Category: Journal

Almost-All-Candidates Meeting

So today I went to see [the all-candidates debate at the Laurier Faculty of Social Work](http://www.wlu.ca/news_detail.php?grp_id=30&nws_id=4479). They invited all the candidates from both the Kitchener-Waterloo and Kitchener Centre ridings to attend. Candidates from every major party showed up, except, notably, the Conservatives. Both of them ditched us.

Hm. I wonder what that says.

I’m going to the debate at UW on Thursday. I’ll be interested to see if Peter Braid bothers to make it to that one.

With the political spectrum spanning the centre to the left, the debate was refreshingly (perhaps even boringly) cordial. I didn’t take notes or anything, and I’ll probably save my overall impressions till after Thursday’s debate.

Some notes:

* Andrew Telegdi mentioned Paul Martin favourably a number of times, and associated himself with Elizabeth May twice. I don’t remember him mentioning Stéphane Dion once. I find this… odd. He did point out that his party was very forgiving, however. So maybe they don’t mind.
* Cathy MacLelland (who I actually really like) seemed a little bit miffed that Telegdi was trying to abscond with her party leader.
* Telegdi came out advocating [preferential voting](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preferential_voting) when the topic came around to electoral reform, like Stéphane Dion did on cross-country check-up yesterday. The NDP guy from Kitchener Centre countered with mixed-member proportional, possibly because he’s forgotten about the Ontario referendum last year. Still, I like where this is going.

Adventures in Nasal Irrigation

Okay, I’ll apologize right now. This is gonna be kinda gross.

I get lots of sinus headaches and am allergic to stuff. I’ve tried a few things for it, but lately I’ve been taking more and more pseudoephedrine, which kinda concerns me. I don’t want to be taking any drugs on a long-term basis. They don’t test for that.

So Oprah comes along and tells everybody about these amazing Neti pot things and suddenly they’re a big craze everywhere. You put some salt water in and pour it out your nose. Miraculously, you’re cured of all ills.

Now my dad’s a pharmacist. He’d pointed out these saline nasal misting things years ago and I’d use them sometime. They do something similar but with quite a bit less water. They’re also incredibly expensive, for reasons i can’t quite make out. But I have some experience with the concept.

The nasal mist thing never really worked out terribly well. Not nearly as well as the neti pot fanatics make out, at least. But I’d never really committed to it, and, like I said, there’s much less water involved.

So I get a little squirt bottle doohickey that came with little salt packets and decided to give it a go. This was Wednesday night.

Thursday at work, I started to feel like I was coming down with something. Last night I was pretty woozy and miserable. Today, I woke up with the left side of my head completely congested and some lovely yellowish-brown mucus. Yum. So I stayed home from work.

I’m trying to decide whether this thing gave me a sinus infection or stirred up something that was already there. Or I just coincidentally came down with a cold. I’ve decided I’ll keep going with the squirt bottle thing for at least a few days to see what happens.

I’m feeling a bit better now and think I kinda need to get out of the house. So I’m gonna go for a walk and listen to podcasts. I’ll keep you updated on what colour my mucus is tomorrow.

No-Candidates Meeting

I totally fail.

Or somebody does.

I was hunting everywhere last week and over the weekend to try to figure out when the stupid all-candidates meeting was for my riding. I figured people just haven’t gotten around to organizing it yet and it would emerge in due course. Then I got a couple items in the feed this morning telling me that [the damn thing was yesterday](http://news.therecord.com/sections/Election2008/article/419561). Poop.

(I also missed my chance to pick up the [Sontaran Stratem Set](http://doctorwhotoys.net/sontaranset.htm) yesterday, not that that’s terribly relevant to the discussion. Epic fail all ’round for me, though).

From the [reports](http://yappadingding.blogspot.com/2008/09/k-w-riding-all-candidates-meeting.html), though, I probably wouldn’t have got a seat, which means Ellen and I almost certainly wouldn’t have been able to stay. This sounds like a shoddy, half-assed excuse for a democratic exercise if you ask me.

Even if a candidate knocked on my door, I almost certainly wouldn’t be there. Those things are useless to me. I need stuff like these meetings to figure out who these people are to make any sort of useful decision.

Video from the event, though, will be broadcast on [Rogers TV](http://www.rogerstv.com/option.asp?lid=12&rid=54&sid=2964) over the next week, if I can figure out how to see it without cable TV.

If you happen to live in one of the other ridings in the region, your meeting is upcoming. [Check the Rogers site for dates and times](http://www.rogerstv.com/option.asp?lid=12&rid=54&sid=2964).

Maybe there’ll be another meeting (probably revolving around some special interest or other) in the coming weeks.

Warning: potty humour

Hey, remember the definitive [Penny Arcade comic on Twitter](http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2008/4/23/). Yeah.

Well, apparently [Jack Layton has a Twitter account too](http://www.joeydevilla.com/2008/09/11/jack-layton-teaches-us-an-important-lesson-in-online-security/).

(Given there’s no corroboration anywhere, I’m betting that’s a photoshop job, but it’s still funny).

Ugh, Election

While I’m happy that a raft of shitty Conservative legislation dies on the floor today (copyright reform bill C-61 included), I’m not entirely thrilled at the prospect an election.

Rather than ranting, I thought it might be useful to outline my algorithm for choosing a candidate to vote for. It’s hand-tweaked, but it has served me well for a few elections now. It goes something like this:

def vote(Candidates):

    voteFor = nobody

    # If there are any super-awesome candidates,
    # vote for the best one.

    for candidate in Candidates:

        if isSuperAwesome(candidate):
            if candidate > voteFor:
                voteFor = candidate

    if voteFor != nobody:
        return voteFor


    # Otherwise, run through the list of parties in
    # order or personal preference, excluding
    # Conservatives.

    for party in ['Liberal', 'Green', 'NDP']:

        if not totallySucks(Candidates[party]):
            return Candidates[party]

    # Otherwise, stay home.
    # TODO: should I have a fall-back to vote for
    # a mediocre indepentant?  Not that it matters
    # at this point...

    return nobody

If you can’t read Python, I apologize. Just read the comments (the bits after the #s) and you should be okay.

I have reasons for all the decision points, but I think, if you’ve been following long enough, you may already have a decent idea what they are. I like to think I follow a healthy mix of strategic voting and ideology. And I won’t vote for a candidate that totally sucks on principle, no matter what their party affiliation is.

I’ll make myself go through the candidates and talk about them at some point in the next month and a bit.