And Another Liberal Myth Bites the Dust

Ever since the Ignatief and Rae came out in favour of an extension to the Afghanistan mission, LPC apologists have been claiming that there's tons - tons, I tell you! - of Liberal MPs who are up in arms about the stance the party leaders have taken. These anonymous MPs, so the apologists say, vehemently oppose the measure.

Warren Kinsella, whose web page I've linked to before, would be one such apologist.

This claim may, in fact, be true. Ultimately, though, it doesn't matter because these anonymous Liberal gainsayers never bother to actually speak up. Not even when it comes to the Bloc's largely toothless Afghan motion, which has been defeated 209-81.

Every single Liberal MP present voted against the motion.

Every. Single. One.

The Liberal Party of Canada is a bunch of useless twats, no matter what their apologists might claim. If they can't even manage a largely meaningless moral stance on this issue, then there's really not much point in making any "big tent" claims, because the only opinion that matters is Iggy's.

UPDATE: There were four Liberal MPs absent from the vote: Cuzner, Fry, Volpe, Folco.

Really, guys? Really?

This is the best you can do?



Ugh. Really, NDP, I'm embarrassed for both of us.

Sweden: Unable to Diplomatize

So another big infodump is going on at Wikileaks and several associated newscorps, this time involving reams and reams of diplomatic cables.  Unlike previous infodumps, this one is set to be released in a staggered fashion throughout the week, with each day getting its own focus.

Cables related to Canada is scheduled for Thursday.  Personally, I can hardly wait, though I fear there may not be anything particularly juicy - all I've heard so far is rumours about U.S. diplomats talking about Canada's "inferiority complex."  We don't have an inferiority complex, not really (our cultural problems relating to the U.S. are worse than that), but I can see how some who might not quite understand Canadian culture might mistake our identity issues for such...  So that's not really such a big deal for me.  As I said, hopefully there's something more interesting related to Soviet Canuckistan, but we'll see.

Already we've hearing the bleating objections of the powers-that-be, who are once again terribly butthurt over the whole ordeal of their secrets being revealed for all and sundry.  These leaks, they claim, stand to get a lot of people hurt or killed (where have we heard that objection before?  It's crying wolf at this point, really) and to impede the U.S. government's ability to engage with other nation-states in a diplomatic fashion, since frank diplomatic statements cannot be made without fear of public exposure.  Negotiations between nations, so the argument goes, need to be kept secret until they've reached their completion, at which point the public can hear a press release about it.  Breaking down the logic, the argument goes like this:

-Diplomacy needs secrecy to work.
-Diplomacy prevents wars.
-Transparency and secrecy are mutually exclusive.
-Therefore, transparency will prevent diplomacy from being an effective tool.
-A nation will be disinclined to use an ineffective tool.
-Thus, diplomacy will be shunned in favour of other methods.
-Ergo, transparency will cause more wars.

It's a fairly decent logical construction, but like all logical constructions it's only true if you buy into the premises.  Here's where Sweden comes into the picture.

See, there's a law in Sweden that makes the vast majority of government records and documents public.  And when I say vast majority, I mean it - to the point that every government e-mail is free for any citizen to read.  At one point, a secret Scientology document was basically made available to the public because it was sent to a high-ranking government official, which thereby made it available to Swedes at large.  Another time it got evil biotech corp Monsanto's panties in a bunch because this policy of transparency allowed Greenpeace to get its hands on a document relating to one of their evil biotech corp products.

Sweden is ranked by Transparency International as the most transparent government on the planet thanks to these and other policies (it's followed by New Zealand and Denmark.)  According to the argument laid out above, these countries would be unable to engage in any sort of diplomatic relations.  This is clearly an absurd claim.

That means the first premise in that logical construction I detailed above is untrue, and as a result the entire argument falls apart.

But all that's really besides the  point, because here's the bottom line:  Voters, citizens, have responsibilities.  These responsibilities include overseeing the people we put into place to represent us as our government.  This requires us to inform ourselves as best we can not only the things our governments do on our behalf, but also the relationships they form with other governments.  It is ludicrous to expect a governmental body to police itself.  Therefore, we need as much transparency as we can scrape together in order to hold them to task for the things they do.  There should be little to no privilege of secrecy here, because time and time again it has been proven that governments use any secrecy they can achieve for unethical behaviour.  Even if heightened transparency makes some tasks more difficult it's a small price to pay.

More nations should follow Sweden's example.  More citizens should demand their governments do so.

UPDATE:  There's a really great article at the Guardian over the whole ethical argument of leaking that I recommend reading. It lays out the same basic argument that I've been making for months in a very succinct manner:

Anything said or done in the name of a democracy is, prima facie, of public interest. When that democracy purports to be "world policeman" – an assumption that runs ghostlike through these cables – that interest is global.

Cookies > Media

Here's Steve Duckett ducking questions by reporters by eating a cookie.


"I'm Eating My Cookie!" - Watch more Funny Videos


For context, this is the conservative hatchet-man who was responsible for bringing in private health care during his time in Australia.  Now he's President and CEO of Alberta Health Services, and is no doubt planning to drown that province's health care system in the tub in the name of profit.

His contempt for the public really couldn't be any more palpable, could it?

My Pet Rats (w/ Illustrations)

I've often told my friends and family that I own the most cowardly pet rats in the world. I still firmly believe this is the case. It's not that they're stupid - they're not the brightest rats I've ever owned, but I've seen them figure enough stuff out that I know they're not dumb by rat standards. No, it's purely a matter of cowardice.

Most pet rats bond with their owner rather quickly - but with Othello and Iago, it was like pulling teeth... A tremendously slow spiral of increasing trust. It was literally months before they learned that it's safe to approach me during play time, even if I'm busy doing something else.

But even beyond their interactions with me, they still get frightened of just about anything. Particularly strange noises - "strange" being defined very loosely. At one point, Othello completely freaked out at the crinkly sound a plastic bag was making while he was in the midst of walking over it.

An object that's out of place - or that they're not used to seeing - is enough to make them wary. This goes for objects that I happen to be holding, in fact, and they're still getting used to the idea that even when I'm doing unfathomable things I'm safe for them to be around.

And yet, despite this fear of strange objects and situations, once we started to make friends one of the first things they decided it was safe to explore was the interior of my mouth.

 

When they started doing this, they were still at the point where any unexpected movement on my part was considered a potential threat.  Moving my hands too quickly?  Oh, no!  But apparently sticking their heads in my mouth was a-ok.

I'm still trying to figure out how any animal, domesticated or not, could develop that as a survival instinct.

Despite their mutual cowardice, Othello and Iago are almost as different from one another as their Shakespearean namesakes.  Othello is the explorer - the better climber and jumper, and always the first to overcome his fear (however briefly) to look around something new.  Iago, on the other hand, is more curious about people.  They terrify him, make no mistake, but he can't help but spend a lot of his time trying to figure out what these big pink-fleshed ape-things are going to do next.

Another example of the contrast in their personalities is the way they handle treats.  Othello is a pretty typical rat in this regard - show him some food, and he'll cautiously approach it in an effort to establish its status as food...  And then he'll quickly snatch it away and run off to devour it in peace, lest someone catch on to his diabolical scheme of taking the food he was offered.

Like I said, that's pretty typical for rats.  But Iago's very different - in fact, he's fairly unique in my experience in this respect.  He's quite slow and careful in taking food from me, as if he were trying to make absolutely sure that yes, it really is okay for him to take what I'm offering.

Sometimes he'll sit there looking at me upwards of a full minute, the food in his mouth, reluctant to actually start eating...  Maybe he's afraid he's going to offend me or something if he chows down.  Or maybe he's worried that the whole thing is a bureaucratic mistake and he wants to give me a chance to correct it before he passes the point of no return.

I dunno.  But I find it kind of weird.

That Was Interesting, But...

I've got no art to show off this week, nor has anyone else's work grabbed my attention... So, instead, I'll use this opportunity to announce my abandoning my blog's schedule.

I started it as an experiment - and I think it's run its course. Continuing it is starting to be a pain, and I've learned just about everything I was going to by this point, namely:

-People seem to like my political posts a lot more than anything else.
-Nerdy stuff comes in second.
-Everything else I blog about tends to generate very few hits.

I'll continue to try to keep a M-F schedule, but from now on I'll just blog about whatever grabs my interest.

Spacetime Invisibility

Yesterday, I was linked to by Warren Kinsella's blog. That lead to an extra 250 or so visitors than I normally get each day. I don't expect many (or, really, any) repeat visits - but it was still pretty cool. Even if I did call Mr. Kinsella a hack. (For the record, I meant it in the nicest possible way, just to highlight how big a deal it is that he's speaking out against Iggy's policy on Afghanistan.

If any of you did come back after yesterday - welcome! I really wasn't expecting that, but it's neat having you back.

Anyway, for today's topic... I thought this was pretty cool, so I figured I'd share: Theoretical Spacetime Invisibility Cloaks.

The basic idea is surprisingly simple. We see things because our eyes are able to interpret information from visible light. That light travels at, obviously enough, the speed of light, which means we see things once light has traveled from them to our eyes. Technically speaking, we never see anything the exact instant happens - there's always a time lag between the object and when we see it.

This is fairly well-known for anyone with an interest in astronomy. The Moon is one light-second away, the Sun a little over eight light-minutes away, the nearest star 4.3 light-years away, the nearest galaxy , and so on. There are time lags on even everyday distances, however impossibly slight. For something a meter away, we see it as it was about 1/300,000,000th of a second ago.

Here's how you use that information to build a spacetime cloak. All those times are for the speed of light in a vacuum, but light can slow down depending on what material it passes through. Researchers have slowed down light to as little as 38 miles per hour by sending it through a special, super-dense form of matter. And it's through carefully slowing down and speeding up light that we can create a temporal void.

Let's say you're standing a mile away from an observer. You start slowly decreasing the speed of the light traveling towards the observer so that it's only traveling at 60 miles per hour, or a mile per minute. Since you're slowing the light down gradually, the observer won't be able to perceive the change. Once the light has reached 60 miles per hour, the observer is now seeing you as you were one minute ago. You've now created a one minute spacetime corridor. You've now got a minute to do whatever you want without the observer having any idea what you're up to.

The Afghanistan Mission and the Liberal Party

 It's been quite a week for the Liberal Party.  It's also been quite a week for anyone who, like me, grows increasingly sick of Ignatief's weak, half-arsed "third way" leadership.

Now, like most Canadians I've never been particularly fond of Dion as the party leader, but Iggy's making me look back at Dion's brief days with nostalgia.  Thanks to Ignatief, the Liberals have come to be some of the Conservative Party's staunchest allies.

Oh, I know it doesn't look that way on paper.  At least, not with a cursory glance.  Pay attention, though, and you'll notice a pattern of Liberals being conspicuously absent from strategic votes - witness the way the vote for Bill C-300 went down (and that was their own bloody bill!) - making their efforts to battle Conservative policies highly disingenuous.  They're letting the CPC basically get their way with everything, from privatizing Crown corporations, to weakening environmental laws (even those related to offshore drilling, of all things), to killing important progressive legislation, and now their efforts even include extending the Afghanistan mission by a good three years.

Last week, I blogged about this last issue briefly, but I feel the need to return to the topic for a variety of reasons - one of which is the fact that even Warren Kinsella has come out against the Liberal handling of the Afghanistan issue:

You know, I was busy with last night’s gig (and a big shout out to my buddy BCL, who came by to take in the show) and feeling sorry for myself for my Man Cold©, so I didn’t get a chance to fully reflect on the following:
1.  The Prime Minister said last Fall that our combat mission in Afghanistan would end, and would be “a civilian humanitarian development mission after 2011.”
2.  The Liberal Party’s leader said this Spring that his party also favoured “a different role focusing on a humanitarian commitment” after 2011.
3. “Humanitarian.” They both used that word.
4.  After the Liberal leader abruptly changed his mind about all this “humanitarian” stuff, so did the Prime Minister.  Both of them now favour extending the war, and yet more combat roles for at least 1,000 troops.
5.  There’ll be no debate about any of this in Parliament, which is, you know, the Supreme Legislature of the People.  No one seems to give a shit about that.
6.  To drive in the final nail in democracy’s proverbial coffin, the Prime Minister emasculates his Minister of Defence, and sends out his press secretary to tell the rest of us that we’ll be at war for a few more years.  On political info-tainment shows.
7.  Got all that?  Whiplash-inducing reversals on all sides, open contempt for the legislature, cabinet ministers neutered in public, unelected hacks wielding the power of the executive.  Oh, and, more war.
8. More war.  Just like that, in the week where we are all supposed to be remembering why war is a bad thing.
9.  And political people actually wonder why both the Liberals and the Conservatives are dropping below 30 per cent in the polls, and why the NDP is moving up.  And they wonder why people are growing more and more cynical about democracy, and democratic institutions, and are angrily lashing out at politicians.
10.  Wonder no more.

For context, this is the same Warren Kinsella who's long been a Liberal party hack and even a high-ranking campaign coordinator.  Him coming out so strongly against a party's stated position is very rare.  So rare that I don't think it's ever actually happened before.

So, why would the Liberals stake out such a terrible position?

Basically, because Iggy, much like his "third way" liberalism, is stupid.  I strongly suspect Iggy was trying to stake out a position that would attract Red Tories of the CPC (the old guard who are supposedly non-crazy) away from Harper's neoconservativism and toward the Liberals.  Basically, they wanted to out-conservative - or at least pre-empt - Harper.  "Extend the mission with 400 troops?" they asked, scoffing, "Why, stop being such a girly man, Prime Minister!  You should have a full thousand!"

The problem with this plan is that it can't possibly work.  Harper's the one who made the announcement of the extension - trying to impress the less-than-30% of voters who actually like the idea by throwing a larger number out isn't good enough to attract them away from the CPC, because pro-War has long been the CPC's territory.  Harper basically has two choices at this point - he can say, "Nah, 400 will manage," at which point the pro-War crowd will continue licking Harper's feet and praising him for his wisdom, or else he can say "Sure, a thousand's even better," at which point he'll have conquered the idea as his own and the Liberals don't get any credit for it.  (Turns out, Harper actually said both, in the order I listed above.) 

 But by even making the suggestion in the first place, the Liberals can't speak out against the idea of the extension without coming across as a bunch of waffling wimps.

Which, of course, they are.

Which is why, of course, this is exactly what they did

“How many trainers? Where are they going to be? Are they going to be out of combat? How much is it going to cost? Why is it impossible for this government to give simple answers to clear questions that Canadians need to have answers to before they can approve any mission by this government,” Michael Ignatieff demanded.

These are meaningless and weak questions, and Ignatieff doesn't actually expect any answers - at this point it's just flailing.  Even NPD turncoat and third-way liberalism champion Rae admits that the Liberals can't do anything to really fight the CPC on this issue:

But, for now, they are hostages to Conservative policy, as Mr. Rae admitted. "We have done an unusual job for an official opposition and we are not -we are not in a position to negotiate a plan, we are not in a position to do anything...," he said after Question Period.

I've seen it speculated that the real issue here is the Liberal war chest.  Namely, that it's empty - if they were to go to election too soon, the party would implode from lack of funding.  So, they move politically rightward at every chance, hoping to eat away at CPC support, while biding for time to refill the war chests.  This hasn't been working, of course, because war chests get filled through strong leadership and brave ideological stances - something good leaders like Layton and Harper* have understood for some time.

Honestly, the state of the Liberal party, the poor leadership Iggy's giving them...  It really makes me miss Cretien.  Pepper-spray and all.

*Here I use the term "good" to mean "effective," not "kind" or "righteous" or the like.  Which should be obvious, since Harper's one of the few politicians in North America I'd unironically describe as evil.

Shower Products for Men

"It's the closest your face will ever come to being shaved BY A SPACESHIP!"

The Making of Tron

Anyone who knows me knows how excited I am about the upcoming Tron sequel.  The original hasn't particularly aged well, but as a kid I absolutely adored it - not just for the special effects, but also for the glimpses of the society inside the computer that the movie depicted.

Years ago I was lucky enough to see the Making of Tron feature in the anniversary edition DVD of the original movie.  For those who aren't so lucky, though, the entire feature is available on Youtube.  Watching it really drives home just how huge an undertaking the movie was at the time, and how far special effects technology has come in only thirty years.

Here's the first part (of 9).  The rest can be found going to Youtube directly.

Ghost Town completed

I finally finished Ghost Town, and you can find it here.  It's not quite what I was going for, but it's fairly close and honestly I was losing patience.  I doubt the rest of my buildings and neighbourhoods will have quite that level of detail.

To cleanse my palette, I also did a character design of Boss Lyubochka.

I think I'll try to tackle a bar interior next.

Samsung Unveils See-Through Monitor. Also, Japan is Still Weird.

That's cool, I guess.  But where's my rocket car?

Also!  A friend of mine, currently living in Japan, pointed out this video (or rather, a related one, but I like this one better) that I felt I had to share.  This is Hatsune Miku, a character mascot from a music software program called Vocaloid...  And she's giving a live concert here.  In holographic form.



S1m0ne is getting more and more prophetic every year.  Incredibly, I find myself wondering if Jem was similarly prophetic, but down that road lies madness.

And yet, I can't help but admit that this is kinda awesome.

The Afganistan Withdrawal Hornswoggle

For years now, we the public have been told that 2011 will be our last year of involvement in Afganistan.  As most are likely aware, this is no longer the case - Harper has announced that we'll be keeping 400 Canadian soldiers there to operate in a training capacity, and the Liberals countered his announcement with the suggestion that we should increase that number to an even thousand because...  well, because they're Liberals and the Liberal party is pretty shit right now.

Of course, this move surprises no one who's been paying attention.  Pogge pointed out, way back at the beginning of October, that the official line from both U.S. and Canadian governments weren't really meshing well with their own message:  namely that our planned withdrawal was putting the mission at jeopardy, that "it will be impossible to replace Canada's more than 1,000 combat troops without diminishing forces elsewhere in the country."  The reason this objection didn't make much sense is that our withdrawal was meant to occur at the same time as the planned drawdown of American troops in Afghanistan - which suggests that, in truth, the U.S. Government has little intention of actually reducing their forces.

The number of troops we're going to be keeping there during this farce of nation-building is yet to be determined - don't think for a second that the four hundred number Harper gave is in any way accurate, not with the Liberals giving him ample opportunity and excuse to boost that upwards considerably, nor with the concerted campaign to convince us that we really actually don't want to pull out anyway.  Our withdrawal may not even end up as a drawdown, at this rate.

Let's see... Tuesday? It's grey. I'll stay in bed.

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The Tim Burton Movie That Almost Was...

Back in the 90's, there were persistent rumours of a Tim Burton-directed Superman movie. Few details were known, but I recall one of the theories was that it would involve the electric Superman (dubbed Superman Blue) rather than the more classic supes, since that's the version that was in the comics at the time.

Turns out the rumours were pretty much spot on, as a gallery has recently been unveiled for what would have been Tim Burton's Superman Lives. You can view it here for epic lulz.

Really dodged a bullet on that one.

Tracy Butler is an Art Goddess

For she has done a thing! And much like most things she does, it is a beautiful thing!

Very illuminating to see her process, not the least because it really shows you exactly why so much time passes between her webcomic pages.

Retinal Chip Helps the Blind to See

Some smart folks in Germany figured out that they could help people with a certain kind of hereditary blindness see by inserting a subretinal implanted chip beneath the retinas of the blind.

One of the patients surprised researchers by identifying and locating objects on a table; he was also able to walk around a room unaided, approach specific people, tell the time from a clock face, and describe seven different shades of gray in front of him.

The particular type of eye disease this alleviates affects 200,000 people worldwide. The chip functions by "[replacing] the retina's cones and rods - its light receptors - which were lost in retinal degeneration."

The down side is that the test worked with 11 subjects; only three of them received any benefits, the others' conditions having progressed too far.

Still, it's a pretty major breakthrough in the fight for vision.

Hal-Con Report

This is a bit overdue, but I've been recovering from the trip.  Better late than never, though - regular posting returns tomorrow.

So, my thoughts about Hal-Con...

1.  It was way, way too crowded.  I think the organizers either were locked into the location after it became clear how many people were going to show up, or else they really didn't know what a thousand people would really be like.  At any rate, they needed at least twice the area they had.

2.  They were understaffed.  By 2 PM on day one I was already seeing Hal Con staff getting incredibly frazzled and short-fused.  Things only got worse as time went on, and sometimes innocent Con-goers would get on the wrong side of the volunteers' exhaustion.  They needed at least twice the staff they had to keep things working.

3.  Special mention for the security staff.  From what I could see, they had it worst of all of the volunteers, and it wasn't uncommon to find them yelling angrily at each other into their walkie-talkies, usually over something that's gone wrong.  But I'd neither seen nor heard about any of the security staff acting short-tempered with any of the Con-goers, so kudos to them.

4.  There weren't enough programs by a pretty huge margin.  In fact, they didn't even have enough programs for all the pre-registered guests.  Really, there's no excuse for this - why wouldn't they at least make sure they have enough for the people who'd paid for their tickets in advance?  They ran out of programs before the first day was half-over, and had to print out emergency single-day schedules - which they also ran out of quickly.  People who were showing up only for Saturday or Sunday weren't even given anything, despite paying $32 dollars.

5. The events themselves could have used more thought; the costume contest, for example, allowed so many last-minute entries that hardly any non-contestants were able to watch.

6. A number of the workshops and seminars were pretty cool, but were placed poorly.  About eight people had to walk out of the Writing Comics workshop, for example, because there weren't enough seats and they didn't feel like standing for the whole hour.

It was a rather poorly organized event, really.  Some of the things I'm willing to cut the organizers some slack with because this was their first Con and it was a learning process for them, but other things (like the lack of programs) are really inexcusable.


Now, despite all this, I did have fun...  But it was often in spite of the Con, rather than because of it. 
The real test will be next year - if the organizers have learned from their mistakes and avoid them next time around.