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cmh blog |
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Stop the Lansdowne mess
Sent to City Councillors today: It is time to put the brakes on this stadium debate for the time being. This process needs a reboot. At the outset of the Lansdowne process we had a bright vision for a competition and something world-class. Councillors wrote and reassured us that we would not have a sole-source back-room process. Now it looks like the city has decided to take it all to the back room anyway. Councillors are now getting in on the sole-source action, criticising an urban planning document (stadium site list) that shows current proposals are bad planning. Defending the backroom dealers is not your job… standing up for good planning and a well-designed city is. This whole debacle is a slap in the face to citizens who spent their time and energy putting their imagination to work for the good of the city. The overwhelming result of the public consultation process was that we did not want pro sports to drive the development of Lansdowne. The ink was not dry on those consultations when pro sports derailed the process. That was insulting and dirty. It makes me wonder who you are working for. In the artificial rush that has been created, you have lost focus on creating a world-class tourist draw to complement the canal’s heritage status. I am very scared that I will wake up one morning soon and the whole thing will be a done deal: another South-Keys-Kanata-Centrum-type development built in my backyard, unwanted by local residents who value small local business. We thought we had a golden opportunity and the right timing to redevelop Lansdowne. In truth there is no hurry. Rather than giving Lansdowne away for development (a likely scenario given the current funding picture) I would prefer to wait for brighter days when we can make Lansdowne something to be proud of. I’ll wait for brighter days when a unified strong council has the vision to build something great and the backbone to stand up to its own staff and pandering developers. |
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Bus Strike
Dear Councillors, Your dogmatic position on the transit strike is killing the business and social life of the city. You are supposed to look at the big picture on behalf of citizens of Ottawa. In this you have failed. By now the economic damage to the city far outweighs any possible benefits you may be holding out for. The media is on your side only because the drivers have pathetic PR. Some of us realise that a better council would have prevented the bus strike by looking for savings that did not threaten the drivers. The mayor is trying to increase his popularity on the back of the drivers. In joining with him you have lost track of the fact that these are your hardworking employees to whom you have the responsibility of being a caring and respectful employer. How do you expect to recover from this damage? You’ve gone too far. End the strike today, find savings elsewhere and let’s get on with it. We will remember your mismanagement at election time. |
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Yes, Mr. Simpson
This article perfectly sums up my views on the current self-immolation behaviour of the conservative party. |
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What is the conservative game?
The conservatives have tabled their regular fiscal update this week, but it contains a poison pill for the opposition parties. When Chrétien left office in 2003 he fundamentally changed politics in Canada by leaving behind a limit on donations that people can make to political parties. Big corporate donations are a thing of the past. Now political parties have two kinds of financing: they can get small (sub-$1k) grassroots donations, and they receive $1.95 per individual voter they get out to the polls. The conservatives propose to leave the donation cap in place, while cutting the $1.95 per vote. Many Canadians do not like party politics, but we have to recognize that political parties are the way our political system works. Parties are the way we generate and market ideas. Bankrupting all the parties is not the way forward. The alternative to the party system is electoral reform (not popular) or, frankly, anarchy. Chrétien’s system doesn’t cost that much, and it rewards the parties in a free-market one-vote=$1.95 kind of sense. It rewards parties that appeal to Canadians who come out and vote. It is a good strategy. Harper’s suggestion is self-serving, short-term thinking that frankly stinks to high heaven. The question I have, is why the conservatives are doing this. They must know they are putting a gun to the head of the opposition parties, and that the parties have no choice but to vote against the bill (which also contains stupid things like selling government assets when the market is down, incidentially). It seems likely that the opposition parties, with their big debts, could compromise with one another and could form a coalition government if allowed by the Governor General. Given it’s been 6 weeks since the election, this is a highly plausible outcome that would leave the Conservatives in opposition. The conservatives are smart, why take that chance? Well, if it does come to an election, the conservatives have money in the bank while the other parties are in debt. Perhaps they feel that spending 300 million more dollars to run an election that will only serve themselves is a good thing right now? Absolute power corrupts absolutely. The whole thing sickens me. We should be pulling together with our eye on the ball, but instead the conservatives have their eye on power. What does it say about Canada that we tolerate this and re-elect the party who does it? My bet is that the conservatives will back down when it looks like they’ll have to face a coalition government. Thus showing the kind of dirty politics they believe in. |
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Pumpkin Portraits 08
Quick shot of my pumpkin this year:
Some from down the street:
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Random links to funny blogs
passive aggressive notes (the story I’m linking to is funny) |
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Bronson Expressway
For years car-happy city staff have fostered growth in the south end of town with the promise of the Bronson Expressway. Never quite officially stated, the plan envisages expropriations along Bronson and a high-speed connection to the Queensway. Despite not being an official plan, it is being built stage by stage, consequently with no environmental assessment. Inevitably, all sections will be built except the one requiring expropriation. At that time there will be wringing of hands, and a declaration that we have to do it because we’ve come this far. The next-to-last step in the chain is now being considered. The battle is on. Here’s my letter on the topic to the Citizen: I was shocked to read in today’s Citizen that city staff have scheduled the airport parkway for twinning in the next few years. We must be quick, loud and clear in killing this idea before it again takes root. City staff say we need extra capacity on the parkway, but their proposed expansion does not serve any high-capacity routes. A highway to nowhere makes no sense; this is clearly an attempt to move forward with the Bronson expressway. City employees have taken a piecemeal approach to this mega-project, getting small chunks built in the south to force the final move: expropriation to drive 6 lanes of traffic through the heart of a neighbourhood to the Queensway. With the widening of the Bronson canal bridge this summer, it is no surprise that city staff want to build the next piece of the puzzle. As council has repeatedly said no to the Bronson expressway, why are city staff allowed to put their fingers in their ears and schedule the work anyway? Why are staff fixated on an idea that makes no planning sense and will destroy a neighbourhood? Why is council powerless to control these city employees? Residents should demand answers to these important questions. We must organize to stop the twinning of the airport parkway — the next phase of Bronson expressway construction — right away. The alternative will be an expensive, distracting and divisive debate: an environmental assessment that rehashes all the same issues that have been explored time and again. In this time of financial uncertainty, we do not need an expensive white elephant that expands road capacity to an existing bottleneck. Make no mistake: a white elephant is what it will be. Downtown residents will not accept the Bronson expressway — now or ever. |
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Defence Passed
I have passed my defence. I have some very minor revisions to do, but it is essentially over. When Senate meets (a formality) I will officially have my degree. I have been nominated for a senate medal |
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Defending the Ph.D.
I’m defending the Ph.D. on Wednesday at 1pm. Cross your fingers for me. |
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CurbTalker
Parliant has released a new product to help realtors provide those call-in numbers that let buyers call to get a description of the house. It makes some nifty reports for brokers and should be useful for buyers and sellers too. |
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Fake community newspapers
I like community newspapers. That is why I am glad that they have an exemption, under city by-law, from no-flyer stickers. Of course, everything good must come to an end. A paper called “The Now EMC” (whatever that means) claims to be a newspaper. Recently, I got mad about this and here is the letter to the editor of the Citizen that resulted. CanWest (publisher of the Citizen) has sunk to new lows by starting community newspapers like The Now to skirt the by-law enforcing no-flyer mailbox stickers. Newspaper is a term that barely applies to this product as it wraps 4 sheets of ad-laden copy around 1.5 pounds of dead tree in the shape of unwanted flyers. There were 11 articles this week, on 16 pages. Accompanying this were 274 pages of flyers. This paper freeloads on the right of genuine community papers to widely and freely distribute neighbourhood stories of community interest. Let us take an example of the fine journalism CanWest publishes under the label of The Now EMC Ottawa-East. Recently, the editor took the time to publish an editorial (“Calling the Shots”, Aug. 8). In this remarkable dying-swan piece, the editor defends his journalistic independence. In response to accusations of bias, he lectures those who “make up their minds regardless of circumstance” in “mis-directed anger.” In the same breath, he launches an ad hominem attack against “grad-student types who speak fluent academic jargon-ese”. There is no evidence that this irony is intentional. Although he asserts that he is “nobody’s baby,” it is clear from the editorial’s placement under the advertising deadlines and specifications that the opposite is true. CanWest should be ashamed of itself. Advertising to those who choose to receive it is fine. Advertising to those who have not indicated a preference is defensible. Purposefully starting a rag with the barest veneer of shoddy journalism to circumvent no-flyer stickers is reprehensible. |
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Super Bass-O-Matic 76
What a classic. I’ve always loved this sketch. And I still do. |
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Dehumidifier cost
Still trying to track down our power usage. I ran the dehumidifier on the kill-a-watt for 91 hours 16 minutes (3.75 days or so). In that time it used 42.18 kWh. Based on our current cost of 9.764 ¢/kWh that’s a cost of about $1.09 per day. |
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Window air conditioning
I am working flat out on my thesis, and it is getting hot in our house. I have been retreating to the Carleton library to work in air conditioned comfort, rather than running our window air conditioner all day.
I Parking at Carleton is $10 for 4 hours, or $2.50 per hour. I plugged a “Kill-A-Watt” power meter inline with my window air conditioner and ran it. The room was already cool, so this is the cost to maintain the coolness we had overnight. When actively cooling (not just fan) the air conditioner uses 530 Watts of power. If it were to run solid for one hour at 530 W then it would use 0.53 kWh. At current rates we pay 9.764 ¢/kWh, giving a cost to operate of 5.1 ¢/hr. I recalculated using the current peak rate for people with smart meters (13.594 ¢/kWh) and they would pay 7.2 ¢/hr to operate the window air conditioner. Of course these numbers assume constant operation of the air conditioner. Normally it cycles back to fan a lot. I ran mine for an hour with an inside temperature of 23.3 and an outside temperature of 28.5 (humidex 37). I read the actual kWh reading off the kill-a-watt. I actually used 0.28 kWh, or 2.7 ¢. For kicks (and stalling) I decided to check the split ductless air conditioners a friend is thinking of installing. Of course, these units are designed for much higher capacity because they aren’t sized to cool a single room. Still if you can get away with single-room cooling and the ductless units are a luxury then it makes sense to see the difference in cost to operate. I put in “ductless air conditioner watts” into google, picked the first link, and selected the biggest option of 24000 BTU/hr in the hopes this would approximate the system the friend is thinking about (2 cooling units run to a single compresser). (For comparison my window air conditioner is 6000 BTU/hr.) These units run at a spec of 2590 W while cooling. Using the same calculations this would run 25.2 ¢/hr at current rates or 35.2 ¢/hr at peak smart meter rates. Again, these are flat out cooling, not cycling on and off. A full-house central air conditioner, lets say a 4 ton unit, runs at 48000 BTUs. I can’t find operating watts for these. Let’s assume the costs double from the 24000 BTU ductless. That gives 50 ¢ per operating hour (70 ¢ for the smart meter rate). So there you have it. Running full tilt, a window air conditioner uses 5 ¢/hr, a 24000 BTU ductless uses 5 times that, and a whole house estimated at 10 times the window air conditioner. You cool more area with the more expensive methods, but I just need a cool corner to work in, and so it doesn’t make sense for me to pay $2.50 an hour to park at carleton when it’s costing me 5 ¢ an hour to stay home. Of course, Carleton is already paying for the air conditioning so there may be an environmental benefit to going there, but my little air conditioner is already saving 90% of the power I’d use if we were on central air. I might choose to go to Carleton on this basis when the province’s power grid is really hurting.
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OpenID
OpenID is good technology. It lets you have one standard centralized web identity, protected with a username and password. When you want to make a comment on some weblog, you don’t have to make an account on that weblog, you just use your OpenID to authenticate. Your ID is actually a webpage that you control. Mine is my home page. You put a tiny bit of magic text into the webpage, and poof it works! There needs to a a little server somewhere that checks your password, but it doesn’t have to be in the same place as your webpage. I set one up on xyzzy. If you want to set this up let me know. |
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Bill Gates hates Windows
This is a really funny flame from Bill Gates about how hard it is to download and install stuff on Windows. I’m sure we’ve all felt this way at one time or another. |
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We now do contract stuff too
Parliant has created the iPhoneAuthors custom iPhone programming team. We have lots of experience in all the right technologies, so feel free to get in touch if you require contract work for the iPhone. |
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Men and child raising
An interesting paper came out today looking at fathers and how involved they are with taking care of their babies. The paper tried to look at why some fathers do not seem to engage with baby-raising. It argues that (in their U.S. sample) the encouragement of the mother was more important than whether the men wanted to help. So men who wanted to help but were criticised or shut out of the process disengaged. Men who were encouraged got engaged in the process, even if they hadn’t been that interested. This isn’t a causational study, so things likely go in both directions, but still very interesting nonetheless and worth a read: Summary: Mom’s behavior impacts father’s child rearing: study (reuters) Medium detail: Mom’s Behavior Key To Dad’s Involvement In Child Care (press release) (I tried to find a link to the paper, but the issue isn’t out yet.) |
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Macro Lilac Buds
The buds on our lilacs are opening. And I have a new macro lens! Can’t decide which of these I like better.
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Text Messaging vs. Morse Code
Jay Leno did a bake-off between morse code and text messaging to see which one is faster. Watch it to find out if Motorola will be implementing a morse code SMS input mode on their next phone. |
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