Thursday, February 28, 2008

Prince Harry: American Hero!


Cat's out of the bag: Prince Harry has been "on the front lines" in Afghanistan for 10 weeks or so.

This is all over the news and obviously nothing groundbreaking, but I wanted to post it so I could include my observation that Prince Harry seems like the ideal American hero. The dude is pretty much only about 2 things: partying and kicking ass. He's a drunken womanizer but also a fearless soldier. This is the stuff American Good 'Ole Boy dreams are made of. Prince Harry would 100% eventually become President of the United States if he was eligible. (And he very well may be, if Republicans need to change the rules to cover for McCain now and Schwarzenegger in the future..)

McCain vs. McCain

To pick up on Smokestack's post from a few days ago, my favourite conservative pundit George Will wrote a good column in the Washington Post today about this McCain vs. McCain-Feingold story.

I think this story may pick up a lot of steam. Not because of the "does using public funds as collateral for a loan = using public funds" issue, because there will never be a definitive answer on that. It's more because of the absurdity and hilarity of John McCain's own law screwing over John McCain. Every Democrat and every Republican who hates John McCain must think that this is the best and funniest shit ever.

One in 100 Americans Incarcerated?!

And one in nine black men? This blows my mind. If these figures aren't evidence of a broken system, I'm not sure what people need for proof. I hope this Times article has some resonance, at least enough for a mention on the campaign trail. If Hillary's smart she'll tackle this issue like an intern in the White House. Word up.

Wednesday, February 27, 2008

Obama of the North

The Weekly Standard tells us about how Trudeau ruined Canada! And cautions that Obama is the Trudeau of the South.

Did "The West Wing" predict this year's election?

The final season of the TV show "The West Wing" was about a young, visible minority member of congress who decided to run for president. He lacked experience but gave really good speeches. To win the nomination, he had to triumph over the party's frontrunner who enjoyed a massive lead and was assumed to be the natural pick. But he won, and then went on to face a very old, maverick republican in the general election.

Sound familiar?

See a video that compares real life to the TV show here.

Main difference: In the TV show, the contest (obviously) went on to an intense brokered convention.

On a side note, I should mention that I really enjoyed the final season of this show. Seasons 1-6 were okay but the sentimental patriotism was a quite nauseating and Aarron Sorkin is a ridiculously cheesy writer. But Season 7 feels (and looks) totally different from the show up to that point.....it's presented more or less as a mock documentary about the behind-the-scenes of a presidential campaign.

Monday, February 25, 2008

White People

Ha ha!

I'm on a roll!

If I have this many posts in a day, you should assume that I have a 12 hour day at school after a week off and am therefore having a bit of trouble not being bored.

Having said that, go here and make your own Jackson Pollack painting.

GOP Facists

Scott Horton of Harper's on the political prosecution of former Alabama Governor Don Seigelman. He was featured in the 60 Minutes piece on Seigelman yesterday, and apparently there is a lot more to the story. This case just reeks of prosecutorial misconduct. If the Democrats in Congress aggressively pursue this, it could turn up a shit storm of GOP crimes. Then again, the Dems are way more likely to physically turn into giant vaginas and helplessly flap around on the ground for eternity than aggressively pursue anything.

If only there were laws against such things...

Read here and here for good explanations on how John McCain is trying to cheat the McCain-Feingold law on public election financing.

They both have good explanations of the legal issues involved, which are complicated. Basically his loan transaction was the equivalent of what is called an avoidance transaction in tax law - a transaction that uses legal methods to get around a tax law provision to achieve the same effect. The tax code is constantly being updated to close these kinds of loopholes, and there is also a General Anti-Avoidance Provision that catches transactions that generally violate the spirit and purpose of the tax code.

Under other statutes, some provisions are just broadly interpreted by Courts to ensure these types of transactions don't happen. We just did a case in Secured Transactions that closely mirrors McCain's loan transaction and the judge just disregarded the transaction and enforced the law as it would apply had the transaction not occurred.

Anyway, the point is just that the transaction did not necessarily violate the letter of the law (I don't know how McCain-Feingold addresses avoidance transactions), but it certainly violated the spirit of the law. Which is embarrassing if you wrote the law in the first place.

BC Energy Plan

I've been meaning to post this one for a while with comments, but I've decided instead to just throw it out there and see if anyone wants to comment/discuss.

This is the 2007 BC Energy Plan.

This is a critique of the plan by a progressive energy economist at SFU.

The critique comes in three parts:

- Part I looks at how the policy of energy self-sufficiency creates an artificial demand in the Province leading to the creation of unnecessary and environmentally intrusive new energy assets.

- Part II looks at how the pricing of electricity as the marginal cost of supply from low-cost heritage assets (as opposed to the cost of bringing new assets online) works as a disincentive to conservation.

- Part III takes a closer look at the environmental effects of energy self-sufficiency.

Have fun!

Hillary Clinton is desperate...

...enough to circulate this photo.

Yikes.

Sunday, February 24, 2008

GATTACA

This is the creepiest thing I've read in a while. In the US, you can use DNA testing to screen your genetic predisposition to certain inheritable diseases. But of course once a health insurer knows you are genetically predisposed to a disease you cannot get health increase and it is currently legal for employers to discriminate against you. So it basically be a death sentence.

Saturday, February 23, 2008

Down with Suburbs!

The Atlantic takes a look at the decline of the suburbs.

Thursday, February 21, 2008

Density and Commuting

I was going to link to two good Ezra Klein posts, but since Matt Yglesias links to both of them here, and is wittier than I am, I'll just link to him.

Monday, February 18, 2008

Surprise, Surprise

The meat industry in all it's glory.

Friday, February 15, 2008

Topics in Administrative Law

This case has some interesting administrative law aspects to it. Administrative law is a bit of a tricky beast. It's something I did not even know the existence of, let alone understand, until taking administrative law in school.

Basically, it involves administrative agencies of the government and how they are enacted, structured and operated. They are set up by enabling statutes that specify the structure of the agency and the scope of their jurisdiction. They are often given jurisdiction to create binding policies and regulations. And since they are often created in order to delegate executive or judicial decision making to people who have greater expertise in the subject matter delegated to the agency, they are structured to be legally independent from direct government involvement.

Many of the legal cases that arise in the area of administrative law have to do with:

1) Ensuring that the agency only makes decisions within the scope of their delegated authority.

2) Ensuring decisions, especially quasi-judicial decision, are make in accordance with procedural fairness requirements under the Constitution and the common law.

3) Ensuring that the agency remains independent to the degree contemplated by the enabling statute.

So anyway... back to the case of the Chairwoman of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC). She was fired by the feds after the shutdown of the Chalk River nuclear facility and the resulting worldwide shortage of medical isotopes.

The CNSC is an administrative agency. As such, it is legally independent from the government and is legally only able to act within the scope of it's delegated authority. In shutting down the facility, the Commission was only legally entitled to consider factors related to the safety of Canadians as a result of operating the facility. It would have been, in fact, unlawful for her to have even considered the resulting isotope shortage the shutdown would have resulted in. If she had considered the isotope shortage, the Commission's decision would have been unlawful and would have been struck down by the court on judicial review.

Secondly, the government is only entitled to give direction to the Commission through means authorized in the enabling statute. For instance, most enabling statues for administrative agencies contain a provision that allows the Governor-in-Council (the cabinet) to pass special directives to the agency within a given subject matter. For instance (and I haven't actually read the exact statue in this case), it may have a provision that says "The Governor-in-Council may pass directives to the Commission instructing them what factors to consider in deciding whether to bring nuclear facilities online." Then, the Governor-in-Council could pass a directive saying "The Commission must consider the availability of medical isotopes in deciding whether to bring nuclear facilities online." That would be a lawful order to the Commission.

In this case, the Minister of Natural Resources Gary Lunn just picked up the phone, called the Commission, and instructed them to bring the facility online. This is clearly an unlawful order.

So to recap: both the Minister of Health Tony Clement and Minister Lunn were completely negligent in dealing with the medical isotope shortage - which was 100% their own responsibility - while displaying complete ignorance of the legal functioning of the government and their roles as Ministers. Then, to shift blame, they fired the Chair of the Commission for failing to consider an unlawful consideration and failing to follow an unlawful order.

If I were advising the government on this case, I would urge them to settle as quickly as possible to avoid what will almost certainly be a harsh rebuke by the Courts and a reinstatement of the Chair of the Commission.

Ladies and gentlemen, your Conservative government in action.

UPDATED: I looked up the enabling statute: The Nuclear Safety and Control Act. Section 19 is the provision that deals with directives:

19. (1) The Governor in Council may, by order, issue to the Commission directives of general application on broad policy matters with respect to the objects of the Commission.

So pretty similar to what I thought it might say.

The scope of the Commission jurisdiction is defined in s. 9. Here is the applicable part of the provision:

9. The objects of the Commission are

(a) to regulate the development, production and use of nuclear energy and the production, possession and use of nuclear substances, prescribed equipment and prescribed information in order to

(i) prevent unreasonable risk, to the environment and to the health and safety of persons, associated with that development, production, possession or use,


It could certainly be argued that medical isotopes could be considered in "health and safety of persons, associated with..." But I think, given the broader purpose of the Commission, it would be extremely implausible that a Court would interpret the provision that broadly.

Africa!!!

So we just booked our Africa flights for the summer yesterday, and I'm pumped enough to note it to the blog. I guess I need to "blog it out" a little. You know, like how hippies sometimes just have to "drum it out"?

So yeah.... May 3rd. 2 months in Tanzania, Malawi and northern Mozambique. And possibly Uganda.
And if that isn't awesome enough (and it is), it includes a one day stop in Dubai on the way, and 2 days in London on the way home. Neither of which I've been to, and both of which I have long wanted to go to.

Word.

So if anyone has suggestions for places they have heard are good in those destinations, let me know. Although I can't imagine that one often comes across cool things to do in Malawi.

Wednesday, February 13, 2008

Republicans Heart Steriods

It was weird that the steroids in baseball scandal naturally settled along partisan lines. The Democrats were all really hostile towards Roger Clemens and the Republicans were all sympathetic towards him. Isn't that weird?

Yahoo!'s White Knight

Yahoo! looking to News Corp to block Microsoft's bid. All 3 of these are terrible companies. News Corp is Rupert Murdock. Enough said there. I'm pretty firmly in the Mac camp. And I don't even know what the hell Yahoo! does anymore. What is this? It just looks like some annoying pop-up window. Is that their whole business?

Meat eaters smell bad and have low energy

According to this article, my "interdietary relationship" is taboo!

Who will Edwards endorse?

Any guesses? Conventional wisdom would say Obama, but it's starting to look like he may actually decide on Clinton.

If this happens, my guess is that it would almost certainly be in exchange for the Attorney General position or something similar. Which would make Edwards lose a lot of street-cred in my eyes. Granted he probably has legitimate concerns about both candidates, but I don't think there's any question that Obama has more progressive policy positions on the issues that are important to Edwards, like poverty, the influence of lobbyists, etc. Sure Clinton has a better health care plan, it's not like Edwards was all up-in-arms about that during the campaign.

So we'll wait and see, I suppose...he can always stay neutral. But if Edwards endorses Clinton, I will declare on this blog that John Edwards is a phony and proceed to have an awkward visit next week with Brad & Hilary!

Monday, February 11, 2008

Stay average

More Fun With Alternative Energy

In keeping with the age old tradition of creating new products by mashing together existing ones, here is the "Energy Island":



It's a floating platform that combines solar, wind, wave and Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (a little like geo-thermal where energy is produced by cycling a fluid through warm upper currents and cold lower currents) energy.

I have no idea how much it might cost, but a single platform has a 250 MW capacity ... similar to a single coal-fired generator. So a fair amount. And it looks all futuristic and shit.

Saturday, February 9, 2008

Rock Music!

Good local band I just heard today. It's the dude from P:ANO.

No Kids is the band. Follow the link for download.

Friday, February 8, 2008

Biofuels

It turns out that biofuels release more greenhouse gas emissions that equivalent amounts of conventional fuels, if you factor in land use conversion. Who would have thought that clear-cutting the amazon to grow corn and sugar for ethanol would backfire?

Thursday, February 7, 2008

Wednesday, February 6, 2008

Tech-couver

An article about the attempt to attract a larger tech industry to Vancouver. Seems like a good idea to me. Making a conscious effort to promote the technology sector has worked in places like Waterloo and Ottawa. Vancouver has a pretty good base with the video game (i.e. EA) and alternative power industries (i.e. Ballard). As well as large Canadian tech companies like Business Objects. It's also in close proximity to the Microsoft sphere of influence around Seattle, and silicon valley. It's also super-Asian, which can't hurt.

An Argument for Clinton...

From James Wolcott at Vanity Fair.
My vote isn't about Me. Who I am, how I conceive myself, how my vote positions me in the pulse of the moment. The tab I flip in the voting booth isn't intended as a dramatic gesture to pin in my lapel like a carnation and sniff during intermission, like some Clifton Webb character. I don't accept being lectured or morally browbeaten into voting for one candidate over another in order to prove my virtuous intent...
Perhaps it's my atheism at work but I found myself increasingly wary of and resistant to the salvational fervor of the Obama campaign, the idealistic zeal divorced from any particular policy or cause and chariot-driven by pure euphoria. I can picture President Hillary in the White House dealing with a recalcitrant Republican faction; I can't picture President Obama in the same role because his summons to history and call to hope seems to transcend legislative maneuvers and horse-trading; his charisma is on a more ethereal plane, and I don't look to politics for transcendence and self-certification.

Tuesday, February 5, 2008

Night of the California Presidential Primary

Lets all hope for a peaceful election night. We all know what happened the last time a popular black Senator's presidential campaign was competitive in California.

Shoot him in his toodles

Military Spending

Here's a good article in Slate about how ridiculous the US Defence budget is. The Pentagon is to politicians what Buddhas Vegetarian Restaurant is to Toronto commonfolk: You can't talk shit about it without severe consequences. And so they get away with wasting MASSIVE amounts of money.

I think this would be a good policy for Obams.....he says he's all about "changing the way people think". One of the benefits of having Obama as a candidate (or president) would be that he's good at articulating things to the general public that are a little more complicated then, say, "you're either with us or against us". I'm sure he could successfully make the case that just because you think the defense budget contains waste it doesn't mean you're a traitor or a terrorist. If nothing else, I bet something like this would've helped him in the primaries. He could propose to pay for new spending programs - universal health care? - by getting rid of all the bureaucratic bullshit in there, like how each part of the military (army, navy, air force, marines) gets exactly EQUAL funding (regardless of how much they actually need) because otherwise they bicker.

Also, this would be a fantastic way to make John McCain lose his temper.

Monday, February 4, 2008

Chinese Trains

After having spent many a day in China on the trains, I can sympathize with this:

When record blizzards hit China last month, what began as a 36-hour train trip for Edward Wang became an ordeal lasting nearly twice that long.

He described fighting among drunken passengers and staff armed with knives, fears of being robbed by those desperate for food, and breathing air so foul that some people became dizzy.

I didn't quite experience anything of that magnitude, but we did get spit on once. And water ran out a few times, though you could buy anything at the makeshift markets at each stop. Our record was a 30 hour trip from Urumqi to Lanzhou. A similar length and same destination as the dude in the story. We almost died the first time we were in Lanzhou when our completely ripped taxi driver tore through the city at 4am at 140km/h on city streets without stopping at a single red light. He turned around to us at the end of the ride with a huge smile, like he was proud he got us there so fast.

Not much point to this post... just bored in insurance law.

FOOOBALL!!!

As luck would have it, I flipped past the Superbowl in the last 10 minutes of the 4th quarter last night, and decided to watch the rest of it since it was a close game and the Giants were up by 3. It was actually one of the most entertaining sports games (er..quarters) I've ever watched (not all that many). But the most interesting thing about this year's NFL season is how much everyone HATES the Patriots. I don't really understand it....being a really good team is all they've done wrong. The whole thing seems kinda weird to me considering how much Americans love winners. I could see some resentment of their success in Canada maybe, but that's one of those little cultural differences between our countries.....down there, from everything I've seen, it's completely acceptable to be mighty successful and mighty proud of it. Unless you're a sports team, apparently. I guess that in America, the only thing more loved than a winner is a comeback.

Sunday, February 3, 2008

Is Hiro causing shit?

Here's a pretty cool video of 200 people "freezing" in time for 5 minutes at Grand Central Station. How much do I wish I was an clueless observer?

Saturday, February 2, 2008

They've Got The Crazy

Good article on the effect of cuts to mental health services on policing in Vancouver. Mental health problems were a contributing factor in 42% of police service calls in the downtown eastside over the course of the study. At least they have Tasers to keep the crazies in line.
The cost of this is enormous, Wilson-Bates said, and she calculated that almost 154,000 police hours would be required to deal with such cases annually, or the equivalent of 90 front-line officers working full time. The direct wage cost for those officers would be $9 million, but that does not include ambulance, hospital or court costs, or costs related to stolen property or lost productivity.

Friday, February 1, 2008

Help Wanted

Here's a job that is in big demand right now... securities litigators. On mortgage-backed securities:

“Anybody who touched the security in the process of creating or selling it is going to be subject to litigation,” said Joseph A. Grundfest, a business and law professor at Stanford and a former commissioner of the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Always bet on the I.R.S.

That Wesley Snipes tax fraud case is actually pretty interesting. He's a tax-denier.

Alberta


















Although far from objective—and at times downright patronizing—this show on Vice TV helps put a face to the oil sands project. Parts 9 – 11 provide insight into the snafu that is housing in Fort McMurray.

Also of interest is the torrent of bullshit spewing from Ralph Klein's fat maw (Part 6).