So if the New Democrats took an unprecedentedly huge share of the votes–for once in their history, actually benefiting from first-past-the-post, rather than consistently taking a far smaller share of seats relative to the popular vote cast…

And if the Conservatives managed not to benefit from this at all either, winning another minority government…

And if the Liberals, NDP and Bloc Quebecois voted for a motion of non-confidence…

And if Governor General David Johnston doesn’t dissolve Parliament, forcing another election–which, as viceroy, (stupid monarchy) he’s perfectly entitled to do…

…then Johnston would have to turn to the newly anointed leader of the Official Opposition and ask him if he was up for giving it a go. And if the answer was yes, as it almost certainly would be, then with a third of the seats, a quarter of the popular vote, and the leadership of the Liberal and Conservative parties more appalled than ever imagined possible…

Then this guy would become Canada’s next prime minister:

Credit: Scott Rogers

As entertaining as that would be, and while it’d be great for galvanizing Liberal and Conservative support for abolishing first-past-the-post, an important question remains: can we actually trust those polls?

Maybe.

The CBC posted an article on the issues facing pollsters today: chiefly, that the average Canadian has neither time nor desire to talk to pollsters on the phone. This, of course, is countered somewhat by the typically Canadian instinct to not actually hang up when asked if we can spare a half hour of our time, but still, the fact is:

But for the purposes of their polling, researchers are obliged to assume that the 15 per cent of callers who agree to spend 20 minutes talking to them are representative of the 85 per cent who are too busy or whatever to participate or who never pick up at all because they can identify a pollster through Caller ID.

(Emphasis added for my own amusement.)

Still, editorial snafu that may be, it’s pretty accurate given what I presume about these folks who do not under any circumstances want to respond. A Freudian slip of the word processor?

One thing is certain: the typical respondent is not the typical Canadian. How different they may be is another matter.

PS: Vote. Seriously.

Personally, this is not exactly the greatest shock ever. Here in Canada, where services like Hulu and Netflix aren’t present, at least competitors like Rogers Video can be propped up by their larger media companies, or appeal to local urban cinephile demographics. Viacom (wisely) spun Blockbuster off on its own in 2004, after the start of its decline.

I’m curious to see who will paint this news as indicative of lax IP regulation and who will view it as merely another casualty of the economy. To me, it’s just one more business model that didn’t adjust quickly enough to technological and social change.

I actually went into a Blockbuster just the other day, but I was checking out the Wind Mobile kiosk. Granted, I’m not much of a movie buff, but it’s hard to see how renting–and returning!–a DVD for $4 is a better deal than buying it for $7…at the grocery store.

Read the article: Blockbuster Will Be Delisted After Proposals Fail (Wall Street Journal)

That’s right, boobs. Or what-have-you.

“I don’t get it.”

Well, the other day, Tehran’s acting Friday prayer leader Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi–yes, he’s not even an Ayatollah. I know, right?–went and said some crazy shit about boobs and how they cause earthquakes.

Or more specifically, no, he didn’t really. As PBS explains:

While delivering his weekly address, Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi, Tehran’s hardline Friday prayer leader — the man who replaced Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani in the role — revealed what had caused the strange prognostications. “Adultery causes earthquake,” explained Sadeghi. “The incidence of sin has proliferated. Sins — such as the laxities of some women or the way some young people harass and ogle on street corners or some families don’t observe religious values and practices while they are traveling — have mushroomed,” he told millions of television viewers on April 16. “These allurements that some women and some girls apply to themselves outside their homes, the young people who are tempted and turn to promiscuity and commit sin — all this increases adultery. According to our sacred transmitted texts, this is one reason for the incidence of natural calamities. When sin proliferates, earthquakes become common.“

So of course, this was picked up by the international press. They love this stuff. The greatest focus, of course, was the sentence about “some women” and their “laxities”: namely, the “allurements” they “apply to themselves outside their homes”.¹

This isn’t about boobs. It’s a nod of support, under the guise of religion–and frankly, I’m not even sure if Sedighi means it as some kind of badly-translated “we will bury you”-esque metaphor–for Ahmadinejad’s odious, dissent-quelling plan to depopulate Tehran.

“Depopulate Tehran? I hadn’t heard anything about this!”

You don’t say.

As you will no doubt recall, former Friday prayer leader Rafsanjani is currently Chairman of the Assembly of Experts. He’s also a former President of Iran and political opponent of current President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. During the 2009 Iranian election crisis, Rafsanjani’s July 17th sermon (ostensibly) called for an end of censorship of the press condemned the state-sanctioned violence against protestors.²

Consequently, he is no longer Friday prayer leader.

Flash forward eight months, and Ahmadinejad is throwing out crazy ideas like maybe moving five million people away from Tehran:

The issue of moving people and organizations from Tehran has received much publicity since the President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s recent call on Tehranis to pull up stakes and move to other cities.

Last week Ahmadinejad called on Tehranis to move to other cities because Tehran is earthquake-prone and if a massive quake hits this overpopulated mega city, the ensuing crisis will be unmanageable.

“Thanks to people’s prayers, Tehran’s fault lines are not active now,” but the occurrence of a massive earthquake in Tehran is certain, so at least five million should leave Tehran to make the crisis more manageable, Ahmadinejad said last week.

“Wait, wait, wait. Speaking as a hypothetical pro-Ahmadinejad Iranian-Analogue-to-the-Daily-Mail-reading Tehrani, I have to say that this proposal exists solely to save us from earthquakes.”

No. No it does not:

During the post-election events Tehran was the heart of the protests. Initiating rallies in huge numbers and acting as a model for other big and small cities of Iran with a concentration of most of the top universities and political, civil, cultural and economic organizations and a great magnet for young people coming to Tehran to either work or study.

So, good luck with that, Iran. Sorry about the press focusing on the boob thing.

…which brings us to last Monday, when Jen McCreight, Outgoing President of the Society of Non-Theists at Purdue University, threw up a quick blog post proposing an experiment to show Sedighi what’s what:

Time for a Boobquake.

On Monday, April 26th, I will wear the most cleavage-showing shirt I own. Yes, the one usually reserved for a night on the town. I encourage other female skeptics to join me and embrace the supposed supernatural power of their breasts. Or short shorts, if that’s your preferred form of immodesty. With the power of our scandalous bodies combined, we should surely produce an earthquake. If not, I’m sure Sedighi can come up with a rational explanation for why the ground didn’t rumble.

As of this moment, the Facebook group for “Boobquake” boasts 60,000 members, and Google News is reporting over 430 separate news articles around the world. Countless blog posts have leveled criticism against McCreight, accusing her of…well, pretty much every nasty thing. I particularly enjoyed the concern over what would happen if there actually was an earthquake today. Cheeky know-it-all-ism–meet–Islamophobia, awesome.

“Say, this raises a good point! What do you have to say about this Boobquake stuff, Catherine?”

I’m glad you asked that question! It’s silly and irreverent and I’m going.

“Wait, you’re going!? But! But!”

Hush.

The most obvious criticism leveled against Boobquake is that it promotes the objectification of women.³ And honestly, it’s easy to see why. Vancouver’s print media have not exactly paid much attention to anything beyond ZOMG BOOBS:

News1130 is on the street, finding full support for the shaker. “God has given me eyes to appreciate beauties,” says Vikram. He may see some beauties!

He asks what’s wrong with seeing the human body. “I’ll be the happiest man in the world if a woman comes in front of me and asks, ‘Can I buy a soda?’ And why not? I’ll open it for you… I’ll open the soda for you!”

Is that a euphemism?

The Boobquake will be shaking from 4:00pm-8:00pm at the VAG.

That’s some classy stuff, News1130.⁴

However, I really want to emphasize that while this story promotes the objectification of women, it is possible to write one that keeps it to a minimum about the same topic.

Even still, that Vancouver Province article annoys me for a variety of reasons.

First, what the heck do those women from Mission in the photo have to do with the rest of the article? There’s no explanation given as to who they are or why they were interviewed. They do have a very nice photo though–ohhhhhh. Good one, The Province.

Angela Squires will be monitoring seismic activity Monday from Vancouver as she and other women take up the busty bid to prove the cleric wrong in a show of solidarity at the Vancouver Art Gallery.

Right on, Angela. Of course, Metro Vancouver (yes, yes) does note:

“I thought, ‘how ridiculous,’” said Squires, who will be showing off her legs instead of her cleavage because she’s had a double mastectomy.

Yes, that’s some super fact-checking, The Province.

Metro Vancouver further quotes Squires as saying:

“People — especially (those) who have a perceived authority — are coming out with ridiculous statements that are not necessarily questioned. And it’s important for all of us to question what comes at us.”

Honestly, Metro Vancouver wins this one,⁵ though the Province does at least mention the word “skeptic”–though not any of background of there being a broader skeptics and humanists movement.

“But aren’t you afraid that if you show up wearing a low-cut top, guys will stare at your chest?”

First of all, my chest is at eye level for most dudes. It happens. Second, no. I’m not going to let concern over what guys may or may not do impact how I dress. That absolutely stinks of victim-blaming and I find it despicable.

Straight Dudes, I really hate to be blunt here, but I don’t notice you as sexual humans. At most, you are rivals–and let’s face it, even that’s a stretch. I don’t care whether you find me attractive, and I’m not going to use that as a consideration in how I dress. However, I am going to allow whether or not other lesbians find me attractive to influence how I dress. Sure, there may be overlap, but that’s one venn diagram I really don’t care about.

I want to be very clear on this: I do what I do for me, not for anyone else, and I do so because I have the freedom to choose.

1. “Outside their homes” is a great qualifier. Why, he’s practically Pierre Trudeau.
2. On the other hand, he’s wanted in Argentina on terrorism and murder charges. So really, this is a case where I can–at most–support his Selma-killing policies.
3. As we know, women’s bodies should be hidden away beneath a chador at all times. Y’know, so they’ll be respected.
4. Also, you can’t spell.
5. I know. I’m scared too.

I understand that “some of [your] best friends are Haitian” and that you’re only talking about the “bad ones” when you say “Canada will be overrun by gangs and HIV” if we fast-track the immigration process for Haitian refugees. I get that you’re not really a racist, I do.

In fact, I totally agree with your thoughts on it being “their problem” for living on a fault line, or that “those people” should have taken matters into their own hands and risen up against the succession of vile dictators more frequently. Clearly a country with such a rich history of coups could do better. Heck, the Americans were there for 20 years to help out, and where are their thanks?

And let’s face it, a country that poor? “What would they do for us,” indeed?

…you complete asshole.

Eugene Cernan walks on the moon, Dec 13, 1972

I’m skeptical of the usefulness of manned spaceflight, even as I believe in its long-term necessity. (Besides, should it be necessary for humans to leave Earth, we could get that going on fairly short order. The technology’s straightforward, even if we don’t have interplanetary ships today.)

I was born almost a decade after the last time a human stepped foot on the moon. The Apollo program was Cold War nose-thumbing and sabre-rattling at its most blatant. It was a corporate boondoggle on a scale scarcely seen since. It was a distraction from the horrors of Vietnam and from the waning popularity of two Presidents.

Landing on the moon was also the most impressive thing humans have ever achieved.

Despite all its flaws, I’ve been a big supporter of the space program for my entire life. Building better telescopes and probes is absolutely necessary for the same reasons the Large Hadron Collider is necessary: because if we don’t seek out knowledge about the universe, if we don’t appreciate it, what the hell is the point?

36 years ago today, Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt stepped into their lunar module and returned home, the last humans to step foot on another world. That’s not appreciating it, guys.

“We can go out to the airport,” the mom said as they were leaving.

“Oh, that’s a long drive!”

Yes. Yes it is. With the opening of the Canada Line now moved up to August 17th, less than two weeks away, it will actually be quite a bit faster–for me, at least. The closest station is a 2km walk, bus, or bike ride away, but I expect door-to-door travel time to be much, much shorter than calling a cab.

It remains to be seen how well the existing bus service will integrate with the new stations, and if more frequent east-west buses will be needed to funnel Vancouver residents into the Cambie Street corridor. In any event, by opening early, Translink and InTransit BC will hopefully have some extra time to work out many of the bugs before the old bus routes out of Richmond get discontinued.

I probably won’t use the Canada Line much myself, still being closer to the Main Street bus myself. Since I tend not to go to Richmond or Oakridge Centre much, I don’t see a lot of opportunity to use it, but it would definitely make getting to Yaletown or Davie Street from my neighbourhood much more convenient.

Plus, as has been pointed out to me by friends and drinking buddies alike, now that I’ll be attending Langara College, the 49th Avenue station makes it extremely convenient to blast down to Gastown for a drink immediately after class. (Guys, you get that school isn’t 9–5, right?)

Still, this really does hammer home the point that for a pedestrian and transit user, the shape of our city really is defined by which buses go where. (Hint: they go downtown.) Personally, when I’m a passenger in a friend’s car, I never think about taking 12th Avenue to cut across town because there aren’t buses that go there.

These fascinating travel-time maps of Great Britain effectively illustrate what even a densely-populated country like the United Kingdom must contend with when moving people and goods around.

Also interesting is the implication of what “central” means to different people. This week, there’s been some discussion over at the Vancouver League of Drupalers, of having some coworking meetups to chat about Drupal projects we’ve been working on, get some coding down, and so forth. But where to actually meet? The Grind at Main and King Edward? Sweet, I’m there. Waves in New West? Yeah, not as convenient. However, if I lived right beside any Expo Line SkyTrain station in Vancouver proper save for Stadium or Main Street, it would be faster to go all the way out to New Westminster, hands down.

Fortunately, having my spiffy new bike has opened up a lot of options too, particularly with the ability to switch to transit when I need it, now that all the buses have bike racks.

So far today, I’ve ridden just under 8 kilometres to three out of four scheduled errands. The last one will double that. I’ll spend most of it on the cross-town 10th Avenue bike route. In the end, I will have spent about the same amount of time on the road as I would have, had I driven, if you factor in parking. It’s pretty liberating, I have to say.

But hey, even if it isn’t something that’s totally useful for me, a link to Richmond and the airport was necessary. I wish different choices had been made in construction and planning, but it’s definitely something we’ll be getting some use out of as a city. Plus, hey, Vancouver’s the first Canadian city with a subway link to the airport. Go us.

I’ve been convinced for a long time that the biggest threat to free speech in the 21st century is not, as in past eras, some kind of trend towards authoritarianism, but rather, intellectual property encumbrances. The idea that VANOC can trademark lines from O Canada is appalling to me. It’s bad enough that the Olympics have become so branded and mired in the exclusivity of the brand that they’ve threatened Olympia Pizza in Vancouver’s West End, to say nothing of the actions taken since then.

Thus, I wholeheartedly support the choice to the True North Media House in response to the line trademarked by VANOC.

But I’ve been thinking about situations where The Authorities have confiscated memory cards or deleted photos and so, I’m wondering about technical workarounds to this: I would consider using an EyeFi card in my camera to tether with a 3G phone (say, a jailbroken iPhone or possibly something with reasonable battery life.) to automatically upload my photos to my website or Flickr so that I wasn’t actually storing any pictures, I was posting them live. Short of jamming or Iranian-scale network monitoring and packet inspection, there would really be little anyone could do, assuming the images themselves were legal.

If I take a photo of a poster with the Olympic Rings, is distribution of that photo a trademark or copyright violation? Is my use of the words “Olympic”, “2010”, “Winter”, or “Games” in this post actionable? No, but what if I’m doing so in protest of something involving one or more of those words?

I mean, I don’t seriously consider myself at risk for having the last name “Winters”, or for writing under that name, but it’s so important to explicitly affirm that I have the right to do so when proposing –or passing!– any law that purports to restrict speech.

From the TNMH website:

We intend to create a space in downtown Vancouver to serve as a media resource centre with high-speed internet, audio and video production facilities, green screen and interview space, press conference space and workstations.

This project was launched by a group of media makers who covered the past several Olympic Games as un-accredited media. The organization has grown into a extensive group of volunteers from various industries and bringing diverse skills and motivations to the project.

Nice, right? Dave notes that they’ve been careful to identify as a group distinct from anti-Olympic protestors as well as the IOC itself. He says that his interest is in finding the stories the mainstream media can’t or doesn’t cover. He wants to make friends with people from other countries, hang out with them and enjoy a game or two: this is what breaks down the differences between us and makes it hard to hate people from “over there”, wherever that may be.

And he’s right. Studies demonstrate residing in large, diverse cities, or international travel — even religious pilgrimage — increases tolerance, respect and understanding for people lucky enough to be able to make the trip. And isn’t that what the Olympics are supposed to be about?

Unlike a few friends and bloggers, I’m not a huge sports fan myself. At the same time, I’ve been known to enjoy watching a game, taking in an event. But it’s the stories Dave’s interested in telling that are most interesting to me. And that’s why I’m going to go to the next TNMH meeting.

While otherwise a competent, irritatingly underfunded news organization, the CBC sucks at infographics. Most of their “interactive features” are just text that requires a lot of clicking and scrolling to read. That’s not “interactive”, guys. That’s “broken”. (In fairness, a lot of these come from the Canadian Press, which presumably also supplies these horrible clicky things to the two other^[1] Canadian news organizations.)

But I digress. A tad.

Yeah, that’s a shame.

This graph of the depressing failure that is Northern Telecom is pretty good because it ties news and events to stock price over time. There’s still ridiculous amounts of clicking on tiny little dots though. Mouseover, anyone?

(In fairness, there are at least forward/back buttons.)

I find it really bizarre that the two most effective “interactive” features on CBC’s website are both incredibly morbid: a “where did people find feet washed up on beaches?” map, and a map of gang hits in Metro Vancouver. (Wow, that map certainly makes the Downtown East Side look quiet. “DTES: Too poor for gang-bangers.”)

Both of these, predictably, use Google Maps, and colour-code the different categories of event at that location. (“Raccoon paw hoax” or “stabbing”, for example.) This conveys a decent amount of information without having to select the icon to view additional details. However, you still do have to click the thing to find out anything more.

I will say, though, that the effectiveness of both of these horrible death maps could be improved by taking time and date into account: personally, I want to see how long ago those people down the street got murdered in their attic. I mean, really, now. (I remember seeing a Google Maps mashup that did this, with a slider at the bottom. Can anyone help me out with a URL?)

The New York Times, on the other hand, takes online infographics to a whole new level, rivaling the quality of their print features. I’ll explain more about this in 30 minutes.

[1] Yes, seriously. (Stupid Conrad Black. Stupid CRTC.)

I, on the other hand, share my name with a number of moderately Googleable women, none of whom seem to be serial killers or skinheads or anything terrible like that at all. That said, the most prominent ones tend to be fairly embarassing. So who are they? A couple other Catherine Winters have written embarrassing books, but that’s thankfully a lot better than it could be. No, my fellow Catherine Winters are pretty harmless.

The first Catherine Winters’ story is pretty tragic, however:

Nine-year-old Catherine Winters was last seen around noon on March 20, 1913. A family friend named Dan Monroe spoke to her as she walked along the town square toward her Newcastle, Indiana home. On that day, the schools had closed due to an outbreak of measles and Catherine had spent the morning playing with her pal Helen Stretch. As she skipped toward home, she wore a “red sweater coat,” a white straw hat, and a black and white checked gingham dress. She had brown eyes and light brown hair.

They never found her. At the time, it was a huge mystery — was she kidnapped by gypsies? Did she run away? Her disappearance was covered in a 1913 silent newsreel.

Of course today, we can all guess what happened and it’s pretty horrifying. I really can’t fault her for having the same name, particularly when she met such a tragic end.

Second to her is a Catherine Winters who is also pretty hard to be irritated by. Catherine Winters of Lindon, Utah is 12 years old and plays the flute really, really well. I figure she doesn’t need crazy people picking at her for being good at stuff, so I’ll forego linking to any of the sites that list a little too much personal info.

Catherine, if you ever read this:

• Tell your parents to think about password protecting some of those photos of you. Flickr is a good option for this.
• Don’t let high school get you down in a couple years. In my experience, Catherine Winterses don’t like high school.

So, with the exception of Catherine Winters who disappeared in 1913 and Catherine Winters who plays the flute, the rest are kind of lame:

There’s Catherine Winters, who in 1983, wrote a single entry in the 1980s Sweet Dreams series, How to Talk to Boys and Other Important People. I’ve had people ask me if that one was mine. (“Yes. Yes it was. I was a published author when I was 2 years old.”) I strongly suspect that this is the Catherine Winters who wrote for Young Miss magazine in the early 1980s. If it is, today she’s writing for Health.com and is not as lame as previously asserted. Either way, it’s surprising that someone as prolific as this Catherine Winters could be eclipsed online by a book written 25 years ago.

[Update: May 28, 2009: Catherine Winters good-naturedly confirms that she is, in fact, not as lame as other Catherine Winters have worried and doesn’t sue me. (Thanks, Catherine!)]

There’s a “Katherine Winters Hair Salon” in Irvington, New York. I’m not actually sure of the spelling of her first name, but apparently, the proprietor isn’t actually named Catherine Winters. I’m not totally sure where the name comes from. As of this writing, there’s only one extremely negative review available on Google:

“If she didn’t give me a bunch of attitude for leaving and offered me a discount to come back when she got her ____ together I might have come back. I wouldn’t go back if she paid me.”

Finally, there’s the Catherine Winters who self-published a 48-page book called Being Single and Loving It. In the author’s own words:

I wrote this book because I had experienced some shortcoming also in the area of being single and praying for the right mate to come my way after my journey on being single I am now happily married to a wonderful husband but if I had not stood still just for a second I also would of miss my blessing. I hope and pray that my book would give you some things to consider while your waiting on God and soul searching for what you want your mate to be.

You know, a lot of people look down on self-publishing because it’s not seen as ‘legitimate’ or because you don’t have ‘editors’ or ‘proofreading’ and can have ‘problems’ with ‘grammar’, but to them, I say, balderdash! I’m ordering this right now.

So that’s the big four. Still, that’s not even counting the myriad Katherine/Kathryn/Catharine/Cate/Kate/Kat/Cat/Cathy/Kathy Winter(s)es out there! There’s too many to count, so I picked out a couple entertaining ones.

• In 2008, New Orleans resident Mary Catherine Winters, a nurse at Omega Hospital, (Yes, really!) gave $419 to Hillary Clinton.
• In 1976, British ice dancer Kathryn Winter won gold at the inaugural World Junior Figure Skating Championships. At two sentences in length, she has the shortest Wikipedia entry I’ve ever seen.
• Kathy Winters, NASA Shuttle Weather Officer, gets quoted in the press all the time and apparently has the authority to scrub shuttle launches. I feel this more than makes up for going by “Kathy”.
• Dr. Kathryn Winters, a pediatrician from New Mexico, has at least one patient (or more likely, at least one patient’s parent) who likes her, but thinks her staff is rude.

Interestingly, Catherine Winters have a tendency to be fictional!

• “Catherine Winters”, “Cate Winters” and “Kate Winters” are all popular names in a variety of fan fiction: Twilight, (Damn it.) Smallville, Harry Potter, Boy Meets World, Doctor Who, and so on. The most blatant one of these, a Stargate SG-1 Mary Sue seems to have disappeared.
• Hilary Swank played Professor Katherine Winter in the 2007 film The Reaping, which I have not seen. With a Rotten Tomatoes score of 9%, I have not made plans to do so. (Seriously, Hilary, who is your agent!? Most. Inconsistent. Career. Ever.)
• Kate Winters is the protagonist of Gerri Hill’s novel Coyote Sky, currently one of the top-ten books on Amazon’s ever-mercurial lesbian romance list. Unlike The Reaping, I have read this, and yeah, I’d say that ranking is fairly well-deserved. If your name is Catherine Winters, it might be weird to read though. I’m just saying.
• One of my personal favourites: “Catherine Winters” is the alias chosen by the protagonist of hetero romance novel Indiscreet by Mary Balogh.
  

  Lady Catherine Winsmore, a heroine of quiet courage, refused a forced marriage when rape left her with an illegitimate child. Exiled by her family, she poses as a young widow, Mrs. Catherine Winters. An innocent smile brings the unwelcome advances of another rake, the Viscount Rawleigh, Rex Adams.

  That’s super. Not only do I apparently have a name that makes me sound like a character from a romance novel, I have a name that sounds like a character from a romance novel made it up. Awesome.

Who shares your name?