An Exercise In Futility

On May 12, BC voters will be asked to choose between two voting systems: The current Single Member Plurality (SMP) system, or Single Transferable Vote (STV). This referendum was also conducted last election, with almost 60% in favour of a change to STV (the government decided this was sufficient support to hold the referendum again).

Last time around, i flip flopped on this since i did not fully understand the issues and i was swayed by people who i believed DID understand the issues. By referendum time i was mostly against STV, and in the end i did not even vote on it.

This year i have done more research into it and have solidified my stance: STV is not the best alternative to SMP, but it is a good alternative that will benefit most British Columbians. In fact, the only people who will ’suffer’ from a change to STV are those who feel that fringe or independent parties should not have an opportunity to win seats.

Very simply put: BC-STV is a system that provides better proportional representation in the legislature than the current SMP system.

Under SMP, a candidate will win the seat in their riding with anything more than 50% of the vote, which means that up to 49.x percent of the constituency would have no local representation at all. By having larger electorate deciding multiple seats, there is more opportunity to elect someone who represents you and your ideals. Which is better: having an MLA (who you would not vote for) who is “accountable to you” because you can drive to their office, or having an MLA sitting in the legislature who you DID vote for?

The choice is clear: Vote YES for BC-STV.

i almost feel like i ought to dump the content of the blog to hardcopy and be done with it. Twitter is more than sufficient for telling people about how much coffee i drank or what colour the pavement is today.

Ideal coffee making system - unit would be plumbed in to water source and drain, the only user interaction would be to tell the unit when to make coffee (either on demand or by pre-programming), to drink the coffee, and to refill the beans/grounds and soap when near empty. Soap is required for self clean. Carafe would be removable but a robotic clamp could grip the carafe during the cleaning process to dump the contents. Or spigot type dispenser. Problem with spigot system would be downtime while system self-cleans (carafe system can cycle between 2 carafes). Beans or grounds would be dispensed internally in preprogrammed amounts. System could contain both decaf and caf, and combine in desired ratios. System would have a web-based interface for configuration and operation, but unit could also be operated at the physical unit itself (one touch brew).

i bought a $100 coffee maker with insulated carafe last year and i have been disappointed. The $20 kmart special i had before made WAY better coffee.

There are two things i dislike about this camera we have, and they are both to do with manual focus. One is that the focus ring has no markings, so it is not possible to set the focus to infinity. Maybe a focus reticule would help in that case - and that is peeve number two. On our old Minolta there was a reticule in which you had to align two images that appeared in two half circles - and that would indicate that the subject was in focus. I am barely an amateur photographer but it made sense to me that this would eliminate any focus error that would be introduced by my eye (which focuses independently of the camera). On manual focus with no focus reticule to assist me, i am having to guess when the subject is in focus. Or am i fooling myself?

Whatever proportions of instant coffee, sugar, and milk were in my cup this morning, the flavour took me right back to a little motorway stop on E19 in the Netherlands back in 2000. It is so neat how taste and smell can awake vivid memories.