Pie Palace

I recently tried to photograph my sad little Xmas tree. All I got were underexposed photos with a bright twinkly spots on them. Now I learn that I should be photographing Xmas lights in well lit conditions. Doh! Hat Tip: MG

There is now a moratorium on the aliterate posting to PiePalace. You may only comment if you (a) bother to read my post and the subsequent comments, (b) take five minutes to think about what you’ve read, and (c) write in a constructive manner.

If you haven’t read what I wrote, but you really want to post, I will be happy to provide either: a diagram explaining the more difficult concepts contained in a post; or a “Readers Digest” version of the post written in words of one syllable or less.

Thanks to Terra, John, and Tina for our new editorial policy. Please remember that I’m not referring to the literate majority of my readership, just the aliterate few.

The Green Party has finally set up a petition to get onto the leaders debates before an election. If you’d like to see democracy served well, go to DemandDemocraticDebates.ca and add your name to the list.

Last weekend, I became an unwilling spectator of the Liberal leadership convention. It seemed like every radio channel, from CFRA to CBC was following the convention with the kind of glee that I associate with a coronation. Thankfully, the expected coronation (of Ignatief or Rae) didn’t happen. Instead, the “academic” from Quebec was elected. Considering the front runners, that was probably for the best.

The convention itself didn’t hold too many surprises. From the coverage I heard, it seemed to consist of schmoozing and back-room dealing, which are two activities that often spring to mind when one hears the word “Liberal” in Canada. What I did find surprising was the nomination process.

The nomination process sounds truly bizarre. From what I could ascertain, local delegates are elected from each riding, and then sent to the convention. The delegates don’t have to declare for any one candidate, but they can, at which point they seem to be somehow “locked in” to supporting that one person. A series of votes happen, which eliminate any candidate that falls below a certain threshold. The net result is an event that plays out like a reality TV show, with eliminated candidates telling their supporters who to vote for next in the hopes of something in return from the winner. Meanwhile, the rank and file party members don’t get a say. Some of the delegates that I heard interviewed hadn’t even made up their minds as to who to support until the night of the first vote.

As I heard the coverage of the event, I was mentally comparing it to the process for the Green Party leadership convention in August. By contrast, we had a relatively sedate closed ballot, in which members ranked their options for leader in order of preference. All of the first place choices were tallied, and the loser was eliminated from every ballot. The process repeated until one candidate got more than 50% of the votes. How does that compare to the Liberal convention? Every Green Party member had the opportunity to vote directly for the leader. Candidates for the Green Party leadership race couldn’t horse-trade to sell their delegates’ votes in return for future patronage positions. Perhaps most importantly, most Green Party members couldn’t delay their choices until the convention, they had to do a certain amount of homework beforehand to decide who they support. In my riding of Ottawa Centre that involved a local leadership debate, as well as a meeting for members who wanted to discuss the candidates with other members.

The Liberal election process sounds like something that the Vatican would use to select a Pope (minus smoke signals) – baroque, closed, and wholly unaccountable to the membership (no offense to any Catholics, as they would be the first to point out that the process is Baroque, ordained by God, and accountable only to God). By contrast, the Green Party process is relatively democratic, populist, and open.

So someone has come up with a definition of online games. They involve:

• Collecting stuff
  
• Getting points for doing stuff
  
• Getting encouragement/feedback
  
• Trading with others
  
• Tweaking your environment to be more enjoyable

As someone who has been meaning to update their blog for ages, I have to say that blogging fits into these categories. Let’s see how:

• Collecting stuff maps onto posts. I feel a desire to have a relatively up-to-date blog, with posts on issues and events that I feel are important. The “stuff” being collected is posts. The “full collection” is an inventory of my interests.
  
• Getting points maps onto rankings like Technorati’s linkage list. The higher my ranking, the better I feel that I’m doing.
  
• Getting encouragement comes from my readers. I want my posts to be interesting enough that readers respond. Ideally, I’ll generate real discussion.
  
• Trading with others is performed by posting on other blogs, and linking. I can give points to others by linking and commenting, in the hope that they do the same for me. Of course, posts that link back to my blog are also advertisements for what I have to say.
  
• Tweaking are the endless hours that I’ve spent poking and prodding my blog software to look the way I want it to.

Of course, the list might be enough that one could argue that it embodies any engaging activity, from working, to being in a successful relationship.

Edit: Removed some absolute language in the last paragraph. I just think that it’s possible to describe those activities with this list, not that it’s necessarily possible.