Pie Palace

I’m putting together a blog aggregator that will put posts from local blogs onto a single feed/page. It’ll look kind of like Planet Eclipse or Planet.OpenMoko, but less geeky, and more local.

This is where you come in, gentle reader. Can you suggest a decent name for the site? Most URLs that involve “planet” and “ottawa” are taken. I’m looking for a name that doesn’t already exist (ie, that you can stick a “.com” or a “.ca” onto the end, type it into a browser, and not get an existing site), and implies Ottawa and its surroundings.

Any suggestions? (Your reward will consist of your name on the “About” page, if you would so desire)

The following is written in a response to a comment on No Need for Handguns. The blog seems to think that I’m a spammer, so I’m saving the comment here:

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And if you read the Stats Can reports, most gun crimes are with rifles, not handguns.

According to StatsCan “handguns accounted for two-thirds of firearm homicides in 2002, up from about one-half during the 1990s. Rifles and shotguns accounted for one quarter of all homicides involving firearms.” Most firearm-related homicides in 2002 involved handguns.

I would also like to see some evidence that banning handguns will make us “safer” or actually reduce gun crime

According to the same report, most firearm related deaths are suicides (2/100,000 Canadians) a few are homicides (.4/100,000), and even fewer are accidental (.1/100,000). Since the 70s, rates of suicide have fallen, but rates of suicide with a firearm have fallen faster. Other methods of suicide have not risen. At the same time, rates of firearm related suicide have fallen dramatically since 1990, suggesting that the firearm control programs introduced in the 1990s had some success. (Note that one would have to compare suicide rates during the same time period to come to a conclusion)

This suggests that limiting access to firearms will have a positive effect.

Fun fact: Out of 32 posts, this is the first one to cite statistics. It’s also the first by a self-identified Green Party member. Wouldn’t it be nice if Conservatives and Liberals made an effort to understand what’s happening before arguing about it?

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Update: Made it more clear who I was responding to with this comment and fixed some HTMLisms.

Ignore. I’m
playing

with unbalanced *ML tags.

David Chernushenko has resigned as Senior Deputy to the Leader, and as candidate for Ottawa-Centre. For those of you who don’t know, David Chernushenko has run in this riding twice, providing steady improvements in our portion of the popular vote. He was on board when the Green Party went from kooky fringe party to a quasi-accepted member of the political mainstream.

After losing the Green Party leadership race last summer, the new party leader, Elizabeth May invited him to stand as “senior deputy to the leader,” a paid position that would allow him to continue to make the Green Party an attractive option for Canadian voters. We’re eight months on, and David has stepped down.

I’m choosing my words very carefully at this point. David has done great things for the Green Party. I don’t know what precipitated his decision to resign. I’m fairly certain that he would have stuck around as long as he felt that he was able to help the Party.

In the interests of Party unity, I’m going to leave my assessment of David’s resignation at that.

But the most important question is this: what does this mean for Greens in Ottawa?

• Ottawa-Centre needs a new candidate.
• Ottawa-Centre, and other ridings need to start grooming star candidates. These folks have to be able to speak to citizens and media, in a manner that is both compelling, interesting, and attractive (Richard Warman, are you available?)
• Greens in Ottawa have to get off our butts to start attracting new voters, volunteers, members, and donors without having a star candidate around.

That’s the joy of grassroots activism: when it comes to picking up the slack, it’s up to the volunteers. We’re sorry to see you go David, and we hope you come back. But don’t expect us to wait up – the Party’s only going to grow while you’re gone.

Joe Mamma is having a sale on their old snowboarding stock. I picked up a fantastic K2 Access board for $150. When asked if this should be called “Crazy Jose’s I’m-going-to-lose-a-lot-of-money-sale,” he replied “No, it’s Crazy Jose’s It-didn’t-snow-much-last-winter-sale.” Global warming? Nah, couldn’t be…

Twice this week I’ve had the pleasure of being accosted by evangelists. Evangelist #1 was an open-source zealot who told me I was a prostitute because I write software for a company¹. Evangelist #2 was a 69 year old guy on the bus, who started talking to me with the conversational gambit “Have you had a second birth?” (which due to his slurred speech sounded like “Have you ever seen a live birth?”), before quoting gospel at me.

Evangelist #2 was the more annoying one. After listening to his blather for a couple of minutes, I got off the bus, right in front of the church at First and Bank. The sign in front of the church currently says “FIFA – Football Is For All, Faith Is For All,” which is kind of cute, considering that the FIFA Under 20 cup is running in Ottawa. I had the sudden overwhelming urge to run across the street and smash the sign.

I feel that rage is wholly justified, if misdirected. I’ve had good experiences with St. Giles: they have helped non-profits that I volunteer with, and are pretty progressive. Just because the uninformed and clueless have decided that they know how I should lead my life, doesn’t mean I should damage the property of a seemingly decent third party.

Which is why I hereby decree that when I become king, every February will be open season on zealots and evangelists. Since I don’t want to be too much of a tight-ass about the whole thing, hunting out of season won’t be enforced all that strictly.

1. Odd, since the stuff I work on has a pretty high probability of being open-sourced. (back)

Over the weekend Canada got it’s first two cases of mistaken identity with the national no-fly list¹. The two kids, aged 10 and 15, are both named Alistair Butt, and live in Saskatchewan and Ontario.

Even though Transport Canada assured us that these mixups would be rare, and wouldn’t cause a delay, they’ve already happened.

The whole idea of a no-fly list is flawed. If someone is too dangerous to get on a plane, then they should be in jail (safely away from gasoline, nails, and Mercedes). The no-fly list allows police to be sloppy: simply declaring someone “dangerous” without having to prove their case in a court of law.

I’m glad that Canada’s privacy commissioners have called on the federal government to suspend the no-fly list.

1. There’s some uncertainty as to which no-fly list the kids were on: the Transport Canada no-fly list, the US no-fly list, or an Air Canada no-fly list. (back)

This may be old news, but the folks supporting mixed member proportional representation in Ontario have themselves a website. Bully for them, I say! Here’s hoping they get themselves a win.

Geeks abound in my profession. The geekiest of the geeks are socially awkward, uncoordinated, obsessed with our own narrow interests. It turns out that there’s a medical condition called Asperger syndrome whose list of symptoms are very similar to the behaviour of the stereotypical geek. Interestingly, Asperger syndrome is described as a highly functional form of autism.

One of the diagnostic tests used to determine if someone is an aspie is an Asperger Quotient (AQ) test. The test consists of 50 questions, which quantify problems with social skills, attention switching, communication/imagination, and exaggerated attention to detail.

I’ve webified the AQ test. It allows you to calculate your AQ, and shows your in comparison to those common to certain professions.

Miniposts2 is a pretty simple blob of software, so it doesn’t deserve a name for every version (y’know, like Europa, or Leopard). Especially not this version. Version 0.6.5 is a bug fix that prevents pages disappearing from the admin view. It doesn’t add any of the promised features, nor does it address any other problems.

If I were to give this version a name, it would have to be appropriately unassuming, like “flatulent kitten,” “errant snail,” or “housebroken possum.”

If you’re a MiniPosts user, please take a look at the project page, or download 0.6.5 directly.