I will be the first to say that the Governor General’s decision to prorogue Parliament is the worst of the possible outcomes we could have seen today. It is not a solution to the crisis. Rather, it is a stall tactic that delays a confidence vote—a vote Harper’s Conservatives will likely lose. Moreover, how is this helping our economic situation, which is supposedly so dire that it needs immediate action? If Harper really thought the economy mattered more than his ego and desire for power, he’d seek a better solution—not necessarily yielding to a coalition, sure, but definitely not suspending our legislative assembly!

That said, I‘m glad that we now have a concrete decision, even if it’s an ambiguous concrete decision!

I respect that in our parliamentary democracy, the Governor General’s role is to make a decision like this, and I do not envy her this responsibility. No matter what she decided today, she would have upset some Canadians and set a precedent for future governments. I disagree with her decision, but respect it as a democratic one.

This is why I prefer parliamentary democracy to any other system, such as the American one. We have this check on the power of the Prime Minister’s office. Notice that the politicians are not blaming the Governor General; they blame Harper. Not only is this a smart move (since Harper is publicly elected; the Governor General is not), but it is symbolic of our democracy: it’s Harper’s fault that the situation has degenerated to such a degree as to require prorogation. The Governor General weighed the options and decided that this would be the best for Canadians.

In answering reporters‘ questions outside of Government House, Harper implied that the opposition parties are required to work with him to produce a budget that will help Canada’s economy. Well, the opposition parties are already working with each other, and they outnumber the Conservatives—Harper should work with them. Perhaps a coalition isn’t a good idea right now; maybe it would be unstable. But that does not mean that the Conservatives can rule like a majority government.

Don’t blame the Governor General if you’re upset with her decision. It isn’t her fault that our politicians are self-serving and shortsighted. We have a dearth of great leadership in our country right now. I am not disappointed in Canada as a democracy. I am disappointed in Canada’s political leaders for squabbling like children instead of running our country.

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At this point in the game, I feel sorry for small C conservatives. Part of the problem for liberal voters in the last election was that we had a choice for whom we could vote. Aside from abstaining, voting for a conservative independent, or voting for someone who is probably more left of centre than one’s ideology would like, conservative Canadians are stuck with Harper. And that sucks.

Stephen Harper has wrought considerable damage to the Conservative Party of Canada. He has tarnished its reputation and diminished its influence. The Conservatives had a real opportunity in the past years after the fall of the Liberals and the adscam; Stephen Harper squandered that opportunity. The result? There may be another election in a couple of months!

In Question Period today, rather than try to address tangible disadvantages to a Liberal-NDP coalition—and there are such disadvantages, for sure—Harper led the Conservatives on a spurious, ad hominem attack round against the opposition parties. He accused the leaders of being un-Canadian because they refused to sign their coalition agreement in front of a Canadian flag—this accusation is also false, incidently. Of course, accusing one’s opponent of being unpatriotic is the last defence of a desperate politician; we saw similar tactics in use during the American presidential election.

Similarly, the Conservative party line regarding the coalition is that it is a “separatist coalition”, a coalition in which “a separatist party would have veto power.” These phrases came up over and over during Question Period, and Jim Prentice repeated them during his interview on CBC Newsworld. The Conservatives insult the intelligence of Canadian voters by promoting such nonsense. Yes, the Bloc Québécois supports the coalition. But they don’t get veto power—on the contrary, the agreement binds them to support the government on confidence motions until June 30, 2010. Recall that the Conservatives currently have a minority government, and the Liberals and NDP don’t feel too amenable right now. If the Conservatives hope to pass any legislation, they need another party to support them—by alienating all the opposition parties, they are essentially guaranteeing an election or a coalition government.

Mr. Harper does Canadians a disservice by engaging in such slander and rhetoric. In order for Canada to be a strong democracy, we need dissenting points of view: liberal and conservative. So my heart goes out to you, Canadian conservatives, for what you are enduring right now, what amounts to the mockery of a once proud founding party of this country. We can only hope that whatever the outcome of the current situation, it will result in improvements to the leadership of the Conservative party.

And that pigs will fly.

Let’s talk now about those possible outcomes. There are essentially three scenarios, and it rests largely on the shoulders of our Governor General. Firstly, Harper could ask the Governor General to prorogue Parliament. Should the opposition parties defeat the government, the second and third options, respectively, would be to call an election or invite the opposition parties to form their proposed coalition.

Proro-what?

Many politically savvy Canadians, myself included, were not familiar with the term proroguement until this week. When parliament is prorogued, the current session ends and all bills die, but Parliament is not dissolved and we do not have an election. Harper could request the Governor General to prorogue parliament in order to avoid losing a confidence motion.

To me, this seems like the least democratic of the three options. Essentially it’s Harper requesting a do-over of the past two months. Since we do we give politicians do-overs? The promise that Harper made was that his stronger minority government would work with the entire parliament to actually govern. Harper has failed to deliver. Now instead of changing his tact, he’s just going to delay governing more.

Plus, I fail to see how this will solve anything. It seems like it will delay the inevitable: barring a major dispute, I doubt the opposition parties will abandon their coalition plans in the course of a couple of months. So they will just defeat the government at the first opportunity in the next session of parliament. Harper can’t stall forever. I suppose he could wait until the economic crisis grows dire enough that the parties have to support whatever economic plan he proposes, simply to take action to help the country. But since when has holding the country hostage been democratic and in the best interests of Canada?

It Was So Fun the First Time

Some of the rhetoric today in Question Period leads me to believe that Harper has already geared up his campaign machine again. Let’s just go back to the polls—October’s election was too ambiguous; let’s do it again. Because it was so much fun the first time around. Let’s see: same leaders, same platforms, essentially the same (if not worse) economic situation. How is the outcome going to change significantly? Moreover, last election saw the lowest voter turnout in history. Somehow I suspect that an election so soon on its heels would break that record.

Let’s Work Together

By now it’s obvious that I’m incredibly biased in favour of a coalition. Let me quickly point out why that is so before I take a moment to critique such a coalition.

Aside from the reasons I mentioned yesterday, a coalition carries with it the implication that we will get things done. Many Canadians expressed anger at our last election because it meant several more weeks without any effective governance from … well, from our government. Similarly, many Canadians now are angry at all our parties for playing games with our political system. And rightly so.

But as I pointed out above, prorogument and an election both result in further delay. A coalition has no such delay: together the three opposition parties can pass legislation whether the Tories like it or not.

It’s true, however, that a coalition is not without its disadvantages. There is the uncertainty surrounding leadership: Dion lost the confidence of the Liberal party, but under the current plan he would become prime minister (at least until the Liberals choose a replacement in May). Will a synthesis of Liberal and NDP economic plans successfully help see our economy through these difficult times?

I can see why some people just want the Governor General to call an election—they don’t necessarily want an election, but since one of the above three scenarios has to happen, an election is, to them, the least of the three evils. I’m still in favour of a coalition. It’s the most interesting of the three options, and I like interesting.

And hey, at least the three opposition leaders are trying something innovative! All Harper has been doing is whining. It’s getting very tiresome.

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I love this country, and I love our politics.

Canadian politics are often not as exciting as American politics. And that’s true—due to the two-party system in America, the political landscape is a vast minefield of polarized partisanship. In Canada, while we do have two major parties, we have two other parties who exert a strong influence in Parliament.

But this is why I love Canadian politics: it may not be as exciting as American politics in general, but it can get exciting at any time. Due to our parliamentary system, the government can be defeated on any motion considered a “confidence motion”. So in America while the President is elected independently of the legislature every four years, and is generally stuck in office for four years, our leader changes as the government does, and our leader can potentially change at any time.

Last Friday, Canadian politics got exciting again. The three opposition parties announced that they were in talks to form a coalition government. That means that rather than any one party forming the government, two or more parties would work together to form the government and pass legislation. In order for this to happen, the opposition parties would first have to defeat the government. Their first opportunity to do this was supposed to be today, but in response to this coalition talk, Harper pushed the vote back a week.

At this point, I’ll digress for a moment to talk about how monumentally poorly Harper has managed this situation. While it’s true that the election gave him a stronger minority than before, that’s no reason he should be able to govern like a majority government. The opposition parties have timed this move in response to the lacklustre economic plan that the Tories introduced last week; accusations that this is a “backroom deal” that’s been in the works for months are irrelevant—who cares? The opposition parties have many other legitimate grievances other than the Tories’ economic policies; they would have found a reason to defeat the government eventually.

Harper went on to accuse this coalition proposal of being an undemocratic attempt to seize power with a clear mandate from the people. I‘m wondering in what book a minority government comprises a clear mandate from the people. I’m also wondering how this situation has changed from when Harper was a signatory to a letter to the Governor General proposing a possible coalition if Paul Martin’s government were defeated. Lastly, Harper accuses the opposition parties of being undemocratic, yet he is the one who is delaying this confidence motion and who may even prorogue Parliament to prevent his government’s defeat. Yes, because not assembling the democratic assembly is so very democratic.

Plus, postponing the vote just gives the opposition parties more time to organize. It became pretty clear that the three parties were amenable to a coalition idea and were close to working out the specifics, but the wild card was still who would lead it—since the Liberal leadership isn’t exactly solid right now.

Today, however, marks the end of Mr. Harper’s rosy little minority government. The three opposition leaders appeared in a press conference where they signed a formal coalition agreement that would outline the terms of the proposed government. The Liberals and NDP would form the government with the support of the Bloc, who would agree not to vote against the government on confidence motions until at least June 30, 2010. The coalition agreement between the Liberals and NDP will be effective until at least June 30, 2011. Both of these dates can be extended if so desired. The NDP will receive 25% of the cabinet posts, although the deputy prime minister and finance minister will be Liberals. Stéphane Dion will be prime minister for the interim until the selection of a new Liberal leader on May 2.

It’s almost an underdog story, the stuff out of Disney movies: the little Liberal who could! Here Dion “leads” the Liberals to their most crushing defeat in history, steps down as leader, and now faces the prospect of being prime minister! What a great come back.

The question now is not if the government will be defeated, but when. Once the government is defeated and Parliament dissolves, it will be up to our Governor General, Her Excellency Michaëlle Jean, to decide to call an election or to invite the opposition parties to form a coalition government. Until the parties signed this agreement, I was sceptical that a coalition could come to fruition. But now it looks pretty likely—I doubt many Canadians would want another election so soon after the one this October.

This is history in the making, a nearly unprecedented event in Canadian politics. The proposed coalition government is democratic, no matter what the pundits say, and it is such a Canadian solution to our political problems.

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With the first term nearing its end, here’s a little review of my second year so far.

That is the best way to describe how I spend most of my time now. With three math classes, I spend nine hours a week listening to math lectures. I have three assignments due each week, so I work on those in my time between school and work. Every second week until the middle of November, I went to a practice sessions for math competitions for an hour on Fridays. Even when I’m not doing my own math, I like to help other people with their math. I am living and breathing math.

AND IT’S FRELLING AWESOME.

For those who don’t understand how someone can be so excited about math, the best way I can describe it is like being closer to God. I don’t necessarily believe in God, but I imagine that what I feel when I’m exploring mathematical concepts is the same feeling pious people get when they do whatever it is pious people do to feel closer to God. And math truly is the language of the universe. If God does exist, in one form or another, then understanding math helps one understand the universe and, in a way, get closer to God and creation.

When I first started university, I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to keep up. I had this deep, dark fear that I’d fail to understand crucial concepts and I‘d never be able to graduate in the math program. Fortunately, so far that isn’t the case. I am learning, and it is a challenge—some of these concepts are really complicated! But I build on what I learned before, and that allows me to understand concepts that a year ago I would have been unable to grasp.

The more I learn, however, the more I‘m able to comprehend just how much more there is I don’t understand yet. I‘m starting to get an idea of where my interests lie, however. I’m really enjoying ring theory—we’ll see if my interest continues next term, when we learn group theory. Abstract algebra appeals to me because it focuses on the reason I love mathematics. Abstract algebra involves constructing and proving the fundamental aspects of math. It’s the fundamentals of the fundamentals. I‘m discovering that I love doing proofs.

I’m getting the sense that most of my peers don’t have the same white-hot passionate love for math that I do. But that’s fine. I’ll show them. I’ll show them all! Muwahahaha! Muwahaha—er … right. Moving on.

When I tell people who know me that I want to teach high school, most of them react with scepticism. Apparently I walk around with the word “Professor” stamped on my forehead. Working for the first time with a new hire at the gallery, I made an allusion to Sisyphus, and my boss said, “Ben’s our resident Einstein.” And the new girl replied, “Yeah, I’m getting that vibe.”

Apparently I give off a vibe now….

I have wanted to teach for as long as I can remember. As I got older, however, the age group I wanted to teach got older as well. So I can’t deny that now that I’m in university, I‘m starting to understand why I would want to teach at a university. My main reason for not wanting to become a professor is that I don’t want to write math papers and do research into theories. I just wanted to do math. Now I‘m realizing that I actually like doing proofs, and it’s scary! :whoa:

Will I stick with my original desire to teach high school? Or will I fulfil everyone else’s predictions? Tune in for the exciting conclusion over the next three years!

Either way, I’m going to be a math hermit for a very, very long time.

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Compared to the rest of the week, Monday and Tuesday play host to an inordinately large number of cultural attractions. Yes, there’s Doctor Who on Friday nights and Smallville on Saturdays, but

Ever since school began in September, I’ve been cooking dinner on Mondays to practise my rudimentary cooking skills. While preparing dinner, I like to listen to podcasts. This schedule works nicely, because The Vinyl Cafe podcast is up by Monday at the latest, and I prefer to listen to the podcast, as I can’t catch it every Sunday; sometimes I‘m at work. I love the on demand convenience of podcasts. In addition to Vinyl Cafe, there’s a new podcast of Search Engine every Monday. Lastly, if I have any left over interviews from Spark’s enhanced podcast feed, I’ll listen to those. Occasionally I listen to an Ideas podcast, but not regularly.

After dinner, my dad and I watch a couple of TV shows if we‘re both home. First there’s Stargate Atlantis, then Chuck, and finally Heroes—sometimes we save Heroes for Tuesday if we don’t have time to watch it. This week’s episodes of Stargate Atlantis and Chuck were particularly awesome! I loved seeing Bill Nye guest star on Atlantis—he got several great comic relief lines. Then, of course, there was the kiss! (Oh, by the way, that was a spoiler alert…). Similarly, Chuck continues to wow and astound me. Although the episodes are often predictable, it’s just so enjoyable to watch them. The lines are witty and delivered perfectly by the stellar cast. I love that show.

My opinion of Heroes is that the writers are squandering a good concept by producing inconsistent episodes. They still have too many characters, so it’s hard for them to integrate these disparate elements into a coherent storyline, resulting in continuity errors and flat moments in episodes that really detract from the better parts.

We record Terminator: The Sarah Chronicles later that night to watch on Tuesday. Earlier during the afternoon, since I‘ve been lucky to have no class on Tuesdays, I usually listen to the week’s episode of Spark as soon as it’s available for download.

Now, however, I have an additional show to watch on Tuesdays: The Guild, Felicia Day’s webseries about a group of gamers who spend waaaaay too much time gaming. The first season, originally available on YouTube, was a set of 10 hilarious 2-5 minute episodes. This season, the show has partnered with Microsoft to make the series available on MSN Video and for download on Xbox Live—in HD, no less! So now I can watch the episodes on my shiny HDTV. I love technology, and free stuff….

Then after my dad and I catch up on leftovers from Monday night, including Terminator, I get to watch House. It apparently perplexes my dad why I enjoy House; I just love Hugh Laurie’s character. His performance is entertaining, and some of the scenarios in that series are just so absurd—clearly no doctor could actually act like House and keep his or her license, but since when has TV had anything to do with reality?

Lastly, The Rick Mercer Report and This Hour Has 22 Minutes are on Tuesday nights. Since the CBC kindly makes these available online, I don’t always watch them, and sometimes I don’t even bother recording them. But it’s fit to include them in my Tuesday night of culture osmosis, since I could watch them on Tuesday if I didn’t have math homework….

Now I must try to complete my ring theory assignment so I can hand it in tomorrow. My ring theory assignment and the education paper I must revise and print out before going to bed are my last assignments of this term. Next week, exams begin—one next week and two the week after. Then I get a nice break before the second term plunges me into a new scheduling hell!

I need a haircut.

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It’s already been over a year since we moved into our new house. Since moving in, although I’ve been very happy with my room on the whole, I have wanted to do three things: get new curtains, get rid of the wallpaper, and paint the white walls.

Classes end next week, and my exams are over by December 12, which gives me a nice break before the start of next term. This is a perfect opportunity to paint my room. I need to do it soon, too, because I’ve already run out of space to shelve my books—and once I put up more shelves, they are never coming down.

Over the course of this year and a month, I‘ve adjusted to the curtains. I asked one of my coworkers (who is an artist, so I figured she could suggest some good colours) what I should do with the room, and she said she liked the wallpaper. It’s certainly not Mario wallpaper¹ … but then again, if I don’t tear it down, I only have to paint three walls, and I don’t have to take down one set of shelves.

So I’m asking for your help with these two questions:

1. Should I keep the wallpaper or tear it down?
2. What colour should I paint my walls (bearing in mind your answer to question 1)?

I‘m not very good with colour, so I appreciate any suggestions you have, whether it’s just a word or if you link me to a specific ID number or swatch. Here are some recent photos of my room so you can get an idea of how everything is laid out:

Thanks!

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• [ 1 ] For those of you who don’t stalk me, I used to have Super Mario wallpaper on one wall of my room in my old house.

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I have previously talked about how amazing I consider the human body, and my opinion hasn’t changed. Yesterday, a 14-year-old girl finally left the hospital after living for four months on an artificial heart.

This event reminded me how amazing the heart is. Your heart is the one muscle in your body that, if you are lucky, never takes a break for your entire life. It keeps pumping, whether you are awake or asleep. It works harder to get you up the stairs or to help you see a marathon through to the end. Yet some people—people who have healthy hearts free of unavoidable defects—reward this hard-working muscle with a megadose of calories and cholesterol in the form of unhealthy foods (particularly fast foods).

I‘m not trying to pontificate about the evils of fast food here. I love eating burgers! This is just a friendly reminder that, if you haven’t thought about it lately, think about your heart now.

Your heart is important! Love it, and it’ll last just as long as you! (Which is kind of the idea.)

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For the second time this year, anti-gay group Westboro Baptist Church is planning to come to Canada to stage a protest, and people want to put a stop to it.

Every time this sort of controversy comes up in the news, I have to stop and consider it carefully. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (Section 2) guarantees us the following basic rights:

1. freedom of conscience and religion;
2. freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication;
3. freedom of peaceful assembly; and
4. freedom of association

At the same time, however, we also have legislation in place to protect people from hate-crimes and hate-speech. So the question is, do anti-gay groups like the Westboro Baptist Church violate this anti-hate legislation? And regardless of this first question, are we violating their rights to freedom of opinion, freedom of expression, and freedom of association? Freedom of peaceful assembly is a separate issue—whether or not this group is “peaceful” is subject to debate altogether, and I would probably say that they are not.

I like to pride myself in being open-minded enough to truly believe in free speech for everyone, even if I think they are idiots. Yes, I will fight for your right to say something, even if I disagree with what you want to say. Yet when we enter controversial territory where the freedom of expression can be abused in order to hurt other people this admirable sentiment is put to the test.

So my answer is no, this group should not be allowed entry to Canada. Their goals and actions are appalling. I understand that some people find homosexuality morally objectionable. I even understand if some people believe that gay people’s souls are in peril of eternal damnation and they should repent now to be saved (I don’t believe that, but I can understand how others might). However, there is a large gap between holding an anti-gay opinion and inciting hatred of gays.

If you did not follow the link at the beginning of this post, stop now to read the article or at least look at the included image. Check out the signs that the leader of the group was carrying at a protest in 1999—look at the one on the right: “God hates fags.”

I did go to church as a child, and that’s not the Christianity I was taught. I’ve been under this impression that the Christian God loves everyone, and that if one repents, one will be saved.

Theocratical dogma on homosexuality aside, consider how this reflects one’s religion! Islam has often received criticism as of late because of the actions of a minority, those radicals who form Muslim terrorist groups like al-Qaeda. That is a concrete example of how the actions of a minority can harm the reputation of the entire religion. Likewise, Fred Phelps’ church shames his religion. I’m well aware that Christianity in general does not burn people at the stake anymore, but if all I knew about it came from that article and that disturbing image, I might jump to that conclusion.

Returning the sign for a moment, notice the pejorative term for gays. This is exactly the same as the dehumanising labels applied to minorities we oppressed and hated throughout history—some of which are still regarded with such shame and disdain that they are not repeated on television before the watershed hour. We pride ourselves so often on having “moved forward” and having put racism, anti-Semitism, and the like behind us, closing those chapters and contenting ourselves to teach them in history classes with various degrees of accuracy.

We haven’t moved forward. We’ve just switched targets for the time being, like a bored kid with BB gun.

We haven’t moved forward, and we won’t move forward until we stop trying to make people feel ashamed of who they are, until we stop teaching other people that it’s OK to hate somebody simply because they are different from oneself. ’Cause guess what? You are different from them. And what if they started oppressing you? Yeah, you wouldn’t like that too much, eh?

Sadly, those people who believe that inciting hatred is fine tend to do it because they believe they have some form of objective justice on their side (usually “God”, but sometimes it’s just personal conviction). They believe that they can do it to other people because they are right and others are wrong. And that’s the point where a government should step in, to protect innocent people from those would abuse our great freedoms for ignominious ends.

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Back in June, my friend blogged about people showing off their Wikismarts to him. I envy him, because on the other side of the coin, there seems to be a plethora of people with zero initiative.

You know who I‘m talking about. The people who seem to have no filter in their brain and ask you every question that bubbles up to the murky surface of their minds, even if the current discussion has nothing to do with the question. These people regularly lurk on message boards and in IRC channels, just waiting to begin asking questions that would be better answered by a trip over to Wikipedia than waiting for someone else to prepare a (probably inaccurate) explanation.

There’s no excuse, really. Most browsers come with search forms built into the browser chrome itself. Even if not, Google (or one’s favourite search engine) is a single page-load away. There is no excuse to derail an existing conversation by asking for someone to explain what the topic of the conversation is all about. Go find out, come back, and show off those Wikismarts.

This isn’t much more than a short rant. It just flusters me, because I applaud those people’s curiosity, but I deplore their lack of initiative in an age where information access is literally at people’s fingertips.

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Today in Canada, as well as in many other countries around the world, we celebrate the end of World War I and remember those soldiers who gave their lives serving their countries. In Canada, we wear a poppy to show our respect for those who have fallen; the Royal Canadian Legion makes them available in return for small donations. It is of course associated with the Remembrance Day poem “In Flanders Fields” by Canadian soldier John McCrae, who served in World War I.

World War I was known then as “the war to end all wars.” Yeah … uh, that didn’t really work very well, did it? In fact, sometimes it feels like we have even more strife than ever. We learn about the two World Wars in school, study their causes and their aftermaths, but do we really learn from these wars? Do we take to heart their morals and stay firm in our resolve to never again lead the world over that terrible precipice? Sometimes, I have my doubts.

I’m not very into nationalism. I‘m proud of my country and proud to be Canadian, sure. But I have no intention of serving in our armed forces, and if we had conscription again, I’d be a conscientious objector. Nationalism can be dangerous, as World Wars I and II demonstrated.

Yet even though I do not agree with military actions, I respect those men and women who put their lives on the line to serve. They are standing up and fighting—literally—for what they think is right. They demonstrate their courage, conviction, and desire to see change. Can you say the same? How many of us have blogs, talk about change, but don’t actually do anything about it? For this reason, if for none other, soldiers deserve respect and admiration. And that is the soldier that should be celebrated, not the gun-toting action heroes we so often see in movies.

I learned today, listening to the CBC radio coverage of the 11:00 ceremony at the National War Memorial, that there is only one Canadian veteran of World War I who remains alive. He didn’t actually see combat, and he has lived in the United States since 1920. We even share the same last name, although we are not, to my knowledge, related. John Babcock is 108 years old. Ninety years ago, when the armistice was signed, he was serving in the Canadian corps at 18 years of age.

Which brings us to now. The present. World War I had a tremendous effect on development of the entire twentieth century. It ended only ninety years ago—a brief time considering the entire span of the history of human civilization, but a lifetime for a single human being. Soon, all those who lived during the war will be gone, and all we’ll have are our memories of them, as well as whatever testimonies we could record. We owe it to them to never forget their legacy. We owe it to ourselves to never forget, to learn from our past, and to strive to improve the world.

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