Double Blind

American Idol voting is rigged – this is a not-so-surprising article that says that it is good evidence that since SBC and AT&T are taking about 100 million toll-free calls extra on the nights that American Idol is on, and since only 20 million of those votes actually get recorded, it’s a sign that the voting is rigged. Although I don’t watch the show, I know the premise is that you would dial some 1-800 number to vote for your favourite character. All I can say to this article is: no kidding! If anybody actually believes that these shows ‘fairly’ count the votes, they have to get their heads checked. Maybe those people that do believe they count votes fairly also believe the validity of online polls in slashdot.org or other sites.

Oh, and for somebody that does want to rig votes, you don’t even have to be a hacker to get a copy of a terminal program and just get your modem to dial the 1-800 number every 30 seconds. It’s very easy to setup.

This thought just occured to me today – at the retail level, milk is cheaper than gasoline. This is the first time in my life that this has been the case. Yesterday, I bought a 4 litre jug of milk for $3.37. This translates into 84.3 cents per litre. When I came back from Ottawa, gas prices in Vancouver jumped to the range of 89.9 to 99.5 cents per litre.

The price of gasoline is directly determined by the price of crude oil, which has risen significantly over the the past few years. This will affect the prices of everything around us since manufactured goods have to be transported around the planet. As ships, trucks and airplanes rely on fuel to transport their cargo, this means that transportation providers will have to raise their prices. This inevitably will be paid for by the consumer.

It looks like that the era of cheap energy is over. This doesn’t mean that so-called “alternative” energy sources are going to be popular – in the grand scheme of things, paying $1 per litre of gasoline is still much cheaper than the alternatives. Crude oil has to get more expensive before it will make any sense to start converting to alternatives. There’s just too much energy per unit volume in oil – nothing can compete with it except nuclear energy.

The proposed Skytrain connection between Richmond and Vancouver was shot down by Translink on May 7th.

There are two issues of relevance that caused this to be rejected: One is that Coquitlam wants Skytrain first and will not want to see Richmond get it first. Secondly, the unions are applying pressure since Skytrain is automated – there is no need for bus drivers in the event that Skytrain is implemented. The $1.5-$1.7 billion cost is a smokescreen – the airport (YVR), Federal and Provincial governments, and private industry were going to shell out everything except $300M to Translink, which effectively gave Translink four dollars for every one they spent. The Rolls-Royce solution would have worked very well.

Suffice to say, it will be 30 years before the rot and decay in most of the municipal politicans die out and hopefully a new generation of people that are slightly more capable of taking proper risks are put in place. I’m not expecting any form of rapid transit connecting Richmond to Vancouver in my lifetime anymore – there’s just too much bureaucratic garbage in the way. Politicians are too afraid that things will screw up like the fast ferries. Have we gotten so scared that we don’t want to risk any megaprojects because of the potential public backlash? We’ve turned into a serious breed of weaklings.

One of the most disappointing parts of public politics is when you have local politicians that can’t see the big picture do stupid things that are not in the long term interests of the jurisdictions they are managing. Hopefully the provincial government can step in and correct this huge mistake, but I doubt it – it’s very politically risky for them and their seats in Richmond are already secure for next year’s election.

The rejection of the RAV line will probably rank as the most bone-headed political decision of the year in this province.

I was listening to an interview on CBC with the Canadian Federal NDP leader, Jack Layton, and he was good. Very good. Albeit, the interviewer (Peter Mansbridge) was rather soft on him, but he was very positive and upbeat and it’s pretty clear that they’re going to be running a “Here’s our future for Canada” type of campaign, which the other candidates are not expressing since they’re too busy sniping at each other. Although I disagree with him on most issues (for example, we should be reducing the debt instead of spending ourselves into oblivion), I can see how what he has to say is designed to appeal to people that have seen nothing but cynisism out of existing governments over the past 20 years.

Since it’s increasingly clear that the federal Conservatives and Liberals are competing for the same voter space, I think the NDP stands to gain quite a bit this coming election – perhaps even enough to cause a minority government to be elected. The guy has quite some charisma that will get him some votes.