Double Blind

This analysis I thought was very coherent and accurate, except for the final barb about if the Canucks won the game that it would have never happened (which I believe was sarcastic and doesn’t detract from the article).

People are still trying to assign blame to the event, but I don’t think it will be pinned too heavily on any single group other than the die-hard professional hooligans that brought the Molotov cocktails to the game 7 festivities.

With the benefit of hindsight but without a formal investigation of the matter, I believe it will be shown that the Vancouver Police and/or City of Vancouver erred significantly in not bringing enough police to effectively control the crowd and enabling their concentration within a very narrow geographical proximity. However, I do believe that it will be shown that the perception of non-response by the Vancouver Police with respect to the looting will be shown to be a correct action that inevitably hastened the end of the riot. Assuming that the goal is to optimize operations for preventing the loss of life, the police were wildly successful.

The psychology of the crowd is very similar to what happens on uncontrolled internet forums – certain people writing with the veil of anonymity will have completely different personalities than when such anonymity is removed.

I found this post by Coyote Blog to be a rather fascinating first-hand experience of what it is like to be stung by a scorpion (apparently an Arizona Bark Scorpion).

It reminds me of a less severe case than the person that ate a very poisonous mushroom and lived to tell about it.

I am finding the campaign run by the bigwigs at the Chartered Accountants and the Certified Management Accountants to convince their memberships that a merger into a new designation is an amusing attempt at marketing something unpalatable. Approximately five years ago something like this was attempted and the Chartered Accountants’ membership were significantly against the merger, which completely killed the initial attempt.

The big-wigs, intent on not listening to their own memberships, are giving it another shot. They seemingly are employing the same strategy of “education” that the BC provincial government is doing with their HST campaign.

My own opinion is in general agreement with most of the other people I have surveyed about this, mainly that the CMAs stand to gain, while the CAs stand to lose. The sad reality is that entrance requirements have been dropped to the point that the quality of people receiving the designations has been continually dropping – both societies have been desperate to raise membership numbers to increase their revenues. This has been done at the cost of the quality of members admitted.

Even though an overwhelming number of CAs are going to be against this, it will be interesting to see how both societies proceed. It will be interesting to see if this gets political to the point where directors are voted out and replaced with people pledging to not pursue this course of action.

A quickie article on the Chilliwack Times:

Mounties are asking for the public’s help after four catalytic converters were stolen from four 2011 Mazda Tributes at a Chilliwack car dealership.

Police say the converters were cut and stolen from cars at the Mazda dealership on Yale Road sometime between closing last Thursday and 11:30 a.m. on Saturday.

The catalytic converters, valued at $900 each, were located underneath the vehicles.

- Anyone with information on the thefts is asked to call the Chilliwack RCMP at 604-792-4611.

There is no way you could do this in working hours at a car dealership. Commissioned salespeople are usually swarming the parking lot. It would be noisy and quite visible.

I’m also surprised that nobody had a camera on the main lot since it would easily show the theft in action. I always wonder about car dealerships and how they manage to secure the $2 million inventory they have sitting outside every day.

On the June 15, 2011 in riots Vancouver (there was a hockey game going on this day apparently):

0. A very failed prediction on my part:

A chat log with a friend of mine, just before the 5:00pm game:

Him: “Hey, my brother is going downtown to watch the Canucks game, is there going to be rioting in your opinion?”
Me: “Depends who wins!”
Me: “Let’s put it this way, the police will be much more aware of potential rioting so if any starts, it will get stomped down quickly”.

I totally blew that one.

1. Measuring the performance of the Vancouver Police Department depends on what your benchmark was. If the Vancouver Police Department’s mission was the prevention of death, they were very successful. Their strategy appeared to be about the lack of escalation rather than the confrontation of the anarchists. If your measurement was the protection of property, then they failed spectacularly. As usual, they were in a no-win situation. I have no idea whether it would have been feasible for them to charge the crowd that set the initial fire in front of the Canada Post building, but I highly suspect that other media commentators will become instant experts on crowd suppression.

2. The 2011 riots will be processed substantially different than 1994. Digital media was prevalent everywhere and unless if you were wearing a face-mask, facial recognition software will very likely be able to track most people in downtown. If you want an example of this software in action, get a copy of Picasa and get it to index your photographs and you will be very, very afraid. Finding (or at least indexing) the people will be a much more easier task for the police since they will be aided with so much digital media, in combination with recognition software, that will enable them to arrest known offenders (who likely are mostly already with police records).

3. For the first time, I finally “felt” the usefulness of Twitter. It’s sole function in internet life is to act as a global real-time comment aggregator. Gary Mason, former sports columnist turned political commentator, in particular, was quite good. Time to start a Twitter account again…

4. This riot is also a very good demonstration on how few people have to turn socially deviant in order for the fabric of society to be overturned. If they were more organized, they could have also done a lot more damage than they did. For example, just imagine if one of those vehicles got driven into The Bay downtown and then set on fire. The fire suppression systems would have activated, but they are likely not designed with the assumption that people will be lighting up vehicles inside the store. It could have been a lot worse.

5. People that were hanging out at the site of the riot while watching others smash windows and light cars on fire (and taking pictures of all the carnage around them) should be considered as complicit as the people doing the acts themselves, but this was not the case today. I am surprised no journalists got injured.

6. It will be approximately 12 hours before this incident will become political, but after that, you will try to have every politician trying to cash in on this event.

7. One can make inferences about this by looking at the people that participated in the riots. I will comment on the young demographic – if you asked why they were there (at least the people that weren’t smashing up stuff) and got a truthful response, the answer would have likely been a statement on how mundane life ordinarily is. You would have never seen this sort of thing 50 years ago.

The following is a very quick analysis of what the Vancouver Canucks’ chances are to win the Stanley Cup:

Vancouver Canucks: 58.8% chance to win
Boston Bruins: 41.2% chance to win

To give you an idea of what 58.8% is, it is about the chances of rolling two dice and getting a total of either 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 or 7. (or if you like large numbers, the chances of getting 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 or 12).

The Vedder Canal Bridge is one of many bridges that go over waterways on Highway 1. There is nothing special about it other than that it occurs just after a curve:

People keep crashing into the bridge. Two dramatic (and separate) crashes involving semi trailers going westbound and ending up into the water caused the Ministry of Transportation to buffer up the bridge with cement barriers and painted shoulder roads to increase the visibility of the bridge.

Alas, it was to no avail when today somebody crashed eastbound and ended up into the Vedder Canal. Apparently two people were in this vehicle and they died. My condolences.

I just wonder what it is about this bridge – there is nothing remarkable about it other than it seeming to claim the lives of people and vehicles.

Some 21-year old parliamentary page managed to stick a “stop Harper” sign up during the Throne Speech in the senate.

Now her name is going to be linked to this event on Google for probably the rest of her life, so you can be assured that this will compromise certain future employment options.