SFUO Elections

Tomorrow is the last day of elections for the Student Federation of the University of Ottawa.

Lets all face some facts here: if you haven't voted yet, odds are you don't really care who gets elected.  If you cared that much you would have voted already.  Tomorrow you're going to see candidates running around telling people to vote for them in a last minute attempt to clinch the election.   I recommend you do what they say.

Allow me to explain:

A good work ethic is probably at least as important as a good platform for a member of student government, and what better way to test work ethic than a frantic race around campus, petitioning undecideds?  So if you have no knowledge of any of the platforms, just vote for whoever gets to you first.  If nothing else, at least we can have a hard working student government.
 

CBC: Excessive Royal Wedding Coverage

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation has taken every possible opportunity in recent weeks to report on the impending marriage of Prince William and Kate Middleton, a subject that doesn't affect Canadians in any significant way and most Canadians don't really care about.

Canada's state media apparatus has always been somewhat out of touch with what Canadians are interested in, but their recent obsession with British Royalty has been particularly uninteresting.  Lately I've started changing the channel over to CTV whenever the a "Royal Engagement" segment comes on.

The above graphic was meant to illustrate the convoluted and mostly meaningless way that the wedding is relevant to Canadians, but I'm not sure I really got the message across.

I did come across one interesting story on the CBC website while I was researching this post.  Apparently, some British parliamentarians are considering amending succession laws so that a daughter born to William and Kate would have a place in the line of succession.  If Britain made this change and Canada didn't, then Canada could technically recognize a different person as "King of Canada" while his older sister would be "Queen of Britain."  Hilarious.

China and the Canadian Seal Hunt

Recently, the Canadian government signed a deal with China that will allow the Canadian sealing industry to sell its products there.  The industry has been suffering lately following the European Union's ban that recently came into affect.  The deal seems to have drawn the attention of groups such as PETA who claim that animal rights groups in China are speaking out against their government's decision to sign the deal.

Firstly, if this is true, I am greatly encouraged by the level of free speech developing in China that allows these groups to criticize their government.

Secondly, while I know making fun of PETA is like shooting fish in a barrel (an act they would, hilariously, probably fight against), none of the seal hunting practices described in the above article are in use today.  The Canadian seal hunt is at least comparably humane to any other modern animal industry, so there is no reason we should treat the seal industry any differently.

Left: Cute.  Right: Delicious?

It's not that I think PETA is wrong, necessarily.  Obviously its important to insure our industries are humane.  It's just that the vast majority of people who support bans on seal products are likely to give up their Big Mac somewhere around the time it is pried from their cold dead hands.  Either you're against products made from animals or you support them.  Pick a side, we're at war.

Gun control: then and now

This Saturday, comedian Seth Meyers weighed in on the gun control debate currently going on in the United States (I couldn't find a link that works in Canada, but its on Hulu if you're in the States.)  He suggested that if the American founding fathers were here today they wouldn't be supporting the right to bear arms as much as they would be horrified by what guns are now.  I thought that was a good point, so i decided to take a look at the differences between modern weaponry and the weaponry of 1787.

Rifles:
1787:
  

2011:



Handguns:
1787:

2011:

Close Range:
1787:

2011:

Graph of Population By Latitude and Longitude

While browsing the internet I came across this graph showing the world population by latitude and longitude and thought I would share it.

Via: Chris Blattman

Fun fact: the most populous settlement north of 60 (Helsinki, Finland) has 63.5 times the population of the most populous settlement north of 70 (Hammerfest, Norway) which has 1852.2 times the population of the largest settlement north of 80 (Alert, Canada).

Why Canada doesn't need its Senate

Welcome to part 1 of my indefinite part series: Why we don't need the Senate.

This month, Senator Andree Champagne attacked Vietnamese born MP Eve-Mary Thi Lac by questioning her loyalty to Canada.  Champagne then went on to be quoted in the Toronto Sun saying she was proud of being "a pure French Quebecer - see my geneology."

This is absolutely ridiculous.  I think the important thing to draw from this is that no elected government official could possibly get away with being so offensive.  Today's reason we don't need a senate?  They aren't held accountable for the ridiculous things they sometimes say and/or do.

Funny side note: When the Sun tried to reach Champagne for comment they couldn't because she was on vacation.  She's a Senator, of course she's on vacation!