Most... ridiculous... writing... ever

Well, not quite, but check out this blogger on conservative National Review, about the British soldiers.

Choice quote:
"In any case, there was no evidence of torture or mistreatment in any of the filmed cases I have seen. They look just fine. You can't fake that."

Wonderful. Also, via Daily Kos, check out the article from The Guardian which explains how Blair turned down flat American offers to use military ops to pressure the Iranians.

What lies beyond the northern border

Word is that the Washington Post will close its Toronto bureau. In and of itself, not that big of a story, except that there will be no more American newspaper correspondents based in Canada. At all. Yes, there's been a lot of cost-cutting at paper media, but there can't be just one correspondent to our north?

Of course, since Canada is the same as the U.S. anyway... just change the tagline from "Los Angeles" to "Toronto" and it'll sound right, won't it?

Medal of Honor goal almost reached!

The Seattle P-I reports that fundraising is almost done for the memorial to honor UW's Medal of Honor recipients.

Congratulations are due to those who have been behind this effort from the beginning. Medal of Honor winners have done a great service to their country and represent the UW showing the same courage, selflessness and model character we would desire of all alumni.

I had a longer post witten, but really, no need to dredge up past controversies...

Change afoot in Turkmenistan

Once a week the Turkmenistan Project (part of George Soros's Open Society Institute) posts digests of the news from that Central Asian country. The news of late has been very positive, on a relative basis. Since the death at the end of last year of president-for-life Saparmurat Niyazov and the inauguration and then "election" of Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov, the country has already been opening up:

• Berdymukhammedov has abandoned daily recitation of the oath to the leader, which is now for special occasions only, and replaced the word "Turkmenbashi" with "President";
• The year of secondary schooling dropped under Niyazov has been readded, 23,000 teachers rehired, and foreign languages put back in the curriculum;
• Pensions which had been dropped to veterans, agricultural workers and others as well as maternity benefits are being restored;
• The Academy of Sciences will reopen;
• Health clinics outside Ashgabat (closed by Niyazov--actually by Berdymukhammedov when he was Health Minister under Niyazov, not that he had a choice) are to be reopened;
• Internet cafes have opened, and seem to be relatively free in terms of content, but are too expensive for most Turkmen;
• The president has restored communication with Azerbaijan after eight years of silence and is restoring ties with others as well.

While it is certainly more boring to read the digests than it was when Turkmenbashi was ruling, the Turkmen people have every reason to celebrate. The negatives: the blatantly rigged election (inevitable) and the detention of an opposition leader in Bulgaria after a Turkmen request to Interpol. The goal of Berdymukhammedov is probably to establish a stable authoritarianism as elsewhere in Central Asia, but really, who knows?

Price discrimination at Dodger Stadium

The L.A. Times reports on price discrimination in baseball:

The Dodgers sell tickets in the field box section for $20, $30, $35, $37, $40 and $45, depending on whether you buy on game day, before game day or as part of a full-season, partial-season or group ticket package.

What's the ticket price? The Dodgers offer you 104 answers in all.

Inevitable as prices climb higher. To put those higher prices in perspective, with some numbers from when I was tiny and not yet aware of baseball,

In 1987, the Angels sold tickets for $8, $7, $5 and $3 and the Dodgers for $7, $6 and $4, with every seat on the same level at the same price.

Hmm. If I count the Dodger increase as 500 percent ($7 to $35, $6 to $30, $4 to $20), that's 8 percent every year for 20 years. And they wonder why you can't get kids interested in baseball anymore... maybe if they could go to more than one game a year there'd be a better chance.

Québec: reactions

Well, to update my favorite story, in Sherbrooke it appears that the reason for Charest's speedy recovery was indeed the counting of the advance votes. In 2003 Charest won the advance votes by about 1,000 votes; it would appear that he won them by a similar or even greater margin this time, as he was trailing by up to 700 votes during the count, then recovered to win by over 1,000.

Reactions from the Canadian blogosphere include:

democraticSPACE reflects on where the projections went right, and wrong.

Paul Wells has much to say.

Antonio reflects from Quebec.

Calgary Grit last night, and on Boisclair--in particular, his statement that 2/3 for the opposition = PQ victory.

Red Tory the night of; on the aftermath; and on Dumont's "autonomism".

Notes on San Diego

As I mentioned a while back, I took a vacation to San Diego a couple of weeks ago. I figured a couple of comments were in order:

First, there is a light-rail system, called the Trolley. Started in 1981, the Trolley is now 51 miles long, but of course, since it's a transit system built into a preexisting city, and a spread-out one at that, its utility is limited. Some of the stations don't seem to be close to anything, in particular, and you can't get to the beach or airport by trolley. I had a difficult time understanding the termination of the Blue Line and Green Line at Old Town. The Blue Line comes north from San Ysidro and terminates at Old Town, while the Green Line runs east from Old Town to Santee. I'm sure there is some traffic-pattern reason for doing so, but I have no idea what it was, and it was inconvenient for me, thereby making it a bad thing...

According to the Wiki article, plans are underway to run a line up to La Jolla, which would have really cut down the time on our trip to the UCSD campus. We bought the four-day passes for $15, which were a decent value considering we stayed (relatively) close to a trolley station and the passes are also valid on the bus.

Part of the Old Town station.


The other comment I have is on Petco Park. We went on the tour (very entertaining and informative). My favorite feature of the park is the integration of the historic Western Metal Supply building... followed up by the fact that Padres owner John Moores (who got his start in software in Houston) owns pretty much all the buildings around it.


All in all, despite the needed improvements to the transit system, San Diego is a great city and I hope to be back sooner rather than later. (And hey, compared to Seattle or Houston, it's tough for me to really say anything negative about transit!)

Québec returns come in

Well, yesterday I was going to make the fearless prediction that Dumont's ADQ would beat one of the major parties in the vote percentages, but I didn't. Maybe I will look dumb for not doing so by the end of the night. With 11% of the votes in, it's neck-and-neck.

8:07 CT The CBC has already posted a "Charest reelected" article. Do they know something we don't? According to the returns so far, with about 15% of precincts reporting in Sherbrooke, Charest is trailing by 126 votes to the PQ candidate.

8:14 CT Well, they've pulled the article from the main site, and Charest still trails. Boisclair and Dumont, on the other hand, are leading comfortably. Wouldn't it be crazy if the PLQ emerged with the most seats but Charest lost his own riding?

8:25 CT ADQ and PLQ are still leading in 45 circonscriptions each with PQ behind holding 35. The popular vote is closer, PLQ first, ADQ just behind, PQ a couple percentage points back. Boisclair's probably done, and it's looking more and more like Charest really could lose Sherbrooke; he's trailing by over 300 votes and 30 percent of "bureaux de vote" (I know I shouldn't say "precincts") are reporting.

8:42 CT Charest's chances don't look too good. Not being able to watch Canadian TV in Texas, I have no idea what's being speculated. Who takes over if Charest falls in Sherbrooke? Deputy premier Jacques Dupuis? The PLQ is still leading the overall seat count...

8:43 CT And I'm resolving never to silence my own fearless prediction, ever again.

9:49 CT Interestingly, Charest is closing the gap late. With about 15% of polling stations left, he's back within 250 votes. Probably about 3,000 votes are still out, so it's certainly possible he could pull it off.

9:57 CT Whoa. The one polling station that just reported apparently had something like a 140-vote advantage for Charest, who's pulled within 110 votes in Sherbrooke. Meanwhile, yes, there is an election going on in 124 other ridings. About 94% of polling places have been counted, and somehow, first-second-third are the same in the vote totals as in seat totals, despite the total mess that has been created.

10:23 CT Huh?? Another three polling places have come in for Sherbrooke and Charest now leads by something like 700 votes. Apparently, everyone, their mom, and their dog here voted for Charest.

10:33 CT OK. Charest was trailing by 250 votes after 182 stations were counted. With another six stations in, he's now up by 915 votes. How, exactly, did he manage this? In 2003, he did not win a single polling place in Sherbrooke by a 200-vote margin--only a couple by a 100-vote margin (according to my very quick glance at the data) and now he's managed to make up over 1100 votes in six? Perhaps some reporting polling places hadn't counted all their votes?
It should be noted additionally, and should have been taken into account, that the PQ dominated the 2003 advance vote, probably by a 1300-1400-vote margin, which accounts for much of the early lead held by PQ candidate Forgues this time around if it held.
Not that I'm casting aspersions or anything, it would have just been a lot more interesting as an observer if Charest had lost, and I've got no personal stake in this. But there will certainly be enough action on the horizon regardless.

10:49 CT Anyhow, whatever the case, they say Charest won the riding by about 1300 votes (half his margin of 2600 from last time, and down from 47% of the vote to 37%). The overall results in the province, with over 99.5% of polling places in, show:

Liberals: 33.1%, 48 seats
ADQ: 30.8%, 41 seats
PQ: 28.3%, 36 seats

Boisclair may be done as PQ leader. Big surprise for the ADQ, which exceeded even the most optimistic polls. The Liberals, usually the party with the smallest "winners' bonus" due to their large margins of victory in anglophone ridings, have a relatively large margin this time with ADQ and PQ splitting lots of ridings. The big question is what this heralds for the provincial political scene--three parties? realignment of constituencies? all of which is beyond my abilities to look at tonight, but which will undoubtedly lead to some interesting consequences. And probably another election fairly soon.

lolcats

I generally don't comment on changes to my links, but... please welcome the newest addition to my "Other Links," I Can Has Cheezburger?

An example of their fine work:

Québec heads to the polls

Jean Charest's Liberal government (no relation to Stéphane Dion's federal Liberals) in Québec goes to the polls tomorrow to seek a renewed mandate. Polls make it a very close race between the usual second party, the separatist Parti Québécois, and the conservative Action démocratique du Québec, a third party for years, which has surged to within striking distance of the top two.

DemocraticSPACE projects a minority Liberal government, with the numbers being:
Liberals, 35.7%, 55 seats (of 125)
PQ, 29.6%, 47 seats
ADQ, 25.9%, 23 seats

ADQ emerges far weaker because its support is spread throughout the province. The PLQ is always somewhat disadvantaged (relative to its percentage of the vote) by winning supermajorities in anglophone West Montreal. Therefore, percentages don't generally translate neatly into seat totals.

Whatever the total, there are major shifts in the Québec political landscape underway, and this election will not be the end of the story.