Bits: Wildflower Decapitation Edition

Awesome.

-A video from a random episode of the old Batman series has been making the rounds of the YouTubes because it appears to offer commentary on the 2008 election... 40 years in advance. There are several parallels that can be seen in this clip alone, which features Batman and the Penguin engaging in a debate prior to an election for Mayor of Gotham City. Of course, this campaign has become such a caricature of itself that it's no wonder it reminds people of a campy 60s TV series.



-Unsettlingly, anecdotal evidence increasingly suggests that early voting sites across the country are being targeted by angry protestors, specifically anti-Obama protestors. This article describes an incident in North Carolina, and features video. So... you're protesting voting? Why not protest Obama by going into the early voting place and voting against him? And I especially like the comment that "Sundays are for church, not for voting"... by the person who's spending her Sunday protesting instead of in church.



-All over the news today... the discovery on the Arizona/Utah border (within Vermillion Cliffs National Monument) of what is being termed a "Dinosaur Dance Floor." How did it get this name? To quote Newswise.com:

“Get out there and try stepping in their footsteps, and you feel like you are
playing the game ‘Dance Dance Revolution’ that teenagers dance on,” says
Marjorie Chan, professor and chair of geology and geophysics at the University
of Utah. “This kind of reminded me of that – a dinosaur dance floor – because
there are so many tracks and a variety of different tracks.”

The find apparently includes thousands of dinosaur tracks in a very small area, in some places a dozen per square yard. There are least four different species represented. The scientists are theorizing that the tracks were formed at an oasis in what that time was a huge area of sand dunes, larger than today's Sahara. I have to throw in one more quote here:

Seiler envisions the dinosaurs were “happy to be at this place, having wandered
up and down many a sand dune, exhausted from the heat and the blowing sand,
relieved and happy to come to a place where there was water.”

Ah, yes, poetical scientists.



-Rather interesting news from Switzerland today, a nation always on the cutting edge when it comes to government. A new law bans the humiliation of plants. Recently, the Swiss Parliament asked a special committee of philosophers, lawyers, geneticists, and theologians to determine the meaning of dignity as it pertains to plants. They have issued their report, which says that it is morally wrong to participate in "the decapitation of wildflowers at the roadside without rational reason", and it appears that parliament is acting on those guidelines. However, one wonders what the actual extent and/or enforceability of such a law would be. More here.



-Free TV On the Internet: Check out this past week's new Family Guy episode, "The Road to Germany". It's already infamous because it has Nazis wearing McCain/Palin buttons, which seems like an unlikely thing to have fixated upon in an episode that revolves around a port-a-potty time machine (which I suppose makes as much sense as a phone box) and a baby dressing up as Hitler.

You Missed Election Day

...In Canada. Yes, the Canadians held an election yesterday, and it seems that not even they cared. It was the lowest recorded voter turnout in Canadian history, at 59% or so. It was an election without many major issues. Polls put the economy at number one, but the worst of the global crisis has mostly passed over Canada, due to tight regulations already in place for the nation's financial industry. In the end, the Conservative Party gained seats but not enough for a clean majority, with a total of 143 Stephen Harper, extremely popular in Canada, will remain the nation's Prime Minister. The once-mighty Liberal Party lost substantially once again, being reduced to only 76 seats. There are also two other major parties, the separatist Bloc Quebecois, which stayed about the same with 50 seats, and the ultra-liberal New Democrats, who continued to gain strength and now have 38 seats.

The Liberal Party governed for 12 consecutive years (1993-2006), mostly under Jean Chretien, but in recent years have been hit by the so-called "Sponsorship Scandal", revolving around corruption and political favors among party members in Quebec. Also, during the 90s, the Canadian Right was split following the near-total collapse of the "Progressive Conservatives" in 1993, when that party went from the majority to having only 2 seats, and the far-right "Reform Party" emerged but was mainly limited to the western part of the country. The Reform Party was extremely controversial in Canada for its advocacy of positions associated with the modern American Republican party. It was openly Christian, anti-immigrant, anti-abortion, anti-gay rights, and also wanted to end the Canadian policy of bilingualism. Following a few unsucessful attempts at reunification, the Reform Party, "Conservative Alliance," and the vestiges of the Progressive Conservatives merged in 2003 under the more-moderate Harper and in 2006 gained a plurality.

This was an election, as stated earlier, that really failed to get going. Stephane Dion, the Liberal leader, was painted, seemingly succesfully, by Conservatives as a weak leader, a sort of Canadian Dan Quayle, and it seems he will soon be replaced. Many criticized Conservative policies, such as a $45 million dollar arts funding cut (can you imagine how low that would be on an American election agenda?), as well as Harper's seeming to take a "wait-and-see" approach to the economy. There was also a business about them trying to bribe a dying independent with life insurance that never really caught on. Other parties, especially the Bloc and NDP, were quick to declare victory at the end of the night because the Conservatives didn't have the majority they wanted, while some criticized the election itself as a wase of money.

Other interesting bits surroundng the Canadian election:

-The Green Party made waves, increasing its national vote totals substantially to around 6%, but failed to win a single seat. By contrast, the Bloc Quebecois had 10% of the national vote, but will have 50 seats. Green Party leader Elizabeth May was seen by many as having had the strongest showing in the debates, but lost to Canadian Defense Minister Peter MacKay in her own Nova Scotia riding. Many felt the Green Party helped take seats away from the Liberals in this election, in addition to the usual NDP cut.

-One issue that cropped up was a 2003 speech by then-Opposition Leader Harper, in which he called for Canada to send troops to Iraq. It was recently revealed to have been directly plagiarized from a speech by Australian Prime Minister Howard that was delivered only two days earlier. The staffer who supposedly wrote the speech ended up having to resign. It's interesting to point out that, though Harper is in power, he has thought better of sending a Canadian contingent to Iraq, as such as move would certainly be wildly unpopular in Canada.

-Chris Reid, a Conservative candidate in a Toronto district, dropped out of the election after statements on his blog gained media attention. The statements? That he wanted to legalize concealed carrying of handguns. In Canada, that's apparently so far outside the mainstream as to end Reid's political career. Here in Ohio, by the way, "Conceal/Carry" is legal, with a permit. A lack of success in Toronto, where Conservatives hold zero seats out of 22, ended up being a major piece in that party's failure to win a majority.

-Then there's the case of NDP candidate Andrew McKeever from Durham, Ontario. I'll just quote Wikipedia:

announced on October 3 that he would resign from the election campaign after it
was revealed that he had posted comments on Facebook in which he called one
war activist a “fascist bitch” and threatened to beat up another person. Mr.
McKeever wrote comments peppered with expletives and calling the operators of a
war resister website “Nazis.” McKeever was also quoted as saying “I like the
part in Schindler’s List when the guard starts waxing the prisoners.” McKeever’s
decision to drop out of the race came with just over a week left in the
campaign, meaning his name would remain on the ballot. One week before the
publication of McKeever's resignation, NDP leader Jack Layton defended McKeever
and refused to make him step down.

-More NDP... Julian West, the party's candidate in Saanich, BC, dropped off the ballot after details surfaced regarding his conduct at an "environmental event" 12 years ago, where he went skinny-dipping and then asked two teenagers to bodypaint him. This may be the first bodypainting scandal I have heard of in world politics.

-Independent candidate David Popsecu, running in Sudbury, was invesitgated for "hate speech" after he responded to a debate question about gay rights with "homosexuals should be executed."