Barack Obama's Infomercial

Wow. He is good, and he has good people working for him. This video is a great peice of work.



America, a lot of us north of your border would very much like to see you vote for Barack Obama.

I hope you do.

Post Election Numbers

Well, the election is done, and while the new parliament looks suspiciously like the old one, it's once more a case of the majority of the people not getting the government they want.

As everyone probably knows, Canada uses a first-past-the-post system -- whoever gets the most votes, wins. This works well when you only have two parties running, but not so well when you have multiple parties. Here are some numbers from Fair Vote Canada. showing how many seats everyone got, versus how many they should have gotten.

Number of Seats in Parliament:
Conservatives - 143
Liberals - 76
NDP - 37
Bloc - 50
Greens - not 0

Actual Percentage of the Popular Vote Each Party Received:
Conservatives - 38%
Liberals - 26%
NDP - 18%
Bloc - 10%
Greens - 7%

Now, if we were using a system of proportional representation, twe would still have a minority government, but the seat distribution would look quite different:

Seats in Parliament based on Popular Vote
Conservatives - 117
Liberals - 81
NDP - 57
Bloc - 28
Greens - 23

To put it another way:
- If you were a Conservative supporter voting in Toronto, your vote didn't count.
- If you were an NDP supporter voting in Quebec, your vote didn't count.
- If you were a Liberal supporter voting on the prairies, your vote didn't count.

Proportional Representation is a much better syetem than the one we are using because it means that all Canadians get represented, and reflects the true political make-up of the country, both nationally and regionally. It also, because it usually results in minority governments, forces all parties to work together to make laws and policy. Not a bad thing, really.

So, if you haven't yet, I encourage you to learn about Proportional Representation, and ask your MP (and MPP) to support it.

Fair Vote Canada is a good place to start.

Best. Review. Ever.

Go read.

More Politics - Proportional Representation

There's a post over at a friend of mine's blog about strategic voting -- when it works and when it doesn't. It's a good post and something to ponder in these days of faux democracy that we live in.

Meanwhile, got an email from Fair Vote Canada asking me to read their open letter to strategic voters and vote swappers. It's a good reminder that there is the possibility for a better system, if we can get enough people to agree on it.

Here's the letter. Have a read.

Me, I'm a whole-hearted supporter of Proportional Representation myself. Makes sense in a multi-party system and it really isn't that hard to implement.

If you are a supporter and haven't signed the petition calling for proportional representation, here's where to go.

A Little Violence, Because It's Tuesday

So I'm sure I've mentioned that I'm a fight director, right? Been out of the business a while, what having a kid to pay for and a Toronto mortgage to feed. Even so, I like to keep a hand in now and again.

So a friend of mine in Japan is doing Richard III, and he was wondering about fight stuff. He's trying to convince me to go and I'm trying to explain exactly what that would cost. Even so, I put something together for him to give him some ideas.

Now, what you see here was done after only 1.5 hours of rehearsal. It is not performance quality. Instead, it is beginning to take it's first shape. For this fight scene, I'd want at least 10 hours more work to make it passible. 20 hours if I was working with beginners.

Anyway, here it is. Enjoy it for what it is, and my thanks to Alex who took the time to shoot it and put it together, and to Dan who loaned us his space.



You want to see some good film work? Check out Alex's website.

And for some of the best in stage combat, check out Dan's website.

Welcome to Gilead

Posting a lot of political stuff this month. Must be all that election in the air.

Anyway, here's an interesting post from truthout on the rise of Sara Palin and the parallels in her character to the aunts in A Handmaid's Tales. Scary stuff.

Welcome to Gilead, Governor Palin

H/T to Suzanne, who is not a blogger but is frightfully well informed.