Hubert Chathi

Hubert Chathi: R.I.P. Jack Layton http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/story/2011/08/22/layton-obituary.html

Hubert Chathi: what does it say when the government is ready to stop the Air Canada strike, but not the Canada Post strike? http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/2011/06/14/air-canada-strike.html

Hubert Chathi: World's biggest #refugee camp is full http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2011/06/10/refugee-camp-kenya.html #socialjustice

I voted last night (we even brought Ivan along, although he slept through the whole voting process), which means that I'm allowed to complain about the results. So complain, I will.

A Conservative majority? Really? Canada, what were you thinking?!?! The Conservatives have shown contempt for parliament, shut down the house twice to avoid dealing with issues, broke their own election law (if not the letter of the law, at least the spirit of it), among other things, and you give them a majority? (Granted, over 60% of Canadians who cared enough to vote voted against the Conservatives.)

The winners

Stephen Harper and the Conservatives: Harper got the majority he wanted, and proved to Canada that he is the Teflon man. His FUD campaign worked, and he spooked people with the coalition boogey man. He somehow managed to convince people that he had something to do with Canada's economic recovery. He now has free reign for four years.

Elizabeth May and the Green Party: won in her riding, so we finally have a Green Party MP. It will be interesting to see what she does in Parliament. Maybe the Broadcasting consortium will have a harder time ignoring her next time.

The NDP: Official Opposition status, and the best election result they've ever had.

The Liberals: Michael Ignatief was probably the worst thing to happen to the Liberals for a long time. With the loss, Ignatief has resigned. Liberal Party of Canada, please pick someone good to lead you this time.

The losers

The Green Party: even though they finally have a seat, they dropped in the popular vote, but then, that's to be expected in a tight race, with first-past-the-post: the less-popular parties lose support as everyone votes for the lesser of two evils.

Michael Ignatief and the Liberals: the first time they ended up in third place. Nothing they attacked the Conservatives on would stick, and they were unable to make an issue out of anything. Ignatief even lost his own seat.

Gilles Duceppe and the Bloc: at one point, they were the official opposition, and now they don't even have official party status. Duceppe lost his own seat as well. Is this the beginning of the end for the Bloc? Or did Québec just get charmed by the NDP this time? If he wasn't a separatist, Duceppe would have probably made the best Prime Minister out of all the party leaders.

Canada: the Conservatives pulled off some stupid things when they were held in check by a minority. What will happen now that they don't have to care about what anyone else says?

Electoral reform

Electoral reform is dead for the next four years. The NDP will push for it, but the Conservatives will ignore them. They've benefited a lot from the current system. Why would they change it?

Although Proportional Representation gets the most attention, I think that there is one major flaw with most PR systems: it gives independents a harder time. I would prefer a system in which voters rank candidates by preference. Condorcet would be my preference. STV/IRV would be my second pick. Even Approval voting would be an improvement. Note that these systems are not necessarily mutually exclusive with Proportional Representation. But I think that the calls for PR would be lessened if we used one of the above systems.

Shenanigans

Someone has been telling people that their polling station has moved. Nobody knows who is behind it, yet, but it's quite a serious offence, and I hope that whoever it is gets found out.

Hubert Chathi: Awesome http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2011/02/22/body-scanners-airport.html #security #privacy

Hubert Chathi: Canada lags in caring for poorest children: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2010/12/03/unicef-children-report003.html #socialjustice

Hubert Chathi: airline #security season again: http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2010/11/16/body-scanner-backlash-air-travel.html and http://www.newser.com/story/105351/tsa-pats-down-3-year-old.html

Hubert Chathi: Aung San Suu Kyi released. Walk on. http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia-pacific/2010/11/20101113105340355661.html

Hubert Chathi: Canada ratifies UN treaty for disabled rights: http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2010/03/11/disabled-treaty011.html #news

Hubert Chathi: US rules greenhouse gases 'hazards' http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2009/12/200912723433211121.html #news #environment

Hubert Chathi: wow. That's sad. http://www.cbc.ca/consumer/story/2009/11/11/cash-sell-grades-fundraising.html #news

Hubert Chathi: likes dominoes: http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2009/11/08/berlin-wall-anniversary.html #news

Hubert Chathi: The polls must be showing the Liberals currently ahead: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2009/09/01/ignatieff-liberals090109.html

Hubert Chathi: is disappointed that BC has rejected electoral reform again. http://www.cbc.ca/canada/bcvotes2009/story/2009/05/12/bc-election-stv.html #news #voting

Hubert Chathi: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/manitoba/story/2009/05/05/mb-homeless-hero.html #news

Hubert Chathi: wishes Obama luck in his call to eliminate nuclear weapons #news #peace

No, not that kind of hash. The NIST is holding a contest for a new cryptographic hash function. Vulnerabilities have been found in the most commonly used hash functions, MD5 and SHA-1, and the contest is for the new SHA-3 standard. The deadline for submissions was last Friday, so if you missed it, too bad.

Schneier et al. have submitted their algorithm, called skein, and Rivest et al. have submitted MD6.

The NIST held a similar contest several years back for encryption algorithms, which resulted in Rijndael being officially named as the Advanced Encryption Standard. That contest took 5 years. We'll see how long this one takes. Hashing is generally less well-understood, and harder to do, than encryption.