it's just proof that cats aren't very smart.

no rational being would jump up to open the door when they can just stroll through the hole in it.

this is actually pretty good....

....for a microsoft product.

i hear the google talk has three times the viewer share, and there's a lot of excitement about sony's upcoming talk next month.

but, really - no argument. good points. warrants are important. i'm just not sure why that's not obvious.

"they killed kan-e"

those bastards.

the driver has plates on, so this isn't bright. but, if you're in a decent size truck without plates and you're in a situation, this is actually not a bad tactic. you're never going to outrun them, or win a car chase. but, if you can knock the cars out of commission and get far enough away to ditch the vehicle, there's a relatively decent chance you can get out of it.

i mean, it's a better tactic than trying to win a chase, anyways.

wouldn't a contrarian need to disagree with the label?

appointment

jessica
first, i should apologize for sending you faxes and emails; i don't have a phone.

my name is jessica parent. i saw you about a year ago regarding transgender hrt. you carried on a prescription i had been on for four years and have now been on for five years. at the time, we agreed that you would continue to prescribe the hormones from a distance, because i live in windsor and it's very difficult for me to commute to london. however, when i went to renew the prescription, the pharmacy received back a note that you need to see me.

i really can't afford to make the commute. i'm really not quite sure why it is that you need to see me, given that we agreed it was unnecessary. do you need a blood test? could you schedule one at a clinic here in windsor, and have the results faxed to you?

i'm exploring further options, here, but they're kind of bleak. i have an appointment with a family doctor on nov 17, and i'm hoping that works out. i'm also communicating with an endocrinologist, but he's put a condition down to attend a workshop in toronto with a year-long waiting list, and that's kind of a non-starter. i may be able to convince him to waive this, but it's up in the air right now.

if it's just a blood test, i can do that. but i would really like to avoid the bus fare; i could do it, if it's my only choice, but i live on odsp and it's going to be tight up against my budget.

if you require regular visits, i suppose i understand. i think i've been on hormones so long, that it's just a question of a check-up, and i do feel healthy enough that i think it's probably superfluous, but i realize there are due diligence issues, as well. but, i can't commit to that.

in the short run, i'm hoping maybe you could give me another 3-6 months to allow me to exhaust options here. again: if it's just a blood test, i'm more than willing to do that. if not, and you're ok with another few months, i'd ask you to let me know so i can ask the pharmacy to fax another request.

i know this is not ideal. *i'm* the one that's struggling to find a doctor, here, that's at a reasonable distance. i'm not quite sure why this is proving so difficult. but, it's obviously kind of frightening to come up against the idea of not being able to find hormones, after already transition fully for all functional purposes. i hope that the urgency is understood and the difficult situation is accounted for in your decision.

london clinic
Good morning Jessica,

Thanks so much for your email. We can absolutely empathize with the difficulty to get here for an appointment with the distance and financial constraints. I showed Dr. Martin your email and he came up with a bit of a compromise, I hope this can work. He has agreed to extend the prescriptions until June but in the meantime, if you could find a way to make it up here for an appointment that would be very important before we are able to give more beyond this date. The issue is just with the due diligence, for him to be able to be accountable and act in a medically responsible way while prescribing medications it is essential that we see you in our office for follow-ups. Hopefully the extension will make it a little easier to find a way to get here at some point between now and then. Let me know that you would be agreeable to this plan and where you would like me to send the refill for you medications.  If there is anything else I can do to help, don’t hesitate to let me know.

jessicaprobably the easiest thing to do would be for me to fax the refill request from the pharmacy. does that work for you?

extending it to june will give me more than enough time to figure things out here, so that is ideal: thank you. i will know if i need to make another appointment within a few weeks, and if i do i will call you near the end of november to make it. if i don't, i'll let you know as well.

london clinic
Hi Jessica,

I'm so glad to hear this plan will work. You can for sure have the pharmacy fax over the refill requests and I will fill it out and fax it back to them :)

i mostly called it, i just want to point out how i got to where i got to and what went wrong where it went wrong. my predictions were..

liberals: 160-170
conservatives: 95-100
ndp: ~45
bloc: ~35 - but i saw this as a max.

the liberals overperformed in quebec, so that's the major thing that i got wrong. otherwise, it would have been dead on.

error for quebec: the quebec polls were just impossible, near the end. the correct answer was "there are four parties in the margin of error, and the result is unpredictable". but, you can't do that. you need to pick something, even if you're aware it's really just a guess. aggregates break when you have a lot of movement near the end because they're designed to be conservative (as in not change a lot). i thought i picked up a bloc surge over the last 36 hours, and was guessing it would be something like libs 30, ndp 25, bloc 25, cons 15. i actually correctly pulled out low conservative turnout (or unchanged turnout since 2011), which was in direct contradiction to the media narrative; it struck me as absolute bollocks. so, i was thinking that the split would let the bloc come up the middle in many ridings, and leave the ndp with ~15. so, my quebec predictions were: bloc ~35, libs ~25, ndp ~15, cons ~5. what we actually got in quebec was libs 35, ndp 25, bloc 20, cons 20 - which let the liberals sweep. NOBODY picked that up.

almost nobody. i actually picked it up, in noticing that the ndp decrease seemed to primarily moving to the undecideds. but, then the polling firms stopped publishing that, and i was stuck in the dark.

i think that, when the dust settles and the numbers are crunched, what we will find out is that the liberals got a boost on a low turnout in quebec amongst left-leaning sovereigntist voters. people just rejected everything and tuned out. that is the reason that none of the polls seemed to have them so high in their published numbers; if you look at their unpublished numbers, i think it's something that will come out in a distinct swing from ndp to "they're all terrible, i'm staying home and watching the habs game."

errors for ontario: i predicated 90+ seats for the liberals in ontario and -25 for the conservatives. we ended up with 80 for the liberals and 33 for the conservatives. this is better than the models, but still off by about ten seats.

i got to 90 seats by looking at the 2004 federal election, which had the following numbers:

libs: 44.7
cons: 31.5
ndp: 18.1

that seemed to be very similar to what we were seeing in the polling. it netted the liberals 75 seats in 2004; there have been 15 seats added since, mostly in urban spaces, so i added it up to get to 90+. i also suspected the liberals were going to crest over 45, which made me feel ok about the + part. if you check a map of 2004, that would give the liberals a nearly clean sweep all the way around toronto (including brantford, milton, durham, thornilll, markham-unionville, barrie and kitchener-conestoga to name a few), some of hamilton and most of northern ontario.

actual numbers were:

libs: 44.8
cons: 35.0
ndp: 16.6

so, we see the cause of error here: the conservatives polled higher than expected in the gta. nobody had them as high as 35. northern ontario mirrored the 2004 election well, and they actually did better this time around in the 613 than they did in 2004. but that 3.5% difference for the conservatives (clearly at the expense of the ndp) was the ten point difference.

i still beat the models, though.

errors for alberta: i was arguing that the uniform swing was naive and overestimating conservative support; based on the polling, most of calgary and all of edmonton should have been in play. this was based on the idea of the conservatives polling at 53% province wide, which is what the aggregates were suggesting. in the end, they polled at 60% over the province. if you had plugged 60% into those models, they would not have predicted any seats for the liberals (and may have even handed over linda duncan's seat).

6/66 = 9%. doubled is 18%. this, ironically, recreates numbers that are closer to what the models were producing - but it's a total fluke & coincidence.

so, conservatives were being underpolled in alberta. it could have been a last minute swing back, even. i based a calculation on it. it didn't work out because the data was inaccurate.

that will be it for me, here, for another four years.

deathtokoalas, dvlghgfgjhjhfkhghjklka and all the other pseudonyms are signing out until the next cycle. track down my blogs if you're really upset by this.

www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-election-2015-majority-liberal-regional-narrative-1.3279126

i just want to comment on the last point, because it's strangely american-centric for a cbc talking head.

the canadian liberal party is the last remaining descendant of the british liberal party, which dominated politics in britain for a large amount of the nineteenth century. america had whigs (although they were very different than british whigs), which actually turned into the republican party. the liberals absorbed new deal keynesian policies when they were fashionable, but they are at their core an ideologically liberal party. they're the party of mills and ricardo and smith.

when americans hear the term "liberal", they think of vietnam protesters or something. but the term "liberal", in context, actually MEANS "free trade". it refers to trade liberalization. at the beginning of the last century, we called it "reciprocity". in fact, the fta (forerunner of nafta) was borne out of a commission created by the elder trudeau, near the end of his tenure. it was our idea, and it has been our idea since before the time of wilfred laurier - who was quoted by the new prime minister yesterday, and often quoted by his father.

this is contrasted against tory protectionism.

our constitution, largely written by his father, is very "liberal" as well - in the sense of it being very rooted in individual rights.

the term has changed in the united states to something unrecognizable from it's initial meaning. but the canadian liberal party is essentially unique on this planet in holding relatively close to nineteenth century british classical liberalism.

you may want to think of them as halfway between libertarians and democrats, in the american context.

www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/drove-canadas-liberal-party-election-upset/

the one thing i seriously got wrong was where the ndp were collapsing *to*. i figured they'd be around 25, but that the swing would go to the bloc. nobody had the liberals at 35 in quebec, but a few had the bloc at 25. so, i pegged the liberals about 160 and the bloc at about 35. that 25 seat difference on the 5 point swing in quebec, which nobody picked up, is what got me.

otherwise, i think my decision to base ontario results on the 2004 federal election rather than any kind of models (which, by the way they work, couldn't pick up the dramatic swings in cambridge or st. catherines or durham or kitchener or barrie - even if the conservatives squeaked a few of those seats out) was a better overall approach. it was pretty accurate in northern ontario. the conservatives were up a little on 2004 (and relative to most of the polling), and the ndp were down a little. if the conservatives had come down just a tad closer to the polling, the liberals would have won some of those seats - which all the models had as safe conservative seats.

i don't think we'll see another election like this for some time. the lesson is in the uniform distribution not applying well to huge swings. but, it's more on the level of requiring the caveat that the models are designed to distribute small changes.

i would suggest maybe pushing pollsters to get better sampling frames, though. if you could split ontario into three or four frames, you'd be better able to apply a uniform swing to those frames. another idea is to use the last five or six elections as a base, rather than just the last one, and then base the distribution on where you've calculated it's most likely to exist based on a broader survey of where it's existed previously. that's why i went looking for a close match in 2004 to compensate for the huge swing; but, what would have been better would have been to integrate new and old data together.

www.tooclosetocall.ca/2015/10/performance-of-polls-for-2015-federal.html3:38

just some final notes on the election.

the liberals won by doing three things:

1) getting back a good proportion of their base from the ndp, which had been wandering left since 2004.
2) cementing the red tory vote.
3) taking advantage of apathy towards sovereignty in quebec.

but, they peaked at the right time and got a lot of pragmatic support. you could call it a perfect storm, or a perfect planetary alignment. expect polls next month to wander dramatically.

the conservatives are the easiest to understand because they have the strongest base. the conservative base is around 27-30%, but sometimes seems a little higher due to low turnout. there's an additional swing of about 6-8% that they can access under ideal circumstances. this separation became clear in 2004, when joe clark endorsed paul martin and actually swung about that much from the new conservatives to the liberals. you can call this the "clark swing", but the traditional term for this is "red tories". what is useful about the 2004 election is that it provided a direct measurement of how many red tories there are out there.

the fact that the conservatives ran about 30% (a touch higher due to moderately low turnout, albeit higher than the last few elections) indicates that the liberals got almost all of that red tory support.

but, the reality that the conservatives were flatlined at 30 the whole time indicates that the red tories seem to have decided on the liberals a good way out from the election. dominant factors were likely related to corruption - duffy and things of the sort.

the liberals can hold these votes for long periods, but they are moderate conservatives at their core and will bolt back at the first opportunity. they would prefer to vote conservative, unless the option seems too extreme. i expect the conservatives to elect jason kenney, who has a bad reputation amongst these voters and could keep them voting liberal for quite a while. but, if they pick a more moderate option then this support will flow back. further, they will react badly to certain social issues. they're going to lean towards the liberals on a lot of social issues, including multiculturalism, abortion, the death penalty and marijuana legalization. but, an underlooked factor in their swing back to the conservatives in 2006, in addition to the sponsorship scandal, was probably the gay marriage ruling and the martin government's acceptance of it. if the media finds some kind of a scandal, at least a part of it could swing back pretty quick. and, they may have some reservations about assisted suicide. but, to hold these people, they mostly need to run a clean government. that's fighting against gravity.

most of the rest of the swing is traditional liberal support, which is actually still running a little low - the ndp managed to hold about a third of it. they're going to want to see the liberals avoid getting too mixed up in foreign conflicts, which could be somewhat of a weak spot. the tpp is a wildcard. the environment is a growing dominant concern amongst younger voters. but, the point is that this support is mostly policy driven, and something they consequently have far more control over. the ontario liberals have - up until recently - done a good job in holding this support by actually putting through good policy positions. if the liberals actually do this, they could even eat further into ndp support as the holdout liberals slowly give in.

it remains to be seen whether or not they can hold their support in quebec, but i think it is largely out of their hands. the bloc need to make some big decisions.

a disaster scenario will occur if the liberals misinterpret the situation and start pandering to red tories. what the red tories base their voting decisions on is broadly unattainable: every government has corruption in it, but they keep switching sides naively hoping it will reduce corruption. it's the definition of insanity. but, it's been happening for a long time and will keep happening. the pandering will get them nowhere, but will piss off the base they won back. we'll be thrown back to the situation we were in in 2011.

part of the reason i endorsed the liberals is that i was convinced they've come to understand that. but, we'll see if they do or not.

if they act like liberals, and keep acting like liberals, the younger trudeau could be in power for longer than his father - as the conservatives spin-out trying to please their base, and the ndp have difficulty articulating why they'd be better.

if they act like conservatives, expect the government to be short-lived.

wow. snl has really lost it's edge. twenty years ago.

this doesn't even pretend to be insightful satire. it's half an attempt to explain the candidates to a disinterested audience, and half a collection of surface-deep caricatures that could apply to more or less anybody.

there's a lot to play with here. and, there's actually quite a bit of competition out there. i know that snl is basically catering to a prime time network tv sitcom audience nowadays, but it's hard to believe that the lowest common denominator is so small.

bernie has been transparent that his primary aim is to try and alter the narrative, and that is working. and, his answer on the socialism issue - which is basically that most americans don't understand what socialism is, and would support it if they did - is correct in the abstract. there's tons of polling on this. if you ask americans about socialism, they reject it. but, if you ask them about socialist policies, they support them. it's a sad state of affairs, but it has been true for a very long time [it's something chomsky was fond of pointing out at least as far back as the 80s].

but, anderson cooper is bringing up a valid point. you get this 45/45 split in american politics that is partisan and doesn't move. you're stuck winning elections with the remaining "independents", who are also generally the least informed members of the public. the two party system has created this reality where big money gets to define narratives and win elections because it's the only way that the swing vote interacts with issues. it's just a very narrow battlefield, and because it's so narrow, it's so easy to control. sanders is an easy target.

could he increase turnout and overpower it? this is the correct answer: it's not the least risky choice for the democratic party.

it's a harder road to walk down, but the country would be better off in the long run if people like sanders were helping to build a third party, although that should be happening at the congressional level rather than the presidential level. i mean, it's what he's done. he has a base to work with. a model. a long, hard road - but one that could be emulated. that said, and because the important shift needs to be happening congressionally, i do think that it's important that he's there and getting people to think of things from a different perspective.

but, at the end of the day, the spectrum he's trying to work within out of pragmatism is going to kill him off out of pragmatism.

i'm still waiting for the banks to put their candidate down. i thought it was sanders, which would be outrageous, but it's just not adding up. it's not hillary. they hate hillary. they ran obama against her, they will run somebody else against her. it looked like it was going to be fiorina, but that seemed like an attempt to neutralize the female vote that has collapsed with the uncertainty of her winning the primary; it may come back if she takes a wider lead. when it's obvious, it will become obvious.

for that reason, democrats should be questioning their logic. clinton has done everything she can to position herself as the establishment, and the establishment has rejected her. if you allow her to win the primary, the banks will ensure she loses the general.

if i was an american, i'd certainly be leaning towards bernie. but, i really don't see a candidate here that the media will allow to win.

biden is probably the party's best chance. but, the party might not like what he gets you, either.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mr1KJR5UZjM

also: bernie needs to stop referring to himself in the third person, before somebody picks up on it and starts doing a reprise of the comedy routine that turned bob dole into a joke.

that's fertile ground.