Mr. Crowley

Declaration of Voter's Rights Signatures

2010-08-12T11:59:00.000-07:00

Fair Vote Canada has been running a petition call the Declaration of Voter's Rights since the prorogation nonsense last year. I've been tweeting the current count over @FairVoteUBC every once in a while. So I realized I actually have all the data about signatures, so I charted them out with a google finance gadget.
Click on the 6month view to see better detail. I'll keep adding to this every week or so.
I linked interesting news events for a couple points which may explain some of the jumps in signatures. Just my theory though.

Green light in the sky, the mystery continues

2008-04-17T09:53:00.000-07:00

So last night I strolled outside again in the evening whilst doing the laundry and what did I see but the green light again. The light appeared in the same location as the night before and came an went with the more significant cloudcover last night. The odd thing is that when there were bright, low lying clouds the green light wasn't visible, leading me to suppose that either :

whoever is projecting this light turns it off when the clouds come over (this supports by adaptive optics telescope theory)
the light is visible not because it is hitting clouds but because it is lighting up other clouds or dust higher up in the atmosphere
I could see the light because it was behind an inverted mountains of clouds nearer to me than where it was reflecting.

Anyways, here is another picture, even worse than the first.

I saw the light, and it was green.

2008-04-16T12:12:00.000-07:00

Last night I saw a very interesting phenomenon in the sky in Vancouver, BC. A green light that was roughly a rectangle but change shape and position over the evening. This was around 10pm April 15, 2008. Here is a very bad picture.

In case you're thinking I'm going all UFO on you, don't worry. After observing the light for a while it became clear that its some kind of beam with pointed up into the sky. Different parts of the beam became visible at different times, sometimes there were three sections of green light all lined up in a straight line. This is supposedly due to clouds passing in front of the beam and making it visible. It was a very stunning thing to watch and many people on campus were just standing around looking at it.

So my question is, what was it?
I have heard one theory that it is the result of an adaptive optics beam being used from a telescopic. But this would seem unnecessarily powerful for such a use, and it was very cloudy so why would you test a telescope?

Any ideas?
Post up here, more pictures also welcome.

Inexorable destruction by convergence of data

2008-02-08T15:28:00.000-08:00

I just had an impending feeling of doom. You know sometimes when you see a possible future, a choice, a link, an action and somewhere down the line something bad could happen. Maybe, just maybe, you'll meet that person you've been avoiding all these years or read that book you've been avoiding or be forced to do something you've always dreaded doing. Maybe its a social situation, or a roller coaster ride, or an insect museum. But you can see how it might happen, if all the cards fell in just the right way. In just an instant you see it.

I had one of those today. The internet did it to me, and I don't think there is anything I can do to stop it. The internet and all its wonderful social networking power, is slowly, inexorably drawing humanity together. The theory of six degrees of seperation is becoming measurable and even if its off by a number or two, evenutually, we're going to find a way to link ourselves to anyone. At the very least to anyone we've ever known.

Ever.

No matter how much you don't want to meat the bully from third grade or the person that dumped you 10th grade or the person you dumped in 11th grade. You're going to see them all. You aren't forced to add them to your facebook friends. But at some point they'll you be only one poke away from destruction.
Maybe we should always face our past or our fears, its good for us. But soon we're not going to have the option. And there is a sense in that the internet is doing this to us and we mere individuals are powerless to stop it. The social networking phenomenon is a natural progression and now that it has begun it will accelerate. So all these things will come to pass.

Prepare yourself for it.

Why Microsoft shouldn't buy Yahoo.

2008-02-01T12:47:00.000-08:00

So Microsoft has decided to throw their money in the ring.

I was surprised, but apparently we're not supposed to be, and it was clear someone was going to throw in money for Yahoo! eventually. Well, I hope it doesn't end up being MS. I'm trying to find another reason other than that I'm a Mac-loving, Google-loving, moderately anti-MicroSoft kind of guy.

That can't be it.

There is something deeper wrong with this.

Its wrong the same way AOL (soulless monolith of the early internet) bought upstart Netscape and basically let it die a slow death. Luckily its smart people and technology escaped that fate and let the free internet and open source development give us the current pinacle of browser technology, Firefox.

So if Microsoft gets is clutches on Yahoo!, their feature bloat, their 'innovation-speak' will permeate Yahoo and rob it of its last air, admittedly weak at this point , of beign an internet founder and renegade. Microsoft didn't help found the internet, they discovered it, got scared, tried to get into it but realized they didn't understand and are now they trying to buy it.

Google didn't help found the internet either, they took it to the next level.

They undestand it. And it would be much more fitting for Google to prop up Yahoo than Microsoft. Of course, that might be a little too much concentration, and makes even a Google-lover like me nervious.

So what's the solution?

If Yahoo! can't pull itself up it should consider doing what Netscape did when it became clear they were going to be bought out. Renegade to the end, they made their code for their browser open source, undercutting the monopoly that the monopolistic AOL was trying to buy into.

Yahoo! now should do the same thing to deny MS the prize of their clients and brand. They should open up the code for yahoo mail, del.icio.us and flickr, make them public projects and let the people have them. Only that would fix Yahoo as a true internet renegade forever, save them from MS assimilation and give Google a real competitor they couldn't buy out.