Even bigger bridge!

After the tale of Russia's immense bridge to nowhere in The Economist of 8 September, I thought I had seen extremes of bridge-making. Until the 15 September issue arrived (I'm always two Economists behind the world) and they mentioned something even more massive: the Jiaozhou Bay Bridge in Shandong province. I had to google it, thusly:

Longest sea bridge opens in China, The Hindu, 1 July 2011.

And people wonder why I freak out when I don't have my Economist.

Municipal candidates v. the Minister of Finance

Tuesday night, the territorial Minister of Finance, Michael Miltenberger, was in Hay River with four staffers, a moderator and a secretary, to take a public meeting about his upcoming territorial budget. Everyone was invited to come and make suggestions.

Ha!

Your correspondent doesn't have to be told twice to give a minister a piece of my mind. Although that particular date conflicted with several other things I wanted to do, and I also have to work from 5:00 AM to 4:00 PM or so every day this week, I dragged myself to the meeting, where of course I expected to meet all my fellow municipal-election candidates.

Ha, again.

There were FOUR council candidates, out of 15, in attendance. Myself, Kandis Jameson, Ken Latour, and Sandra Lester. (Correction: there were five candidates, as Michael St. John was there also. I just didn't know his name at that time.) And Latour had nothing to say. When you think about it, Latour never really has much to say. That's what made him so successful as acting mayor, really. Compared to the empty-headed blowhards we've put in the job in recent memory, a mayor with nothing to say is a huge improvement. Nonetheless, I'm starting to wonder why we keep electing a councillor whose main achievement is not to ruffle any feathers.

Speaking of mayors, only one of the two candidates attended: Brian Lefebvre. I really thought Cassidy had more sense than to ignore territorial politics, but sources suggest he may have been out of town. That's too bad. What's even weirder than Cassidy's absence is Lefebvre's absence in the conversation, considering that he was clearly there in body. Of course he was somewhere behind me, since I always sit in the front row, but I generally turn my head to look at those who speak, so if he had intervened, I think I'd have noticed. Again, nothing to say is better than complete nonsense, but how can anyone who is running for office not have something to say about the territorial budget? Per-capita territorial spending is 17 times as much as municipal, and most of the issues that anyone cares about are territorial jurisdictions, so that most of what the council should be doing for the citizens is to wrangle with the territorial government. The GNWT is also both the largest component of the territorial economy and the greatest obstacle to creating a real economy, so it boggles the mind that a candidate running, as far as I can tell, on a "business" platform would have nothing to say about it.

Now you might suppose that perhaps he was there to listen rather than talk, but the purpose of the meeting was to talk and be listened to, so that would still be a poor choice on his part. Or you might argue that a handful of people monopolized the floor, but someone who means to lead council meetings should know how to control the floor, and besides, the moderator did a good job of recognizing everyone, and even tried quite hard to draw the silent ones out. So that's not it either. Or, as another citizen suggested in conversation afterwards, he might have been "not wanting to make any statements when he doesn't know how the public would receive them", in which case he simply shouldn't be in politics. There is a thoroughly ignorant view here that our governments should find whatever "makes everyone happy"; as there is no such thing, nothing ever gets done, and no one is happy. If you're going into politics, you have to pick a course of action that either a) produces good results or b) gets you re-elected, the two being often mutually exclusive. Just sitting there with your mouth shut trying to identify something you can get behind that won't alienate anybody is not politics, and what's worse, it's not leadership.

So, I was probably never gonna vote for Lefebvre anyway, simply because that "business" platform is ignorant and has never achieved anything for Hay River, but now that I've seen him in a political meeting, I'm most definitely never voting for him. The only thing that works out in his favour is that Cassidy wasn't there at all. But as my source suggested, he might be out of town.

On the other hand, it's not plausible that all eleven (ten) council candidates who were absent were also out of town, so where were they? And why? What did they have to do that night that was more important than the territorial budget? Was there an even more important political meeting that I wasn't aware of? If so, how come both our MLAs, the acting mayor, the SAO and the press were at our meeting?

There was no other meeting. Those eleven (ten) guys stayed away either because they didn't know, in which case they should be paying more attention, or because they didn't think it was important, in which case they really should be paying more attention. There is nothing you can do here, socio-economically speaking, that does not include the GNWT in some way, either through funding, collaboration, or conflict. No matter what you do, the GNWT is everywhere and its budget defines the life of Hay River and everything else here. It's simply not possible to ignore the GNWT.

What the missing are also ignoring is the voters. This meeting was our best opportunity to be heard and make an impression. Next week's candidates' forum gives us a two-minute introductory speech and then one minute to answer any question directed at us. Last time the candidates were split into five groups and each question was addressed by only one group, not all fifteen candidates (we also had 15 last time). I imagine this one will be much the same. One minute is basically a sound bite; even with preparation, it will be difficult to communicate a platform that way. If all goes smoothly and no time is wasted, there should be time for each candidate to answer four questions, so the total talk time is about six minutes per candidate, on topics selected by the public. In comparison, the territorial budget meeting allowed essentially unlimited time on any topic.

Ha, yet again.

Naturally, I took advantage of this talking time as much as possible. Not as a campaign ploy, even, but because I had things to say to the minister. In the past I've emailed him my comments and he didn't respond, so if he's gonna come here and see me in person, you can be sure I'm making the most of it. There were a few subjects where I had little to say, specifically health and education. Partly because I don't participate in those fields and they're not where economic salvation lies, and partly because many attendees had come on purpose to recriminate about those services. Conveniently, the reverse was true on my topics: not only are they economic drivers, but everyone else didn't have too much to say about them, so I got the floor over and over and talked as much as I wanted. The moderator did look for others to intervene on these topics and there really wasn't much input from the rest of the room, so, more for me.

In the end, therefore, Jameson, Lester and I got tons of talk time, but I think I got the most of it. I suspect the press coverage will ignore that aspect of the meeting, because informing the public is less important than appearing "neutral", and because I suspect the reporter also failed to grasp the importance of the territorial budget to municipal outcomes. But we were there, and we were heard by the Minister of Finance. That's more than the other eleven can say. (In fact it's more than the other twelve can say, given that Latour was hardly heard at all.)

I'm not gonna say I agreed with everything Jameson or Lester said. In fact, even though I like Jameson a lot more than Lester, I probably disagreed with most of what Jameson said, and agreed with most of Lester's points, which is passing strange. (Then again some of her points were pretty non-controversial, for example the idea of cutting costs by not wasting money on swag.) But whether I agree or disagree with them, they made the effort, and I respect that. (I did agree with everything St. John said.)

The next day, I run into an acquaintance and she asks me "where are your lawn signs?" So there you have it. Why go to important budget meetings when you could just stick a few eyesores in the grass with your name on them? Sigh...

That's one big bridge

Here in the Northwest Territories, we thought we had a big bridge. Or a portion of a big bridge, so far. Most of us think we paid too much for it. A fair number think there aren't enough people on the other side to warrant a bridge. (I'm with them. We do, however, have enough current and future mines.) In any case, we in the Northwest Territories are sensitive to excessive bridging. So imagine my glee when I saw this:

Russia's far east: a bridge to Asia?, The Economist, 2012-09-08.

That's a billion-dollar bridge, with 4000 people at the other end, and no mines. I'm awed by the kafkaesque genius of it.

And now, back to the municipal election.

Strategic voting and the municipal election

Now that the list of candidates for the municipal election is out, your correspondent can finally make statistics from reality. And with actual opinion polls come the ability to vote strategically, at least in the race for council. Because voting is like horse races: a lot more fun if your pick actually wins.

First, let's see the results of the first opinion poll.

(Click on it for the full-size version.)

So what does all this mean?

First of all, Ken Latour is almost certainly getting re-elected. The low rank / high rank columns work like this: "low rank" is how low a candidate would place if s/he polls at the bottom of his/her confidence interval and everyone else polls at the top of theirs. So in this case we're showing Latour placing eighth or better, 19 times out of 20. That's how I get pretty confident that he'll still be here October 16.

I'm sure anyone who follows town politics is not at all surprised to see the next three names. Jameson, Jungkind and Mapes are big names; they're sure to get plenty of support on that basis alone. I would also count Vince McKay in that group. It's within the measurement uncertainty. What's more surprising is the bottom of the list. In this case we have the opposite of the Latour scenario: guys who would not get elected even if they poll the top of their confidence interval and everyone else polls the bottom of theirs. McPherson and St. John barely made it out of the "not getting elected 19 times out of 20" by the time the survey closed. But hey, this is statistics. There's always that 20th time out of 20 – and strategic voting. Candow and Coakwell are marginal. A best place of fourth 19 times out of 20 doesn't rule them out, but they're definitely coming from behind. I have never heard of Roger Candow before, but I'm surprised at Coakwell. I rather thought he'd be in the almost-sure-wins than in the almost-sure-losses.

Finally there are the six in the middle of the pack (seven if you count McKay, but I think he's in fifth), who are neither almost certainly in nor almost certainly out. But since five spots out of eight are already as good as taken, these six are looking at more or less 50/50 odds. So this is where most of your strategizing is going to take place.

The key thing to understand about voting for council is that you can vote for up to eight councillors. But you don't have to. If you vote for eight candidates, they all go up one point, obviously. That means the guys who started at the bottom stay at the bottom. In order for the dark horses to gain ground, you want to vote for as few as possible.

Consider the following. Say that you're BFFs with Candow, Coakwell, McPherson and/or St. John. Your guy doesn't have a lot of votes, so if you add on to the other guys' tallies, you're not doing your candidate any favours. You can vote for Latour, because he's strategically neutral: he's getting elected whether you vote for him or not. (Technically, that's not true. Some people need to actually vote for Latour rather than assuming he doesn't need their votes because he's got so many already.) And you can vote or not vote for the Big Four, as you see fit, because it's not likely they'll get voted off anyway, so that's not who's standing in your candidate's way. The main thing you want to avoid is voting for the six middle guys. Four of them need to lose in order for one of the bottom four to get in. So don't give them any help. Vote for your buddy and no one else.

Likewise if there is one of the middle six that you really really really want to see on council, don't vote for the other five. In the 2009 election, the difference between eighth place (Bernard Dueck) and tenth place (Rashna Bundan) was only 14 votes. How many of those 14 voters were really passionate about Dueck? If 14 more Bundan fans had left Dueck off their ballot, she could have been in council.

Ok, so far we've got:

a) Vote for Latour. Or don't. It won't make much difference. (To anything, really.)
b) Doesn't make much difference whether or not you vote for Jameson, Jungkind, Mapes and/or McKay, either.
c) If you really love one candidate out of the middle six or the bottom four, vote for ONLY THAT ONE out of the ten.

On the other hand, suppose there is someone you really really really DON'T WANT on council – and I'm sure we all know who you're thinking. In this case, you really want to fill your ballot. Because if you had been trying to keep Dueck out in 2009, and you picked only seven and didn't vote for Bundan or Gibb (who finished ninth only 13 votes behind Dueck), it's your fault he got in. Just sayin'. There was a good example in 2003, when only nine candidates ran of whom one was extremely unpopular. The expressed votes were higher than in the next three elections. The first eight candidates got from 939 to 1064 votes, which is very high (in 2009 Dueck got elected with less than half of that). The unpopular one got 298. So you see, you can keep the bad eggs out, if you really try. But because we have so many candidates this time, you want to pick the right eight – the ones most likely to finish ahead of the one you're blackballing. Hence the need for opinion polls, right? Because if this poll is representative of everyone's voting intentions, then you know which eight candidates are most likely to finish ahead of That One.

Where it gets complicated is if there are candidates you really really really want elected AND candidates you really really really don't want. Because the guys you put as filler to keep That One out might also boot one of your pet candidates, especially those candidates who are polling lower than That One. Conversely if you're picking filler from the bottom of the odds list, they might not get high enough to keep That One out.

I'll tell you what I think I'm gonna do – subject to change as the polls fluctuate. Obviously I'm voting for myself. Probably also Kandis Jameson, who will be in anyway and whom I like as a person (to the extent that I know her, which is admittedly not much). And I'm gonna vote for Coakwell, too. I wanted him gone when I thought he was gonna be way ahead of me, but since he's well behind in the polls, I'd actually rather like to have him on council with me. I'm not aware that we have any ideas in common, but then I'm not aware of any of his ideas. That's why I like him at his point: whether he does or does not have ideas, and whether I agree with them or not, at least he leaves room for others to speak.

So far, so good, but here's the thing: just like you, I want to keep someone out of the council. So do I vote for the Big Four plus one of the middle six, which would also work against Coakwell and possibly against me too, or do I leave it alone because a) I'd rather have me and Coakwell AND That One on council than none of the three and b) I trust the other voters' good sense?

It's a doozy of a pickle for sure. All I know so far is, I'm voting for me.

Kthxbai.

A common misconception

I'm smarter than I thought!

Facebook status: I notice one thing about my Conservative friends: you guys have never put forward ONE single rational argument to support your little tinpot dictator. All you do is laugh mindlessly at other people's ideas. Your political zombieism and reflexive deprecation of the outgroup is exactly what makes your party proto-fascist and our country the laughing stock of actual democracies. So next time you got nothing to say, don't feel obliged to say it to me - it makes me think less of you and that makes me sad.

Con 1: Wow you would make an excellent dictator.

Con 2: Hard to believe you want to be on council. You will assume everyone that thinks differently than you is an idiot.

Awesome!!!!

Here I thought I was just complaining about the way Cons laugh at you and figure that's a valid counter-argument, but it turns out my theory has predictive value! These comments are both mindless and reflexively deprecative, a heady mixture of red herring and ad hominem that does not in any way address my statement, and yet they apparently feel they've achieved some kind of superlative high ground. Hmmmmmm... That certainly explains why they voted Conservative.

For anyone else who would like to have an opinion but can't read big words, I'll translate my original status: it says "either back your opinion or don't share it with me."

Cons. It's not a coincidence we call them "Cons."

Those with loaded guns, and those who dig.

In the rich world, there are two kind of people at the receiving end of sexually-motivated violence: victims and survivors. The difference is easy enough to spot to the naked eye, but the fastest way to explain it is to look at the crisis intervention after an incident.

For those who have not had crisis intervention following an incident of sexually-motivated violence, it goes like this. You will explain at great length what happened, thinking the counsellor wants to hear all about. The counsellor will nod and pretend to take notes, and then he or she will ask something along the lines of "what could you do to prevent this happening again?"

This is when the survivors will choose to say "you know, that's a good point" and then start strategizing. Over the course of several incidents (and there will be several incidents over a person's life, unless they live in a friction-less vacuum under a rock on Mars), the survivor will develop a strategy that will greatly reduce the frequency of incidentts and the damage sustained in any incident. One might say this increases their "self-esteem" or more accurately, self-efficacy. But in reality, they can do this because they already have self-efficacy. They just need to apply it.

The victim, on the other, will respond with anger and something to the effect that "you're saying it's my fault." Of course the concept of "fault" is irrelevant outside of the insurance and civil law worlds. As the saying goes, "dysfunctional teams look for blame; functional teams look for solutions." The victim, however, will never accept this concept. This is exactly what makes him or her a victim. Whenever a victim is crossed, he blames someone and expects an apology. The apology will neither restore the victim nor prevent further incidents. Perhaps as a logical consequence, the apology does not satisfy the victim. While he may be pleased at first, he will retain the conviction that he was wronged, forever.

A friend of your correspondent's once went on vacation. At quitting time on his last day of work before the vacation, he left his personal protective equipment in the spot where he had been working. The next day, the foreman picked it up and put it away. On his return, the worker could not find his PPE. Rather than making inquiries, he went home, and then refused to go to work for ten days because "someone stole his PPE." The perfect victim mentality.


Once upon a time, your correspondent thought that as survivors choose to respond productively, so victims choose to respond counter-productively. Further observation of victims suggests that in fact they lack the ability to make a decision.

A person in your correspondent's life has a poor relationship with her mother. She asked her mother to participate in relationship counselling with her. The mother agreed and they attended a first session. The counsellor then asked to have a session with the daughter alone. The daughter freaked out because "he's blaming me when it's her fault", and refused to attend any further sessions. Ten years later, the same was still having relationship problems, this time with a man. Your long-suffering correspondent, having listened to endless such tales of woe, managed somehow to get the person to agree, rationally, that as she can only control herself and none other, it was pointless to make demands regarding another person's cognitions or behaviour. And having agreed that logically this is the case, the person then exclaimed "but they're wrong!!!!!" At this point your correspondent realized that somehow the victim brain is unable to process personal responsibility. Even though the victim can understand the rational argument and see its validity, the brain cannot internalize this knowledge and agree that this could be used to guide one's behaviour. And this is not so much a cognitive process as a limitation of the physical brain. A sort of brain damage, if you will. Literature such as On Being Certain (Robert A. Burton, 2009) supports this theory.

This is why, therefore, there are survivors and victims of sexually-motivated violence. Survivors can see that they control their behaviour and no one else's, and that therefore the only way to reduce incidents of sexually-motivated violence against themselves is to change their own behaviour. Victims physically cannot process this theory because something in their brain is lacking; probably something to do with the prefrontal cortex, which handles cause and effect, theory of mind, planning, and self-control. Thus victims are in fact victims long before they suffer any incident of sexually-motivated violence. They are victims because their brain, physically, is that of a victim, in the same way that addicts are addicts regardless of the presence or absence of a focus of addiction, because physically their brain is that of an addict.

The good news for victims of sexually-motivated violence is that the brain has a certain amount of plasticity and one can force the under-active prefrontal cortex to develop. The bad news is that, as in addicts, changing the prefrontal cortex requires first of all admitting one needs to change and that no external force will effect this change. Addicts overcome addiction strictly by their own effort, which begins with the assumption of responsibility. Likewise victims have to begin by assuming responsibility - the very thing they've always been unable to do.