Keith Colwell Nova Scotia legislature fight

If Percy Paris is so obsessed with who represents Preston then why didn't he just run for the Preston district himself in the last election? Oh yeah, it's because he knew he couldn't beat Keith Colwell in a straight up election - even in an NDP landslide.

If Percy Paris is so obsessed with who represents Preston then why doesn't he challenge Colwell for the seat in the next provincial election? Oh yeah, the same reason he wouldn't run against Colwell in the last election. Colwell is a good man who has beaten other good men like Bill Dooks for that seat. It would take a good man to win that seat off Colwell, hence Percy is no match.

Colwell would have been better to just take care of business straight up fight the bully Paris instead of calling the police.

In the news reports coming from the Paris camp on Thursday I haven't seen the race card played that often since the OJ trial. Instead of being a man and taking responsibility for his actions Paris is apparently trying erect some some race curtain to hide behind. and lol at Percy trying to represent himself as a model of restraint afterwards. your actions speak for themselves Percy.

At the very next opportunity Colwell should stand in the legislature, look Percy straight in the eye, pound on his desk, and shout out "I REPRESENT PRESTON". Don't back down Keith and don't be intimidated. The voters already decided who represents Preston and if Percy wants that role then let Percy do the honourable thing for once and challenge you in the Preston district of the people he claims to represent.

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edit: correct the name of Mr. Dooks

some possibly bad golf putting advice

I have a golf calendar at work. I got it from my uncle who owns a successful business installing auto glass. On the May entry it states the standard line about putting to "don't come up short". This is of course because all putts that land short of the hole will not go in, while any putt that at least reaches the hole may sink.

Now that seems fairly intuitive but it may not actually be true. This is because in order to always reach the hole, you need to pace your shot so that it plans to land a little bit past the hole. This is of so that if your shot doesn't go as far as planned then by being short of target it will still reach the cup. Also among strong players faster putts travel on a truer line and so tend to sink more often.

Consider the following situation. A golf pro and a casual player (handicap 15+) face a 12 foot putt. What strategy should be used. Now for the pro it's clear to be aggressive and attempt to hit it into the hole, aiming say 2 feet past the hole (so the putt reaches the hole and with enough speed). For the pro this strategy makes sense for a couple of reasons.

The pro's putts will mostly land within say a two foot radius of his target landing point. So if he misses the putt then he will still be in good shape on the next putt.

The pro can efficiently convert longer 4-7 foot second putts. So if say the pro is unlucky and his first putt lips out and ends up 6 feet away this isn't terrible as the 6 footer is very makeable for the pro. So the correct strategy for the pro is to be aggressive and make a strong putt with enough speed to land past the hole.


Now for the amateur things are different. The amateur is not able to control his landing radius as well so his radius is more like 3 feet and many, but still fewer, of his putts will land in this primary radius.

Also for the amateur being left with a second putt over 3 feet is a disaster as the amateur converts far fewer of these 4+ foot second putts.

From here we can see that it is possible that the correct strategy for the amateur may not be the same as the correct pro strategy. It is not difficult to devise a realistic circumstance where the amateur should aim at the cup, not past it, and accept coming up short half the time.

Consider this situation. An amateur is facing a 12 foot putt.

if he aims to land right at the hole

• 10% of the time he will be lucky and will sink the putt
• 80% of the time his second shot will be within 3 feet
• 10% of the time his second shot will be 4 feet or more

if he aims the putt a bit past the hole

• 20% of the time he will sink the putt
• 50% of the time his second shot will be within 3 feet
• 30% of the time his second shot will be 4 feet or more

in all cases this is his conversion efficiency on second putts

• within 3 feet he will convert 92% of the time and 3 putt 8% of the time
• from 4+ feet he will convert 24% of the time and 3 putt 76%

Plugging this into a simple spreadsheet we can see that the conservative strategy has an expectation of  2.04 putts. The aggressive pro strategy has an expectation of 2.07 putts (despite 1 putting twice as often). Thus the correct play is to ignore the tv pro advice and accept often coming up short.

The Gaiety Theatre

Ah where to start. Seems like we've been constantly bombarded with gay this, gay that, for how many years now. A break from having to hear about it would sure be nice.

Anyway same-sex marriage. I hadn't invested much time thinking about this subject. I guess by indifference I didn't care enough about it one way or the other to be against it. For some reason it occurred to me recently I realized that I am against it. Marriage is marriage is one male and one female and that's that. I'm not obligated to explain, justify or defend it. It's how I feel and I think I'm right.

Now if people choose to be in a same-sex relationship and live together, well that's their personal choice of course and it is not my concern. Realistically if they are living together as a couple then it seems proper they would receive benefits from work and such. So why deny actual marriage? I'll say it's for the good of society to keep marriage as traditionally defined. Thus I don't really feel to bad asking gays to suck it up and live with the disappointment and go without this marriage thing. It hardly matters anyway in Canada as the elites in power have made it the law and it's not going to be reopened. sigh, I just wish I didn't have to hear the drumbeat at least once every single day I turn on the radio or tv or open a newspaper.


Then that other thing. Trans washrooms or whatever. sigh, I heard the IWK put this in or something, our tax money at work. I'll have to remember that at telethon time. Anyway I'm also against these special washrooms. Boys go to boys washroom and girls go to girls washroom. A male is still a male regardless of how he thinks, dresses or acts. So suck it up and go to the boys bathroom.


Interestingly the more logical approach to the trans washrooms is to do what was done with marriage and throw it all wide open. So anyone can go to any bathroom of their choosing. Like marriage, do away with the concept of separate washrooms for men and women; no restrictions on gender. Funny I can't seem to think of a good argument against that. Still I will come out and say I'm also against eliminating gender specific washrooms.

Who knows maybe we will see it, and before you might expect. After all as recently as 1996 it was liberal Bill Clinton signed the Defence of Marriage Act; and up to late 2012 Obama was at least nominally against gay marriage. So who knows what's next on the agenda.

Halifax bars closing and demographics

In recent times few well known Halifax bars have closed. Pogue Fado shut down. Palace closed. Some other place called G Lounge I admit I'd never heard of closed.

Now bars will always come and go so maybe it is just statistical variance that three have closed in a short time. But maybe there's an underlying dynamic.

It's the next phase of the same problem faced in the education system. In the school system every single year for many years now there have been fewer grade primaries than the year before, and so on to fewer grade 12s each year for many years (well it started with the decline in primaries and around a decade later it was to the 12s). Now roll that forward into the key 19-24 demographic that is crucial to the downtown bar scene.

With fewer young partiers and a generally aging population there are just less customers to go around and some consolidation of the bar scene would be expected. Suppose Halifax can support say 1 downtown bar for every 5,000 19-24 yr olds. Then if there are say 50,000 of these then that would amount to about 10 downtown bars. If that declines to say 35,000 19-24 year olds then the market can support around 7 bars.

The boom in university enrolment, along with migration to Halifax from rural areas, papered over this trend of declining birth rate for a few years. But with the rural areas more depleted of young people to move to the city, and the decline in grade 12s now affecting university enrolment, then the trend of declining numbers of young people is now in Halifax as well.

events in the community

some random thoughts about all the front page news this week

first and foremost, in no circumstance do I accept any concept of shared or discounted responsibility for the people who choose to commit crime. the criminal, not the victim, is always fully responsible for his own actions and personal decisions. let me reemphasize that before even beginning

now that's out of the way, you won't be seeing me walking alone through Mulgrave park at 2 AM Sunday morning with my wallet out counting through the paper cash

• there's a reason the minimum drinking age in Nova Scotia is 19
• especially women, at house parties, be careful. many assaults are unplanned crimes of opportunity
• be aware and in control of the situation. don't be so intoxicated to be vulnerable or your safety relies on others who may be too drunk to look out for you
• at bars and house parties be very careful around people you don't know
• when drinking don't be alone with people you don't know or may not be able to trust
• be with and stay with a reliable friend(s) at parties and bars. don't become isolated, especially around people you don't know 
• without toxicology or rape kit physical evidence from the night it happened it would seem to be super tough to get a conviction
• probably a relevant precedent would be the Denver football rape case. if Cox was acquitted even after his friend turned and testified against him and the physical and circumstantial case, then I could see why they didn't proceed to trial in the Nova Scotia Parsons case
• a defence lawyer might have taken a similar tack, "we were drunk out of our minds. apparently we had sex. I don't remember." it's tough to establish no consent in that type of case. remember the burden of proof is on the accuser
• being drunk at the time greatly damages your ability to be a witness in a court case later on
• regarding Anonymous and naming names of the four boys. well the four cleared the criminal hurdle apparently. thus the only objection would seem to be privacy. well Rehtaeh's privacy was certainly violated and they were party to that. and it was them who took and caused to be distributed the notorious photo. thus they have no real privacy claim. especially considering the notorious picture was so widely distributed to be effectively public domain. thus I can't personally see any objection to anyone holding their names to go ahead and publish
• lots of tough talk on the internet these days. careful what you say. everything can be traced and you're responsible for it. don't start what you can't finish

Kill Decision by Daniel Suarez

I finished of another Daniel Suarez book. It was Kill Decision. It was pretty good. I was motivated to read another Suarez title after enjoying the Daemon series.

In the story an American ant researcher McKinney in Africa narrowly escapes a drone attack in the middle of the night. She's saved by a shadowy operative named Odin and his very well trained special forces style group. There have been sporadic drone attacks across the United States and Odin says he is on a mission to track their source after saving Professor McKinney. The liberal, peace activist academic McKinney turns out to be important to the emerging "drone war" because of her research and software model on weaver ants turns out to be applicable on a larger scale with drones.

As usual with Suarez it's a bit hard to figure out who are the good and bad guys. The US government and its heavy reliance on private contractors whose loyalty is to profit, I couldn't really tell if Odin and his team were trustworthy.

Suarez in his style takes some emerging trends such as drones and autonomous software agents and moves it forward in a compelling near future science fiction. He sees drones becoming smaller, around the size of lawnmowers or dolphins. Manufactured in large numbers from off the shelf components, suddenly nations like China can undermine US technology and military economic supremacy and upset the geopolitical balance.

It was a good story. It takes a while to get untracked. The author finishes strong in the last 100 pages or so. I think the biggest knock is that it was so hard to follow up to the Daemon which was so good. Although Suarez doesn't do as good a job of developing the characters. I found them cardboard, lacking dimension, and I just didn't connect with or care about them all that much. I kept hoping Mosely, the Major, Loki or the Daemon itself would make an appearance and liven things up and bring the characters to life. My favourite characters were the ravens Huginn and Muninn.

Still it was a good book and worth reading. The stuff about drones makes you think. His observations on possible implications of drones in naval warfare was quite interesting