More Election Stuff ....

Ok, apparently in my last post I made it sound like less then half of all eligible voters voted in the last federal elections but the rate was just over %58, which is still the lowest on record and apparently has been declining since peaking in the 80's.

What could account for this? Fragmentation via too many federal candidates to vote for? Shifts in demographics such as age and ethnicity?

Well, I did hear one younger female on CBC Newsworld indicate she doesn't follow nor understand politics. I thought two things: One, you can't not not know something about politics. And two, it seems that many of our elected officials don't know politics that well either.

Apathy and 'I don't have time' seem to rule the non-voting roost. Maybe we need to make voting mandatory, but if we are going to police voting then we need to make it as easy as possible as we say in PR, set up a secure website were people can vote online 24-7. How about something in the form of a computer kiosk touch screen setup in malls that people can vote at?

The last municipal election, My wife and waited in line for a ridiculous amount of time. So, take a lesson politicians, advanced polls are fine, but enough information can be fed into a computer with the right precautions to allow people to vote from home if they so wish.

Dude, where's my coalition?

Ahh, spring is here. Flowers are going to be a blooming and a federal election is upon us.

Well, at least the weather should be stable ... or not.

I love the rhetoric that is being tossed around. Harper's Conservatives are all about a Liberal, NDP, and Bloc coalition, coalition, coalition! Forgetting that back in 2004 Harper spearheaded his on little coalition which helped propel him to where he is now.

The bigger issue for me personally is that voter turnout was less then %50 the last federal election.

If citizens are a little fed up about having an election every three years and a minority government, then get out and vote.

The old saying there is power in numbers could never be more true and more needed for the future of democracy in Canada at this point. So if you don't like the terms prorogue, coalition, and minority government, do something about it.

Twister Blu-Ray Disc Review

Oh yeah the 90's. Vanilla Ice, spandex shorts, scrunches, and the movie Twister from 1994. Oh dear, I just dated myself nicely.

My darling wife bought me Twister on Blu-Ray and after watching it I was thoroughly impressed.

I remember having a copy on VHS and then the original DVD release and I will say that the VHS version was great, while the DVD version wasn't that much an improvement overall (see one of my previous posts) but the Blu-Ray is great.

Picture: Very clear with very little grain or issues associated with the analog source material. Colors are very good throughout for the most part. For example, because a majority of the film takes place outside, there is a lot of green which is quite vibrant. There were a few times though where I felt some colors were just a little bit on the flat side, but gorgeous black levels help make up for that.

Sound: A DolbyTrueHD 5.1 track will wow you. In the first act, where Joe's dad gets pulled out of the tornado shelter, the sound of wind howling and pounding fills the surround channels nicely and this holds true for all the scenes where the cast is chasing twisters. The soundtrack comes through nicely whether it is the orchestral score or songs from the 90's (pick it up, it's great!) and dialogue is crisp and clear with no need to do to much cranking between Bill Paxton yelling 'hold on' several times or quieter conversations between a few characters.

There are a lot of bonus features to choose form which round the disc out nicely if you are into that sort of thing.

Picture: 4 out of 5

Sound: 4.5 out of 5

Got Federal Budget?

Ok, Jim Flaherty says the budget is sensible and doesn't raise taxes. Hmm, it seems that in order to pay for new prisons, longer prison terms for inmates, and new fighter planes to replace the aging CF-18's, we need to raise taxes.

Kevin Page, the Parliamentary Budget Officer, says the Conservatives have not provided him accurate numbers on how much the aforementioned programs will cost.

Before anyone blows a gasket, I understand that when you are dealing with large capital expenditures, you will inevitably get some cost overruns. But when the cost overruns get into the tens to hundreds of millions of dollars, we would be remiss to not question the math.

Surprise, surprise, the opposition parties don't support the budget. Were it not for the Conservatives contempt of parliament putting blood in the political waters, I don't think the opposition parties would be chomping at the bit to send Canadians to the polls come this May as is currently projected.

I would love to sit in on a meeting where hundreds of millions to billions of dollars in government spending/contracts is being worked out or negotiated. Just to be able to write out so many zeroes and say 'Oh yeah, this will only cost exactly a billion dollars!'

A Whole Lot of Blu-Ray Disc Reviews

Some time ago I bought a handful of Blu-Ray Discs on Boxing Day. Oh God, at five dollars a piece I had way to many in my hands and had to put some down.

I guess I didn't do a review at the time because most of the titles are just the movies with no special features, which explains the cheap price.

The five dollar titles are: Trainspotting, 21 Grams, Cold Mountain, The Negotiator, The English Patient, the aforementioned had no bonus features, The Negotiator, with some bonus features, and I also picked up Batman Begins at $10 and The Hurt Locker at $20.

Let me tell you, Batman Begins is hands down won of the best looking and best sounding Blu-Ray Discs I have ever purchased or rented. The Hurt Locker is pretty darn good as well and so it should be only being released a couple years ago, and Batman Begins was originally released in 2005 at the end of DVD's solo reign.

The Negotiator is a great Blu-Ray as well. The other Blu-Rays mentioned are all pre hi-definition by a few to several years or so with the exception of 21 Grams. I found that the sound varied on all of them from good to great, but not excellent. The picture looks great in some scenes, the color good in some scenes, but washed out in others. Grain and dust seem to be a problem in many of these Blu-Rays which leads me to the rant I will end with on this blog entry.

When DVD was first released in the late 90's, many people complained that the picture and sound were not any better then the VHS copy they already owned. This is the same issue we have with Blu-Rays, early adopters basically got a high-def version of the DVD they already owned, and in some cases without a hi-definition transfer that addressed any of the aforementioned issues with the original source materials, which are even more glaring in hi-def.

I don't know about you, but I refuse to pay upwards of $30 for a Blu-Ray that hasn't been remastered in hi-definition, for the amount of money you pay, you should be getting pristine picture and the best quality sound possible. Listen up Hollywood!

Would you like tomatoes with that?

I was in Wendy's and I had to ask if I wanted tomatoes on my sandwich, uhh greasy goodness burger. I later learned that there is a huge shortage of tomatoes worldwide and prices have skyrocketed.

You often hear about a crop failure in some other part of the world or even at home, and the inevitable price increases that accompany said crop failures, but rarely is it so viscerally in your face as it was when I was at Wendy's.

The price of tomatoes in the supermarket are way higher then I can ever remember along with Romaine Lettuce.

Imagine what this increase in the price of staples means to someone just getting by in a third world country. The enclosure and commodification of necessities (OK, the burger I had at Wendy's is less of a necessity given the nutritional value) is the reason why people are going hungry, exasperated by rising fuel prices and crop failures.

I think we need to release some land back to the community. A commons if you will, where vegetables and fruits can be grown by the people who will work out who gets what. I mention this because if tomatoes remain as expensive as they are, I should reconnect with the Earth and plant some of my own.

Random Thoughts ....

I often have random thoughts about things and I recently thought about time.

Specifically since I have become a parent and noticed a drastic reduction in alone time. This seems obvious, but in wake of both men and women entering in the workforce over the last 40 years or so, there seems to be a rise in complaints about the lack of time to either get things done and/or to have time to yourself or with someone else.

Time garners some of the truest cliches of all. If something is important we make the time for example. Well, be that as it may, in reality between, school, work, and parenting, it is hard to find time to eat in some cases.

My mother didn't work, and raised three boys while my dad worked feverishly. My older brother isn't working and is home with his son while his wife works because that makes the most sense for their individual situation. Perhaps the cluttered work schedules people have is at least partially correlated to the drop in income that the middle and lower classes have been seeing over the years, which necessitates more time for work, but that is another topic onto itself.

I guess my point is that if we want more time to be alone, with others, work, play, and raise children, something has to give. I say it doesn't take a village to raise a child. It takes the village time to raise a child while doing other things.