Dan Grice's blog

Contest expected to be a close, three-way race

Vancouver, B.C. (September 22, 2008) - Dan Grice, the Green Party of Canada's candidate in Vancouver-Quadra, and his team have broken ground by launching the Green Party's first campaign office in Vancouver-Quadra, in a high-traffic area of Vancouver's Dunbar neighbourhood, close to the University of British Columbia.

"We are thrilled to open our Green campaign headquarters up the hill from the Conservatives and Liberals," said Grice. "Our office is just up the road on West 16th Avenue, so you could say that the Greens are taking the high ground in this campaign. The location and choice of neighbourhood is a clear signal of our intentions to win in Vancouver-Quadra."

The writ should be dropped this week for an October 14th election.

We were supposed to have an election next year, it was one of the hallmark's of the Conservatives Accountability Act which took away the government's ability to manipulate the vote.

For me, this will be a tough go. Around four months of this year will be spent in an election, and the wait over the by-election was even longer.

I know my efforts have resulted in change, as both the Liberals and the NDP reworked their environmental plans almost immediately after the by-election, and I hope to push fixing our democracy in this general election and make head ways on that front.

The Conservatives cut funding for the Telefilm New Media Fund!

This news is horrible, the New Media fund helped drive Vancouver, Toronto, and Montreal's tech community which brings in billions of revenue.

For new game producers and interactive designers such as myself, this gave us opportunity into a market that can be very variable.

Most of this fund was to secure productions and distribution loans to companies to match up to 50% of private funds.

The disappointing thing is that this was one of the few media funds that was disconnected from the TV networks. Most other funders, such as the Bell fund, require producers to have a tv distribution contract and as such made innovation difficult.

Utah, perhaps one of the most Republican districts in the US, just announced that they are moving from a 5 day week to a 4 day week.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-06-30-four-day_N.htm

It seems like a no brainer, our society cannot afford to spend 5 days a week in traffic.

One less day of mandatory commuting could save the average driver nearly 20% and would allow governments and businesses to have equal savings in reduced energy demand from having offices heated or air conditioned.

Less energy usage. More time for families and leisures. Why not?

Don't get me wrong, Michael Phelps is an amazing swimmer. He and his space age LZR Speedo Swim suit are blowing away records and opponents in the pool.

Yet, something is disappointing about the whole act. Olympic swimmers receive twice as many medals as nearly any other sport, and each winning swimmer tends to walk away with medals in pairs.

In Olympic swimming, for each type of swim, whether it is for the butterfly, backstroke, breaststroke, there is both a 100m and a 200m race. Unlike other sports, there is really not much difference in skill between these two distances except for a small bit of endurance. Yes, the competitors slow slightly in the final laps, but the winner of the 100m is nearly always the winner of the 200. In Beijing, like Athens, Sydney and others, it is very rare that the athlete who wins a 100m fails to win a 200m. Each winning swimmer gets to walk away with at least two medals.