by Chris Billowsin Political Ponderings2 comments
About four weeks ago, I was invited to a private dinner party with some old political associates and friends I made during my years with the Green Party. The guest of honor was former Leader of the Green Party of Ontario, Frank de Jong. Also present was former and present Green Party of Manitoba Leaders, Markus Buchart and James Beddome. The dinner and discussion was enjoyable. I have not had the opportunity for many years to interface with others related to politics and economics. I came away impressed with my discussions with Frank de Jong. Talking with Frank, one is immediately impressed with a person who is smart, friendly, speaks with integrity, and humble. He talked about his decision to resign as GPO leader because he saw the need to bring in fresh blood and perspective. The GPO suffered a loss of votes under the new leaders but Frank feels it has more to do with particular election contest than about any personal issues with the existing leadership. I personally disagree with him, because leadership and personality is how voters relate to most political parties but I appreciated his humility. One of the questions that he answered was something that […]
by Chris Billowsin Hobby Heedings0 comments
A year ago I posted about my second year of listening enjoyment on iTunes. Another year has come and gone and my iPod Touch has become how I listen to 90% of my music. I continue to enjoy the organizing of my music library and savor the anticipation of artists waiting in my queue. I use two different programs to run the statistics. The most polished one is called SuperAnalzyer and it creates some wonderful statistics and graphs. SuperAnalzyer PDF Document The other program is a fabulous little script written by Scott Yanff. Thanks Scott for updating it with some new reporting goodies. iTunes Statistics Text Document These statistics were taken late December 26, 2011 of my personal library. It is a snapshot of a year of iTunes use and listening. After listening to a song a couple of times I will assign a rating to it. Some changes of note: 21,108 songs has grown to 25,717 songs with over 4,600 songs being added to the library. 1,737 artists has grown to 2,238 artists 1,341 albums has grown to 1,710 albums I have over 25,000 songs and I have listened to 44% of them at least once. Last year I […]
by Chris Billowsin Jets Flight Control0 commentstags: Jets Logo
So, the Jets have finally returned… they played their first regular season game yesterday vs the oldest and most successful NHL franchise, the Montreal Canadiens. It was fifteen years of planning and waiting. While the Jets lost, it was still excellent hockey and an enjoyable game. Well, I have come around to accepting the Jets name since True North did not pick the Mosquitoes name like I wanted them to. But the biggest reason why I like Jets 2.0 is because of the new logo and what is symbolizes. I really like it because it is very classic era. It borrows from the same kind of assumed imagery as the Red Wings, Canadiens, Bruins, and Blackhawks. All of these logos do not have their city name pasted on them. The symbol is expected to say it all just as you know that the Red Wings symbol stood for Detroit. It implies knowledge. The Jets 2.0 logo follows that tradition and I commend it. This means it stays away from the recent NHL cartoon logos that have been fun, but have lowered the cache and majesty of the NHL in the past two decades such as the Panthers, Lightning, Blue Jackets, […]
by Chris Billowsin Business Beller0 comments
As I alluded to in my New Years address, I was going to become more busy with some website launches. Well, that ‘some’ has become ‘many’ thanks to an obsessive pastime I have had this year. That pastime is named Flippa.com. When I found Flippa, I was stoked. I quickly realized it to be the channel where I could direct my multitude of interests in business, media, and starting a business sideline. I found my investment with Complex Games not moving along as fast as I wanted so jumped right into the world of website buying. Flippa.com as a website and as a marketplace is attractively designed and very functional. It superior to eBay in both features and the quality of the listings. Flippa,com is like a well run computing machine. In July 2010 I purchased my first website, a Flash Arcade. I then purchased a second website, a Persistent Browser Based Game and between these two sites I started generating some money! I could not believe it. These websites were established, had traffic, and a revenue record. I quickly thought it should become possible to develop a sideline that I could expand into a full time job. In January […]
by Chris Billowsin Jets Flight Control0 commentstags: Humor
I grew up being a Winnipeg NHL hockey fan. I ceased to be one when the Winnipeg Jets left in 1996. I never became a fan of the Manitoba Moose, just because I never found the level of hockey to be too exciting and cheering for a team that had its best players called up to the majors did not appeal to me. So, I am pleased that Winnipeg and Manitoba is getting the Atlanta Thrashers franchise. The fact that season tickets sold out and a wait list was created really demonstrates that Manitoba is pretty hungry for NHL hockey. There is lots of opinion that they will be called the Jets, possibly the Manitoba Jets to create a separation from the old franchise. Personally, I say let the Jets name go. I was a Winnipeg NHL fan, but thought that the Jets stunk. From 1979 to 1996 they posted a pathetic 0.378 winning record. While they had some exciting players, they were haunted by a culture of mediocrity. It continues to this day with the team in Phoenix. So, I say we rename the team to something fresh and unique. Something that captures some defining element of Manitoba, namely […]
by Chris Billowsin Political Ponderings0 comments
So in following up on the obvious and newsworthy events arising out of the 2011 Federal Election, I am following up with a list of more subtle, interesting, or amusing events. First, despite all of the pro-democracy people talking about how the people have spoken I will think of it as a bit of a sham. It is not rule by the people. It is rule by a minority of the people. We can see this thanks to the Historical Voter Turnout report by Andrew Heard. It appears that Canadians turned out in greater numbers this election reversing a downward trend. This demonstrates a desire for change and an appeal to a positive image by NDP Leader Jack Layton, but I will be surprised if this reversal is permanent and we see rising voter turnout. Elections Canada has bent over backwards to make voting more accessible to people, but tweaking the mechanics of voting will not fix the fundamentals of what we are voting for. Unless political parties change their purpose, Canadians will continue to stay away from voting in greater numbers. Canadians do not vote because of the steady predominance of parties and policies over leaders and inspired action. […]
by Chris Billowsin Political Ponderings1 comments
The 2011 Election was worthy of note because it created so many new endings. Lots changed on May 2. Yet, some things didn’t. Despite the best polling and computer simulations, nobody predicted that Stephen Harper would end up with a Majority Government. Early on in the CTV Election Coverage, their computer statistics expert claimed that there was only a 10% chance the Conservatives would win a majority government. They were wrong and its because they make a fundamental mistake in understanding our electoral system. Each electoral district is its own election. We vote at the same time, but we don’t vote together. So that’s why it does not really matter whether there are national trends because those trends don’t carry over to each riding perfectly. In each riding there is a unique dynamic of vote splitting, strategic voting, and democratic culture that cannot be easily predicted. This is what allowed the Conservatives to win a majority despite winning less than 40% of the popular vote. Its how our system works. It appears to be unfair, yet I think those who complain about it are not going to find any satisfaction soon. This election marked the end of fair vote movement […]
by Chris Billowsin Mental Mischief0 comments
Life is full of choices at times. Sometimes we feel as if we have no choice because we are forced to do something. But generally, most societies do allow some degree of choice. In the West, choice is directly tied to the concept of human rights. Now the quality of our choices is pretty diverse. There are Easy Choices, Hard to See Choices, and Hard to Choose Choices. The Easy Choices are those that have clear consequences. A good choice would be something that creates a positive outcome while a bad choice would create a negative outcome. Few people would intentionally make choices that have negative consequences for themselves. The Hard to See Choices are those that have long term consequences that we are unaware of. The nuclear disaster in Japan is a great example of this. Because human beings are so predisposed to thinking short term, they are guilty of making short term choices and ignore the long term consequences. If the company officials did a long term evaluation of building nuclear plants near oceans and fault lines, perhaps they would not have proceeded as they did. Maybe they still would have, believing the long term risk is not […]
by Chris Billowsin Spirit Speculations0 comments
I have come across a series of books influenced by Carl Jung and it has me looking differently at personality and who we are. Carl Jung adopted the notion that there are layers to our personality. Perhaps if you asked him the question ‘Who Are You?’ he would have responded that we are complicated and have layers, like an onion. The first layer is the public persona that represents all of the material things associated with us such as our titles, our possessions, our associations, and our accomplishments. This stuff is always being accumulated or lost or moved around. Its the crassest level of who ‘you’ are. The layer below that is the private persona that is the collection of physical, sociological, psychological, and metaphysical elements that create your time/space perspective. This layer guides your way of interacting with the world, but is also dynamically changing. Its the personality level of who ‘you’ are. But there is also the level below known as the psyche level which is even more fluid and subtle. At this layer of who ‘you’ are we would find feelings, emotions, intuitions, reactions that you experience but generally cannot articulate. It is all very gut-level feeling. […]
by Chris Billowsin Spirit Speculations0 comments
I have worked in health care for the past fifteen years. I have seen at least over a thousand clients and as a professional case manager, my job is to help facilitate a portion of their care. It recently occurred to me that despite the vast array and variety of diseases, accidents, and disabilities these individuals may have what appears to be five general / macro methods that sickness and disability is visited upon us. 1) We are born with it through our genetics such as Muscular Dystrophy, Cystic Fibrosis, etc. 2) We suffer an unfortunate physical event such an Accident, Assault, or Attack. It could be a car accident, an injury suffered at birth like Cerebral Palsy, or we could be attacked and injured by a mugger. 3) We suffer a random or complex microbe event that attacks us such as Bacteria, Virus, or Spore. 4) We suffer from a confused immunity system such as Rheumatoid Arthritis, Cancer, or Lupus. 5) We self inflict our own unhappiness and injury such as through a failed suicide attempt, alcoholism, smoking, etc. So what is the point of sharing something so depressing? I am not sure, but it just seemed interesting to […]
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