Jocelyn McLean's POLI333 Blog

I can’t believe I haven’t used this platform to promote this project yet. WARNING: this is a little bit of “self”-promotion.

A few years ago, when my grandparents passed away, my brother decided to start interviewing family members about their perspectives on family, and parenthood in particular. What started as a series of interviews within the family quickly branched into interviews outside the family, with his friends and coworkers. Eventually, he got the idea to transcribe these interviews and create a blog (with permission of the interviewees, of course) featuring people’s stories about their parents. OfOurParents.com was the result. WARNING: some of the articles contain swearing, and some may contain distressing information.

Truly and genuinely, even if my brother wasn’t the creator of this website, I believe this is an amazing project. The people my brother have interviewed have sent him e-mails thanking them for the experience, describing it as cathartic. The most recent interview is an example of this. It is incredibly moving, and also difficult to read.

I know most people in this class are political science students, but I think there may be some Sociology majors (like me) or minors in the class. This may be of particular interest to you, as it is in a way a qualitative sociological study of family and parenthood.

Please, check it out, and if you are at all interested in participating in the project (either with an interview or even by conducting your own interview), feel free to e-mail my brother at the contact information provided on the website.

In catching up on people’s posts from the last few weeks, I have to say I always enjoy the “Democracy in the News” posts by Amanda. Her commentary always offers a lot of insight into the context of the situation being discussed – something that even the news reports themselves fail to do frequently.

This post about presidential elections in Egypt, and the requirement for all candidates to be Egyptian citizens, is an example of her strong writing. She manages to convey both the point of the article, the importance of it, and her views in a clear and concise way.

One of the most interesting new developments in the field of democracy studies is the increasing influence of technology. This is often discussed in the context of social media and its impact on political movements and revolution, as discussed in this post I wrote on Digital Democracy. Another influence of technology – a particularly dangerous one – is the potential for hacking.

While Canada still resorts to the good, old-fashioned ballot voting system, many states in the US use an electronic voting system. Apparently, a few years ago, Washington introduced a new electronic voting system, and sought to demonstrate its effectiveness by holding a mock school board election. They even challenged people to break through it’s state-of-the-art security features without repercussions.

A professor from the University of Michigan and two of his students accepted this challenge and managed to gain control of most of the system within 48 years old, changing the results so that “Bender” (from the TV show Futurama) won with 100% of the vote. It apparently took administrators more than two days to even realize there was an intrusion.

While I’m not sure why this story is being released now, it remains pertinent to the issue. There are undeniable benefits to an electronic voting system. It would allow results to be determined basically immediately. It may increase voter turnout by facilitating the voting process. It would virtually eliminate spoiled ballots, and would (theoretically) eliminate human error from the ballot-counting process.

That being said, paper ballots can’t be hacked. And at the end of the day, as sophisticated as technology may be, it will always be created by a programmer who shares the same wealth of information (or less) as another programmer, or hacker, elsewhere in the world.

I am sure most people in this class are Canucks fans, and likely die-hards – and most of you likely hate the Leafs, as well. As I confessed (terrifyingly) at the beginning of the semester, I was born outside of Toronto and was born and raised a Leafs fan.

This post isn’t about the Leafs.

It’s about Brian Burke, the GM for the Leafs. In 2010, Burke’s openly gay son Brendan died in a car accident. Brian Burke has been vocal about his support for the gay community, and has marched in the Toronto Pride Parades that have occurred since Brendan’s death.

About a month ago, Burke and his other son, Patrick, launched the “You Can Play” campaign, which aims to end homophobia in hockey and – let’s up – professional sports in general. You can watch one of the first campaign videos here.

Recently, the government of Canada announced that they are scrapping the Rights and Democracy agency (or, for googling purposes, better known as The International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development). According to the website, the agency was created in 1988 “to encourage and support the universal values of human rights and the promotion of democratic institutions and practices around the world” (source). This was interesting timing for the agency’s creation, as it was right towards the end of the Cold War and the Western powers’ fight against communism.

CBC outlines the turmoil that arose within the agency in 2010, when government-appointed board members challenged the funding of three human rights organizations because they were anti-Israel.

The controversy stems an interesting conversation about the supposedly non-partisan nature of the agency. Traditionally, non-partisan has been associated with intra-national politics. With increasing internationalization, countries are faced with the challenge of maintaining this non-partisan stance on a global level.

While the government says it will simply absorb the work of the agency into other departments, it will be interesting to see whether or not Canada’s role changes within international politics.

It’s been a big month for Canadian money. There’s been the introduction of the new 50% bill. Although the 100$ bill has been out for awhile, I haven’t seen one yet. Has anyone else heard the rumour that it smells like maple syrup”? Is it possible that one person spilled some maple syrup on their money and this moment began the entire rumour?

The elimination of the penny is news I welcome with open arms. I’ve been ready for this since working customer service in high school, and being responsible for count out and roll those pointless coins. 50 coins, 50 cents. What’s the point? Some people have apparently been confused about how this process will work. A friend of mine posted a helpful tool on Facebook that I thought I would share:

Seems pretty sensible to me. And with that, I leave you with the following (seemingly unsynchronized) clip of the West Wing.

EDIT: Because I can’t seem to embed YouTube videos with this WordPress theme, you can watch the video HERE.