Tonight’s (Sept. 10, 2007) Eastern School District meeting is at 7:00 p.m. at Prince Street School. The District has a commendable policy of meeting in a different school every time they meet.

The Overall Nutritional Quality Index is described as an:

…algorithm designed to generate a single, summative score for the “overall nutritional quality” of a food based on it’s micronutrient and macronutrient composition and several other of its nutritional properties

The idea is that all foods get assigned one simple number, from 1 to 100, that gives you an idea of how “good” they are for you. On this list of sample rankings, mustard greens, fresh strawberries, and raw spinach get a score of 100, while taffy and regular soda get a score of 1.

There’s a nice photo-spread in the September 2008 National Geographic (which you can read if you get your hair cut at Ray’s Place).

I had cause to visit a friend in a Charlottetown apartment building this morning, and passed by this tenant bulletin board on the way in. Wow, that’s a lot of rules. It’s worth noting that the “security feature” of the building wasn’t working at all: the front door was open and I walked right in.

Using the same information filed with Elections Canada that I used to summarize the candidates’ revenue and expenses, I’ve prepared a spreadsheet showing contributions by individuals and corporations to the 2006 Federal Election campaign. I’ve sorted the sheet in decreasing order of contribution, and colour-coded it by party.

Using the information filed with Elections Canada, I created a simplified spreadsheet showing revenue and expenses for candidates in the 2006 Federal Election in the Charlottetown district. I omitted the Marijuana Party candidate, as they had neither revenue nor expenses. The bottom line is that, combined, candidates spent $135,162 on their campaigns. You can view the entire spreadsheet here.

Hot - Charlottetown candidate Tom Deblois, for shaving off his beard. Party operatives tried to get him to do it for the last election, but he thought it disingenuous. Now all they need to do is shoot a new official photo: the current one has him looking, literally, like a deer caught in headlights.

Not - Conservative leader Stephen Harper, for his shallow explanations as to why his party refuses to allow the Green Party into the televised debates — “She is his candidate in Central Nova, and I think it would be fundamentally unfair to have two candidates who are essentially running on the same platform in the debate.”

Not - The consortium of Canadian television networks for agreeing to cave to the Harper Conservatives (and the Layton NDP, more passively) and hold the debates without the Green Party. The Green Party has met all reasonable conditions for participation in the debates: the networks should have held their ground. Extra demerit points for the CBC’s paucity of coverage on this issue: The National’s story on the issue last night included a 5 second video clip with a representative of the consortium and excerpts from a their printed release.

Hot - The Liberal Party for taking a risk that Canadians are intelligent enough to understand their carbon tax plan. And it’s a big risk, as Canadians may actually not be intelligent enough to understand their carbon tax plan.

Not - The Conservative Party for running crass television commercials that assume that Canadians are stupid and will easily fall prey to exagerated scare tactics about the Liberal carbon tax.

How do you say “no longer owned by Tim Banks” without actually saying so?

With a Canadian federal election called for October 14th, and US elections on November 4th, as a dual-national my autumn will be rich with democratic expression.

The US half of me votes in Monroe County, NY, which is the county where I last resided in the US (in 1966, no less). I’m in the 28th Congressional district, the 56th Senate district, the 133rd Assembly district, the 27th Legislative district and City Council Ward S. On my ballot I’ll be voting for:

• President
• Federal Congressional Representative
• State Senator
• Member of the State Assembly
• County Court Judge
• Family Court Judge
• County Clerk
• County Legislator

Federal Senators in the US are elected to 6-year terms, and neither of the current Senators, Hillary Clinton and Chuck Schumer, are up for re-election this fall.

My Canadian half, in the Charlottetown electoral district, will only have one choice to make, for Member of Parliament.

Peter Gzowski interviews John Candy on Morningside in 1991.

Catherine got the keys to her “new” studio space this afternoon — it’s “new” only in the sense that she hasn’t occupied it since 1995 when she last moved out. Before Catherine’s first term, it was Lester O’Donnell’s law office for a long, long time . There are signs of its heritage all over the place; the one I like best is the key to the washroom down the hall, hanging on a hook near the entrance: