rwmtest

Saturday 21 September 2019 is Software Freedom Day . I would like to thank Richard Stallman for his leadership in bringing Software Freedom from a simple logical idea to the reality Free Software is within the software ecosystem today. I am saddened by his recent resignations .  In his words it was "over a series of misunderstandings and mischaracterizations". RMS has characterized himself as "borderline autistic". I believe that while I am near that border, he exhibits far more traits.  My only hope is that we will eventually have a future where the celebration of diversity includes neurodiversity, and there will no longer be so much anger from some communities directed toward us.

While the 18to8 campaign might be seen as humorous by some, there are reasons to be giving serious thought to the variety of ages that younger people are allowed to join adulthood. A few examples: On 1 May 2008, the age of consent in Canada was raised from 14 to 16. In Ontario you can apply for a G drivers license at 16. Voting age is 18 Drinking age is 19 in most of Canada, 18 in Alberta, Manitoba and Quebec There is a huge benefit to society for young people to feel involved and responsible in decisions about their lives, so being involved in politics early seems obvious.  Of all these activities, the age one can vote should be lowest. I don't understand the logic of increasing the age of consent from 14, and it seems quite arbitrary. At least there are some closeness in age exceptions, but this suggest there are predatory issues against younger people that should be made more general rather than this odd fixation some people have on genital sex. A 20+ year old person scamming

Personally I vote based on which person can best represent me in parliament.  While their party affiliation might make it harder for them to do that, my voting for them should never be misinterpreted as an endorsement of their party.  Having participated in and monitored committees and monitoring parliament over the years, I've observed that party affiliation is a poor indicator of where an MP stands on the policy proposals that I will be advocating around. At the dissolution of the 42nd parliament , there were 6 parties which had at least 1 MP associated with them (The CCF is not a registered political party , so Erin Weir  makes that 9 independents).  I'm going to divide the parties into pairs of parties on the right, middle, and left in the political spectrum. Right-wing parties and leadership Those of us who participated in the 2017 Conservative Leadership election  will already have formed their opinion on Andrew Scheer who won that election, and Maxime Bernier who was in