Therefore be it resolved that the Saskatchewan Urban Municipalities Association advocate the Government of Saskatchewan to adequately fund the public library system to keep pace with inflation, and ensure that both large and small community libraries can meet the programming and educational needs that are an integral part of library programming and services for their communities; and
Be it further resolved that the Saskatchewan Urban Municipalities Association participate fully in any government review, advocating for improved services and adequate funding for the development of a long-term strategy for the future of Saskatchewan libraries that includes engaging the library community, municipalities, and the public to ensure support for our community library services, SILS, and programming for all ages and patrons regardless of socio-economic status.
Ryan Meili has just released the above video which captures a powerful message about his campaign and what he wants to bring (back) to the province – the NDP’s ability to tell stories that resonate with people.
There are a lot of ways to indicate who has momentum in a leadership race – some more valid than others.
For example, if someone takes the time to watch and engage with a candidate’s social media content, that’s a tangible demonstration of interest in what a candidate has to say. If people open their wallets and donate, that’s a good indication they support a candidate in a very real way. And if you have large numbers of people doing both things, you probably have a lot of momentum.
There are less valid ways to measure momentum (“nomentum”?) – for example, releasing polls without explaining the methodology or the margin of error or even worse, designing the poll to give a candidate the result they want.
Beyond that, polls are notoriously unreliable and getting more unreliable all the time – from Calgary to the UK to Washington DC. There are all kinds of reasons for that but sometimes it comes down to (hypothetically) some middle-aged dude getting a robo-call from a candidate they don’t support and answering that they’re an “18-35 undecided female” so that their true support doesn’t show up when the poll results are released. You get enough people doing that to mess with polling data (or supporters of one candidate hanging up when they hear its a call from another candidate or whatever) and the results become the definition of unreliable.
Because of that, I thought I’d do an analysis of some of the numbers that are out there that do a good job of indicating the real world support for each of the two candidates running for the Leadership of the Sask NDP.
It’s a different race with different dynamics today. But the message that these types of very real metrics send are clear indicators of who, to tie it back to Ryan’s latest video, is telling the best story – the story that people are interested in, the story that people want to engage with, the story that people are excited to hear and want to support.
To be blunt, given what happened in 2013, I firmly believe that the party ignores these metrics at their peril this time around. 🙁
Technically, a better husband would do a better blog post for his wife on their 15th wedding anniversary.
But since this is the anniversary of us doing the legal paperwork in jeans in our living room in Calgary while the anniversary of the day we had our wedding ceremony on the beach in Mexico fifteen years ago is still a month away (plus since we both tend to ignore the legal one anyhow) I don’t feel too bad about letting this one pass (basically) unacknowledged.
This song has a lot of religious imagery and considering we specifically requested a non-religious officiate who only slipped up once at the end of the ceremony when there was a brief sprinkle of rain and he remarked that was just “god showering our love across the earth”, it’s probably not one we would normally think of as one of “our” songs.
But the lyrics still make me think of us getting married on the beach in Mexico fifteen years ago for some reason. (And man, do I ever love Sam Baker as well!)
Most remarkably, we have Nipplegate to thank for YouTube. Co-founder Jawed Karim told USA Today that he was inspired to create the video site in 2005 after not being able to find any footage of the incident online.
It’s also too bad that Timberlake missed an opportunity during his performance at the Super Bowl tonight to make amends as Jackson basically had her career end for what was *his* mistake while he’s gone on to great success in both music and movies.
In the era of #metoo, imagine what it would mean if he’s stopped his performance midway, brought her out, made a heartfelt apology, told all the viewers to go to iTunes and buy “Rhythm Nation 1814” and then they bust out a wicked duet/dance routine to “SexyBack” which ends with her ripping off his codpiece or something. 😉
Apparently the latest research is showing that kids that don’t quite need regular glasses can still benefit from starting with reading glasses which, in turn, reduces their prescription when they do get glasses and also the odds of worse eye problems (glaucoma, etc.) later in life.
