paul schreiber » politics

Tell the Super Congress to be super open

paulschreiber — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 20:07:14 +0000

Dylan Ratigan explains what’s wrong with politics

paulschreiber — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 22:58:55 +0000

(Yes, it’s money.)

Thanks, Jack

paulschreiber — Sun, 01 May 2011 02:31:52 +0000

I’m flattered you liked my rally signs:

How to register to vote by mail in Canada

paulschreiber — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 14:06:34 +0000

The Elections Canada web site is very confusing. If you wish to register to vote by mail in Canada, download one of two “Application for Registration and Special Ballot” forms:

Why UBB charges are bullshit

paulschreiber — Tue, 01 Feb 2011 17:19:16 +0000

Cogeco charges $1.50 per GB.
Amazon charges 14¢ per GB.
Netflix estimates they pay 3¢/GB.

Netflix figures the ISPs’ cost per GB is under a penny. So they’re charging 15,000% markup.

15,000%.

The FCC just sold you out

paulschreiber — Fri, 03 Dec 2010 00:40:43 +0000

TSA news roundup from Bruce Schneier

paulschreiber — Sun, 21 Nov 2010 03:45:26 +0000

Bruce has done a fantastic job summarizing the backlash to the TSA’s plan to take naked pictures of and/or molest you as a precondition of boarding an airplane:

There’s humour, outrage, and just a wee bit o’ corruption:

Michael Chertoff, former Department of Homeland Security secretary, has been touting the full-body scanners, while at the same time maintaining a financial interest in the company that makes them.

Using Google refine to produce a list of Ontario’s private schools

paulschreiber — Fri, 19 Nov 2010 00:22:07 +0000

Last week, I excitedly read the announcement and watched the screencasts of Google Refine 2.0.

Today, I used it to transform this hot mess of HTML:

Into this structured data goodness:

This is really powerful. It would have been incredibly useful when I was compiling a list of every local election official in the United States for TurboVote. Or when I was making a list of every secondary school, CEGEP, college and university in Canada for CMSF. But I was done with that.

Or so I thought. It turns out the Ontario Ministry of Education’s list of schools is broken. (I called and told them about this weeks ago.) And unlike most other provinces, the ministry doesn’t provide a spreadsheet listing all schools. The school finder does have a list of schools. And each school has its own web page with the data I need. So I wrote a scraper, downloaded 934 pages of HTML and parsed the data in to a spreadsheet. Done, right? Wrong.

What’s missing from the list? Ontario’s private schools. That page is hard to find — it’s buried in the FAQ for parents. The list of schools is hidden behind a submit button.

So now to extract all that data with Google refine. First, I used TextMate to remove the extraneous HTML, giving me just the list of schools. Importing that a running some transforms got me 90% of the way there. Since I couldn’t figure out how to merge the last few freeform columns (enhancement request filed), so I exported to TSV, opened in Excel, merged a few columns and re-imported into Google refine. I then extracted the school types, affiliations, OSSD credit-granting status and association membership.

Check out the files I used:

Oh John McCain, make it stop

paulschreiber — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 15:06:33 +0000

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c

It Gets Worse PSA

www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show Full Episodes

Political Humor

Rally to Restore Sanity

Good news, Canadian style

paulschreiber — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 18:53:28 +0000

Jim Prentice, former industry minister and suckup to american media companies — he authored the horrid copyright “reform” bill — has resigned:

“I am closing the door on political life,” he said, stressing his support for Mr. Harper and the party. “I have completed that tour of duty.”