MY AWESOME SHIT:
Scientific Victoria is a quirky, fun group with a serious purpose. It is a fledgling political organization that advocates for the consideration of science in local government decision making. We believe this will improve governance and save tax dollars throughout the Capital Regional District.
Our goal is to encourage elected officials to embrace information produced by valid scientific methodology. We would also like politicians to place less weight on conclusions drawn from pseudoscience.
We will: 1) present written and oral submissions to local municipalities on key issues, 2) recommend science-minded candidates in the November 2011 municipal elections, and 3) if people really, truly like us, we will obtain party status and from there, world dominance.
Since this proposal is being submitted to a group of tech savvy judges, we should probably be asking for funds to purchase the Vote-a-Tronic 3000 ™ campaign software package. But what we really need, at this stage, is money to print a bi-monthly newsletter that can be distributed to offline folks who vote.
Please support Scientific Victoria – the future of science depends on it!
MY BIO: David Bratzer is a thirty-three year old husband and father living in Victoria. He volunteers with a number of organizations, including the Quadra Cedar Hill Community Association, Canadian Blood Services and the Victoria Restorative Justice Society. He is also organizing a youth scholarship program for the upcoming IdeaWave conference.
He is well known as a proponent of drug policy reform. He has repeatedly called for an end to the destructive War on Drugs, favouring instead an evidence-based approach similar to that espoused by the Vienna Declaration. He has twice testified before a senate committee in Ottawa regarding drug legislation and his writing about drug prohibition has appeared in the Toronto Star, Ottawa Citizen, Victoria Times-Colonist and Straight.com.
In his early twenties – in what seems like another life – he worked in Montreal for two years as the network abuse manager for Zero-Knowledge Systems (now Radialpoint). In this capacity, he co-authored a research paper, “Experience with Abuse Management in a Privacy-Enhancing System.” He presented this paper at the 2001 FIRST Conference on Computer Security Incident Handling & Response in France. Although he no longer works in the IT industry, he remains a passionate supporter of technology and science.
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