The Canadian Dollar October 22, 2007
Posted by Ian in misc., policy.add a comment
For the last little while the Canadian dollar has been pretty strong – we’ve even been higher than the USD. But you’d never know it if you came up here to do your shopping. Especially for cars, books/magazines, etc. The car situation really pisses me off. In the summer we bought a Honda Fit, which is a fantastic little car. After tax and all that jazz it came out to $22,xxx. If we had bought our car stateside it would have cost about $3,000 less. The car I wanted however, was a MINI Cooper S, which up here starts at $30,600 (a lot more than I can afford). In the States it starts at a paltry $21,200 – which would have been affordable. The other car we were interested in but couldn’t afford was the Volvo C30. The price difference isn’t as bad $27,xxx vs. 23,xxx but it was still way out of our price range. Of course for some cars it doesn’t matter because the companies won’t honour the warranty if it isn’t bought up here…
I understand that it takes time to adjust for currency fluctuations but come on, the Canadian dollar has been rising for several years now and things (books especially) are still being priced as if the dollar were at $0.65US…
NY Times Death Watch? October 18, 2007
Posted by Ian in misc..add a comment
Interesting opinion piece about the woes of the New York Times over at ABC News. I don’t read a lot of news papers – I get my editorials from the blogosphere and my headlines from ctv, cbc and occasionally google news – but I really hope that the Times can learn its lessons and recover. I think the author of the piece makes an important point when he says:
Most newspapers adopted the always dangerous strategy of trying to become more like one’s competitors rather than establishing the defensible position of being even more true to oneself. Like most newspapers, the Times decided to become more timely, more hip, and more judgmental than the electronic media — when it should have become better reported, more objective, and better written; professionalism being the one arena where the new competitors would have a hard time competing.
Of course one could argue whether journalism is a profession at all… Good writing/reporting seems more like an art form to me.
Acquiring a modicum of culture October 12, 2007
Posted by Ian in misc..add a comment
In library school a certain someone was amazed at my lack of cultural knowall. I am happy to say that I am getting a little better. Strangely enough, Maya and I have watched quite a few non-hollywood films recently. Last night we saw Pierrepoint about Albert J. Pierrepoint, Executioner. It was a fantabulous thing and Timothy Spall was brilliant. Another film that we saw and give two thumbs up to is an Irish flick called Once… Yay indie film…
Now I just have to get around to reading Dostoevsky and watching Kurosawa and I’ll be set!
It’s enough to make you weep… October 12, 2007
Posted by Ian in environment, misc..4 comments
Today Al Gore won a share of the Nobel Peace Prize with the IPCC… Quite frankly, I’m not sure why this upsets me I mean when I think about the other people who have won this award…
And for those of you out there celebrating – don’t be too smug a British Judge thinks Al might have stretched the truth a little too much in An Inconvenient Truth (from the Torygraph):
Mr Gore claims that a sea-level rise of up to 20 feet would be caused by melting of either West Antarctica or Greenland “in the near future”. The judge said: “This is distinctly alarmist and part of Mr Gore’s “wake-up call”. He agreed that if Greenland melted it would release this amount of water – “but only after, and over, millennia”.”The Armageddon scenario he predicts, insofar as it suggests that sea level rises of seven metres might occur in the immediate future, is not in line with the scientific consensus.”
The film claims that low-lying inhabited Pacific atolls “are being inundated because of anthropogenic global warming” but the judge ruled there was no evidence of any evacuation having yet happened.
The documentary speaks of global warming “shutting down the Ocean Conveyor” – the process by which the Gulf Stream is carried over the North Atlantic to western Europe. Citing the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the judge said that it was “very unlikely” that the Ocean Conveyor, also known as the Meridional Overturning Circulation, would shut down in the future, though it might slow down.
Mr Gore claims that two graphs, one plotting a rise in C02 and the other the rise in temperature over a period of 650,000 years, showed “an exact fit”. The judge said that, although there was general scientific agreement that there was a connection, “the two graphs do not establish what Mr Gore asserts”.
Mr Gore says the disappearance of snow on Mt Kilimanjaro was directly attributable to global warming, but the judge ruled that it scientists have not established that the recession of snow on Mt Kilimanjaro is primarily attributable to human-induced climate change.
Oh just in case anyone is wondering what the hell global warming has to do with peace the prize committee says:
Indications of changes in the earth’s future climate must be treated with the utmost seriousness, and with the precautionary principle uppermost in our minds. Extensive climate changes may alter and threaten the living conditions of much of mankind. They may induce large-scale migration and lead to greater competition for the earth’s resources. Such changes will place particularly heavy burdens on the world’s most vulnerable countries. There may be increased danger of violent conflicts and wars, within and between states.
I think what upsets me the most about this is that there are places in the world – like Burma, Afghanistan, Zimbabwe – who are truly trying to tame violence and bring peace and prosperity, but instead it is awarded to a body of the UN that is proficient in writing press releases and a man who prattles on about how we’re all going to die unless we make sacrifices, but then lives in a massive house and flys from speaking engagement to speaking engagement in a private jet. In fact that’s the thing that bothers me the most about famous people who crusade for causes like this – they expect all of us to do the sacrificing but seem unwilling to make any sacrifices themselves…
rant over.
I have to admit it’s getting better… (and so should you) September 18, 2007
Posted by Ian in misc..add a comment
Little tidbits of good news have come out of the cellar of despair media recently.
First from today’s National Post:
In 2006, for the first time in recorded history, the annual global tally of children who died before their fifth birthday was less than 10 million. Obviously, 9.7 million child deaths — the reported figure–is 9.7 million agonizing personal tragedies too many. But consider that as recently as 1990, the figure was 13 million — even though the world’s population was then 20% smaller than it is today. In recent decades, literally tens of millions of children who otherwise would have died have been saved by modern technology, more enlightened public health practices and improved access to medical treatment.
…
The UNICEF report should be required reading for all those who believe globalization is enriching wealthy nations at the expense of the developing world. In Latin America, which in recent decades has made a stunning transformation from protectionist, strongman-led autocracy to (generally) free-market democracy, child mortality has fallen by a factor of six since 1960. In the tiger economies of Asia, it’s fallen by a factor of four. Far from representing forms of north-on-south “exploitation,” free trade, capitalism and Western technologies have given the spark of life to millions of Third World children otherwise destined for early graves.
Second, comes this revelation:
For the first time in human history, more people are laboring in service trades than in food production, according to data gathered by the International Labor Organization (ILO), an agency affiliated with the United Nations.
As recently as 1996, agriculture accounted for 42 percent of world employment, with another 21 percent of workers in goods-producing industries and 37 percent in services. By last year, the ILO says in a report released over the weekend, 42 percent were in services, 37 percent in agriculture, and 22 percent in industry.
The world is getting better and that makes me happy…
5 Things I think I think September 16, 2007
Posted by Ian in misc..add a comment
Yes I am ripping off Peter King (for those of you who are football fans).
1. I think the NFL is going to be confusing this year. After watching most of two weeks of NFL football I would like to know: Was Cleveland asleep last week or is Cinncinati’s defence that bad?
1a. Is Pittsburgh really that good? I hope so but steamrolling over Cleveland, who might either be brillant or awful, and the Bills who are a bunch of walking wounded with a stud running back, is not really inspiring.
2. I think that TV right now sucks. It seems that there is nothing good on TV these days – maybe I’m just old and stogy but I don’t find any of the comedies funny and reality TV lost its (quite limited) appeal to me about 7 years ago. On the bright side PBS is reairing Ken Burns’ Civil War which is quite possibly the best documentary I’ve ever seen (Burns says that it took him 6 years to make the documentary which for those keeping tabs at home is a year longer than the actual conflict).
3. I think that Queen’s is playing some pretty good football right now. The Gaels are off to a 3-0 start after coming back to beat McMaster on Saturday in Kingston. The exciting thing is that the offence is almost balanced (for the first time since I’ve been watching). The especially good thing about the 3-0 start was that all the wins were over decent teams.
4. I think the best part of my job is the people watching opportunities at the desk. From the people watching file this week: girl wearing some cranberry tights that made her look.. ummm, how to put this delicately…. really bad – even if the tights didn’t look too small (which they did) there was still the god awful colour.. I mean honestly, cranberry?? That was so 15 years ago. On a related note the girl with the neon blue tights and matching leg warmers should be commended for so accurately capturing the 1980’s… [curmudgeon]now go get some real clothes[/curmudgeon]
5. I think rutabaga (or swede for our neighbours to the East in the UK) is a highly underrated vegetable. We made mashed rutabaga and carrot as a side for dinner tonight and it was quite tasty… and very low on the weight watchers point scale which is good for fatso’s like me!
It’s been a while September 11, 2007
Posted by Ian in misc..add a comment
My god it’s been a long time since I’ve posted anything. So here are few quick hit thoughts:
1) tights and leg warmers weren’t a good idea in the 80/90’s why does anyone think that 20 years has changed that?
2) University of Michigan football team is rubbish. The upset of the century is not the upset of the century Michigan just isn’t very good… at least not on defence.
3) Queen’s university football – surprisingly good (they beat Western does anything else really matter?)
4) Tenative deal between our union and MUN – which is good. No details yet though…
5) September in the library – really busy! I was on the reference desk the first day back and got 35 questions in an hour… but only one of them didn’t involve me saying “go to the computer support desk” or “the washroom is down the hall on your right” or “go see circulation”…
Too nerdy even for me… August 24, 2007
Posted by Ian in misc..1 comment so far
Fantasy Journals… kinda like fantasy football but with scholarly publication…
Are some ideas too dangerous to contemplate? July 22, 2007
Posted by Ian in misc..add a comment
Via Ronald Bailey @ Reason we find this article by Steven Pinker. The author starts by suggesting some questions that might be considered taboo or dangerous. In general arguments about morality-type things bore me because people tend to have such entrenched positions but Pinker lists a few questions that are interesting:
“Would Africa have a better chance of rising out of poverty if it hosted more polluting industries or accepted Europe’s nuclear waste?
Would lives be saved if we instituted a free market in organs for transplantation?
Should people have the right to clone themselves, or enhance the genetic traits of their children?
Has the state of the environment improved in the last 50 years?
Did the crime rate go down in the 1990s because two decades earlier poor women aborted children who would have been prone to violence?”
I suggest reading the whole article (it is well worth your time).
If someone were to ask me if I thought that all important discoveries should be brought public without regard to who might be offended, I would answer yes unequivocally. The notion that some ideas are too dangerous is rubbish. And yet there are those who believe that there are some ideas which shouldn’t be probed, some findings that shouldn’t be released… To me that is nothing short of a tragedy… Keeping an open mind and not being afraid to be challenged by new ideas is something that every person should strive for.
Take one of Pinker’s questions: “Were the events in the Bible fictitious — not just the miracles, but those involving kings and empires?” To me this question is interesting for two reasons:
1. If they were fictitious would that change your beliefs?
2. Is it important that moral rules be based on real events?
For me (I am not a Christian) it doesn’t matter if the book is based on real events; it doesn’t change the positive moral messages that can be found within. Maybe I’m just weird that way…
I’ll stop here because I’m rambling… Read Pinker’s article, read what Bailey has to say… but only if you want to.
Something interesting… and relatively old! July 22, 2007
Posted by Ian in misc..add a comment
Today whilst surfing around I came across a link to this website. It is a list of “The Top 100 Things I’d Do If I Ever Became An Evil Overlord” and some of them are brilliant others are just common sense. For example:
“4. Shooting is not too good for my enemies.”
“10. I will not interrogate my enemies in the inner sanctum — a small hotel well outside my borders will work just as well.”
“20. Despite its proven stress-relieving effect, I will not indulge in maniacal laughter. When so occupied, it’s too easy to miss unexpected developments that a more attentive individual could adjust to accordingly.”
etc.
The best thing about this list is that I’m pretty sure I read one of the early versions of it… in 1997! I suggest giving it a skim – it’s pretty funny.
