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Thursday, December 27, 2007
Cradle of a nation
Lesley and I are going to Boston tomorrow. I will attempt to keep some sort of written record, but I have promised not to bring a laptop so when I say a written record, I really mean a written record. Provided I do remember to take some notes I will provide details, with pictures I hope on my return in 2008!
Wednesday, December 26, 2007
On Commercialism
Maybe as a born Jew, devote atheist and married to a Buddhist I should not comment on these things but I have to ask. Am I the only person out there who really is not keen on Christmas?
Between popularized versions of songs, some of which really should not be sung ever blaring out from every supermarket and shopping mall. The incredible pressure to spend spend spend. Using the elbow grease and some pretty aggressive driving at the shopping mall car park, the fight for the last PS3 or whatever the must have toy of the year is, the insanity at the checkout line and then crash and bang some more in the mall car park. Finally return to an unhappy family more interested in the boxing day sales than items that are due for return no earlier than January 3.
If this is the season of peace, little wonder America always seems to be at war with someone.
I realise I must sound like a curmudgeonly nasty old fart, but for heavens sakes what's the point? If Christmas is supposed to be about family I honestly don't see the connection and if Christmas is about commercialism then lets call a spade a spade and call it the late December shopping bonanza. We know its got nothing to do with the birth of anyone, so lets put an end to Christmas commercialism, buy the kids nicer gifts for their Birthday, take a few days off for a nice vacation and maybe do something useful, get out a pair of ice skates or cross country skis and burn some fat while spending quality time with the family. Anyway I'm just glad I'm not Christian.
Between popularized versions of songs, some of which really should not be sung ever blaring out from every supermarket and shopping mall. The incredible pressure to spend spend spend. Using the elbow grease and some pretty aggressive driving at the shopping mall car park, the fight for the last PS3 or whatever the must have toy of the year is, the insanity at the checkout line and then crash and bang some more in the mall car park. Finally return to an unhappy family more interested in the boxing day sales than items that are due for return no earlier than January 3.
If this is the season of peace, little wonder America always seems to be at war with someone.
I realise I must sound like a curmudgeonly nasty old fart, but for heavens sakes what's the point? If Christmas is supposed to be about family I honestly don't see the connection and if Christmas is about commercialism then lets call a spade a spade and call it the late December shopping bonanza. We know its got nothing to do with the birth of anyone, so lets put an end to Christmas commercialism, buy the kids nicer gifts for their Birthday, take a few days off for a nice vacation and maybe do something useful, get out a pair of ice skates or cross country skis and burn some fat while spending quality time with the family. Anyway I'm just glad I'm not Christian.
Tuesday, December 25, 2007
On Classic Hollywood
Tonight we watched It's a Wonderful Life it seemed fitting in honour of the day of the year. (Here is an unrelated aside, speaking of December 25, what day was Joshua son of Joseph - aka Jesus Christ - actually born? Answer: sometime in April or May most likely probably sometime between the year 6BCE and 4BCE. The date, December 25 was chosen to coincide with the Pagan Holiday of Saturnalia, a period of merriment and gift exchanging. I am not entirely sure why the early Christians selected the year they did to mark the start of their calendar, but I'd be willing to bet it was more than some trivial accounting error.)
As the movie progressed (it was the first time I had ever seen it) I became more and more frustrated watching. I kept thinking to our own current financial system and the disaster it is in. The problem the writers of It's a Wonderful Life brushed aside to trivially is money. You see the movie is premised on a good and decent guy who runs a small mortgage company that is perpetually near bankrupt. The mortgage company remains liquid despite the efforts of a mean old bank owner who has all the money in town. And thus the problem I have with the entire movie.
You see its not the rich mean old people who have all the money, its the pension funds and the insurance policies, that is where all the money is. Now think about this, when banks lend money to people who cannot afford to pay the bill what happens? Well the banks have a cash crisis as the short term debt dries up the cost of lending goes up, interest rates are driven up and the economy goes to hell in a hand basket. Meanwhile pension funds find themselves writing off loans and potentially people's retirement savings end up in the Ken Lay trust fund and insurance companies find themselves short for cash when claims start rolling in so insurance premiums skyrocket and claims adjusters find themselves in the lucky position of being ordered to reduce payouts.
Most people who were recipients of these, lets call them subprime loans, used the money not for something lasting, like a home renovation or a new home, but rather the money was used for a new car, or perhaps to pay off a mountain of Visa debt, or the subprime loan might have been a Visa debt in the first place.
In Its a Wonderful Life the loans buy homes and when people have a vested interest in the property they take care of it. Which is true, but in the automobile powered America of today we have urban sprawl (interestingly in Wonderful Life Bailey Park represents an early example of urban sprawl) and all the problems in sprawl, including dependency on oil much of it from abroad, ok a lot is from Canada right now, but don't forget the third largest supply of Oil to the United States is also the World's largest exporter in 9/11 terrorists, Saudi Arabia. As well there is the mass production of green house gasses, the paving over of first rate farm land, the excessive use of natural resources for heating detached homes as well as supplying water, electricity and roads to greater distances.
One final shot at the movie, the protagonist lives in a "drafty old home", he really should get a vapour barrier up and some decent insulation. He's wasting tones of energy heating the outside, someone send in Mike Holmes!
As the movie progressed (it was the first time I had ever seen it) I became more and more frustrated watching. I kept thinking to our own current financial system and the disaster it is in. The problem the writers of It's a Wonderful Life brushed aside to trivially is money. You see the movie is premised on a good and decent guy who runs a small mortgage company that is perpetually near bankrupt. The mortgage company remains liquid despite the efforts of a mean old bank owner who has all the money in town. And thus the problem I have with the entire movie.
You see its not the rich mean old people who have all the money, its the pension funds and the insurance policies, that is where all the money is. Now think about this, when banks lend money to people who cannot afford to pay the bill what happens? Well the banks have a cash crisis as the short term debt dries up the cost of lending goes up, interest rates are driven up and the economy goes to hell in a hand basket. Meanwhile pension funds find themselves writing off loans and potentially people's retirement savings end up in the Ken Lay trust fund and insurance companies find themselves short for cash when claims start rolling in so insurance premiums skyrocket and claims adjusters find themselves in the lucky position of being ordered to reduce payouts.
Most people who were recipients of these, lets call them subprime loans, used the money not for something lasting, like a home renovation or a new home, but rather the money was used for a new car, or perhaps to pay off a mountain of Visa debt, or the subprime loan might have been a Visa debt in the first place.
In Its a Wonderful Life the loans buy homes and when people have a vested interest in the property they take care of it. Which is true, but in the automobile powered America of today we have urban sprawl (interestingly in Wonderful Life Bailey Park represents an early example of urban sprawl) and all the problems in sprawl, including dependency on oil much of it from abroad, ok a lot is from Canada right now, but don't forget the third largest supply of Oil to the United States is also the World's largest exporter in 9/11 terrorists, Saudi Arabia. As well there is the mass production of green house gasses, the paving over of first rate farm land, the excessive use of natural resources for heating detached homes as well as supplying water, electricity and roads to greater distances.
One final shot at the movie, the protagonist lives in a "drafty old home", he really should get a vapour barrier up and some decent insulation. He's wasting tones of energy heating the outside, someone send in Mike Holmes!
Monday, December 24, 2007
Where we are going
Over the past few days I've done quite about of speculating as to why humanity seems so much less optimistic than we once were. My OAC English Teacher, Mr. Coombs once told us that the defining event of the 20'th Century was World War I, prior to that horror humanity, generally, had faith in our own abilities to shape and control our destiny. When it became apparent after the outbreak of war that not only could we not control the natural or accidental (see my comments on the sinking of the RMS Titanic) but on some occasions our plans could run so far out of control, like the Von Schlieffen Plan, that we are left fighting from the trenches machine gunning our former friends at the rate of hundreds of thousands a day. World War I represents the industrial revolutions true arrival into the field of battle, we had industrialised killing people.
Today however I would like to consider some reasons to hope. Right now attached to my laptop is a USB hard drive that I am formatting, it warehouses not billions but hundreds of billions of characters of information. My laptop is old, it is only running at just over one and a half billion instructions per second with a billion characters of memory. Combined weight of the two devices? Under 5kg. Now here's an entertaining comparison, anyone old enough no doubt remembers Neil Armstong's famous One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind remark from the Sea of Tranquility on July 20, 1969. It was a remarkable achievement, the computer used by Armstong and Aldrin to actually land on the moon? The Apollo Guidance Computer or AGC, weighed in at 30kg, had 74 thousand characters of storage of which about 4 thousand characters were memory. It cost one hundred fifty thousand dollars at time when the average American was paid under $5 thousand per year. Perhaps a more portable option for Armstong and Aldrin would be my Blackberry, I don't even know what kind of processor is in it, I know older models used to have a Pentium chip, my unit has about 60 million characters of memory and the battery will not last from a journey from the Earth to the Moon and back, but with one recharge on route (or an extra charged batter left to float around somewhere) and it should be good to go. An added bonus, my Blackberry has a nice colour screen, so when the astronauts are bored, they can look at some nice high resolution images of their destination.
What about average Americans? In the 1960s an American could expect to live to about 65 or 70, in other words there was a very reasonable chance that an average American would die before retiring. Now Americans can expect to live upwards of 70 to 75 years.
In the 1960s vast numbers of people around the world went hungry every day, although still true, thanks to the green revolution it is possible - if distribution systems were improved - to feed every human being on Earth the UN standard of 2500 calories of food energy a day.
We live in a world of new vaccines and new antibiotics, we live in a world of new understandings and new communications.
The World we live in is by no means perfect but there is reason to hope, if nothing else, we are an inventive species good at finding new ways out of old problems.
Today however I would like to consider some reasons to hope. Right now attached to my laptop is a USB hard drive that I am formatting, it warehouses not billions but hundreds of billions of characters of information. My laptop is old, it is only running at just over one and a half billion instructions per second with a billion characters of memory. Combined weight of the two devices? Under 5kg. Now here's an entertaining comparison, anyone old enough no doubt remembers Neil Armstong's famous One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind remark from the Sea of Tranquility on July 20, 1969. It was a remarkable achievement, the computer used by Armstong and Aldrin to actually land on the moon? The Apollo Guidance Computer or AGC, weighed in at 30kg, had 74 thousand characters of storage of which about 4 thousand characters were memory. It cost one hundred fifty thousand dollars at time when the average American was paid under $5 thousand per year. Perhaps a more portable option for Armstong and Aldrin would be my Blackberry, I don't even know what kind of processor is in it, I know older models used to have a Pentium chip, my unit has about 60 million characters of memory and the battery will not last from a journey from the Earth to the Moon and back, but with one recharge on route (or an extra charged batter left to float around somewhere) and it should be good to go. An added bonus, my Blackberry has a nice colour screen, so when the astronauts are bored, they can look at some nice high resolution images of their destination.
What about average Americans? In the 1960s an American could expect to live to about 65 or 70, in other words there was a very reasonable chance that an average American would die before retiring. Now Americans can expect to live upwards of 70 to 75 years.
In the 1960s vast numbers of people around the world went hungry every day, although still true, thanks to the green revolution it is possible - if distribution systems were improved - to feed every human being on Earth the UN standard of 2500 calories of food energy a day.
We live in a world of new vaccines and new antibiotics, we live in a world of new understandings and new communications.
The World we live in is by no means perfect but there is reason to hope, if nothing else, we are an inventive species good at finding new ways out of old problems.
Sunday, December 23, 2007
Random thoughts
Today was Lesley's birthday. I took her to dinner at a Restaurant that I am sure has some odd English name but in Chinese it's called Xin Tian Di, named after a very pleasant little car free area of Shanghai.
If I can just step off topic for a second, Xin Tian Di in Shanghai is one place where a very modest effort was put towards preserving old Shanghai. Too much of that city's culture and history has been swept aside and replaced with new high rise condominiums. Gone now are the 5RMB (less than $1 cdn) pan fried dumplings and noodle soup available right at the side of the road, now you have to pay 30 or 40RMB at an upscale restaurant with fine silverware and food without flavour. (And little brass notices on the wall saying not to take pictures as the walls are patented - honest to goodness, they really have notices just like that in some upscale restaurants in Shanghai.) Of course at Xin Tian Di in Shanghai there are no street vendors, just very posh, very expensive restaurants, but the architecture isn't soaring to nose bleed altitudes.
At dinner Lesley informed me that I am married to someone who is exotic because she is a woman (surprise there) and East Asian. Now I replied that as there are literally billions (yes with a B) Asians more than there are Westerners if anyone was exotic it was (as my friend from America calls me) "Mike the Canadian" as there are only about 15 million male Canadians so if there is anyone who ought to be exotic it should be us Canadians. Surprisingly despite what I feel is a more logically rigorous argument Lesley felt she was right and therefore she was. (One day I want someone to explain that to me!)
While on the subject of the exotic it turns out the Royal Family have started a U-Tube channel. I must admit one thing that I find surprising is that other people would be surprised that HRH Queen Elizabeth would use technology to engage her subjects. For heavens sakes people she's been doing that since she was crowned, in 1957 when many families we just buying their first T.V. set the Queen broadcast her Christmas day message. In 1996 she personally typed and sent an email, making it a proper photo op by having a class of 8 or 10 year-old's helping her to send it. Say what you will about the monarchy this one has tried to keep herself relevant.
One day I probably ought to wax on my thoughts on the Royal Family but it occurs to me that I really don't want to waste the intellectual effort, having a symbolic head-of-state (who my taxes hardly even finance) is probably better than say, the Prime Minister being the head of state. For heavens sakes you know how embarrassed I'd be if Stephen Harper were not only the leader of the government but also on Canada's money? Or worse yet, Brian Mulroney will now be on the stamps! (The joke about Americans being unable to decide which side of the Nixon stamp to spit on could be made Canadian then!)
Earlier I lamented the loss of optimism not only my own but in the public realm as well. As I watched the Queen's Christmas message of 1957 it dawned on me. We have become a much more informed society. When, in 1953 the elected Premier Mohammed Mossadeq of Iran was overthrown, anyone who saw the events reported on the news, by the well trusted news reporters of the day, would have believed that this was a purely internal Iranian matter that happened to play out very well for Anglo American interests. Today we know our governments lie and deceive all the time, just reading that last sentence "that happened to play out very well for..." screams: CIA, CIA, CIA!!
Who would have thought that agencies of the United States Government would go into narcotics trafficking in America's cities in order to finance a war in Central America? Well in the early 1980s that is exactly what happened. Or how about training Muslim fundamentalists on how to commit acts of guerrilla warfare (that's terrorism against solders, not to be confused with the entirely similar terrorism against civilians)? Maybe giving Osama Bin Laden training on how to use modern military hardware and tactics wasn't the wisest expenditure of CIA money, but at least the Soviets got driven out of Afghanistan. We made a deal with the devil to get rid of a comparatively harmless troll. Ooops!
Thanks to You Tube, Google, Wikipedia, Blogs, anyone and everyone can find out about it. Perhaps ignorance is bliss?
If I can just step off topic for a second, Xin Tian Di in Shanghai is one place where a very modest effort was put towards preserving old Shanghai. Too much of that city's culture and history has been swept aside and replaced with new high rise condominiums. Gone now are the 5RMB (less than $1 cdn) pan fried dumplings and noodle soup available right at the side of the road, now you have to pay 30 or 40RMB at an upscale restaurant with fine silverware and food without flavour. (And little brass notices on the wall saying not to take pictures as the walls are patented - honest to goodness, they really have notices just like that in some upscale restaurants in Shanghai.) Of course at Xin Tian Di in Shanghai there are no street vendors, just very posh, very expensive restaurants, but the architecture isn't soaring to nose bleed altitudes.
At dinner Lesley informed me that I am married to someone who is exotic because she is a woman (surprise there) and East Asian. Now I replied that as there are literally billions (yes with a B) Asians more than there are Westerners if anyone was exotic it was (as my friend from America calls me) "Mike the Canadian" as there are only about 15 million male Canadians so if there is anyone who ought to be exotic it should be us Canadians. Surprisingly despite what I feel is a more logically rigorous argument Lesley felt she was right and therefore she was. (One day I want someone to explain that to me!)
While on the subject of the exotic it turns out the Royal Family have started a U-Tube channel. I must admit one thing that I find surprising is that other people would be surprised that HRH Queen Elizabeth would use technology to engage her subjects. For heavens sakes people she's been doing that since she was crowned, in 1957 when many families we just buying their first T.V. set the Queen broadcast her Christmas day message. In 1996 she personally typed and sent an email, making it a proper photo op by having a class of 8 or 10 year-old's helping her to send it. Say what you will about the monarchy this one has tried to keep herself relevant.
One day I probably ought to wax on my thoughts on the Royal Family but it occurs to me that I really don't want to waste the intellectual effort, having a symbolic head-of-state (who my taxes hardly even finance) is probably better than say, the Prime Minister being the head of state. For heavens sakes you know how embarrassed I'd be if Stephen Harper were not only the leader of the government but also on Canada's money? Or worse yet, Brian Mulroney will now be on the stamps! (The joke about Americans being unable to decide which side of the Nixon stamp to spit on could be made Canadian then!)
Earlier I lamented the loss of optimism not only my own but in the public realm as well. As I watched the Queen's Christmas message of 1957 it dawned on me. We have become a much more informed society. When, in 1953 the elected Premier Mohammed Mossadeq of Iran was overthrown, anyone who saw the events reported on the news, by the well trusted news reporters of the day, would have believed that this was a purely internal Iranian matter that happened to play out very well for Anglo American interests. Today we know our governments lie and deceive all the time, just reading that last sentence "that happened to play out very well for..." screams: CIA, CIA, CIA!!
Who would have thought that agencies of the United States Government would go into narcotics trafficking in America's cities in order to finance a war in Central America? Well in the early 1980s that is exactly what happened. Or how about training Muslim fundamentalists on how to commit acts of guerrilla warfare (that's terrorism against solders, not to be confused with the entirely similar terrorism against civilians)? Maybe giving Osama Bin Laden training on how to use modern military hardware and tactics wasn't the wisest expenditure of CIA money, but at least the Soviets got driven out of Afghanistan. We made a deal with the devil to get rid of a comparatively harmless troll. Ooops!
Thanks to You Tube, Google, Wikipedia, Blogs, anyone and everyone can find out about it. Perhaps ignorance is bliss?
Saturday, December 22, 2007
My bad
Yesterday I screwed up.
Those people involved in and hurt by my mistake know what and how I did what I did.
Mea Culpa!
Swallowing pride and apologizing is not something I am particularly inexperienced with. I actually know a great deal about it, having done it many times (I am only human and very error prone at that). But it still sucks.
I would like nothing more than to go back in time and undo the mistakes I made that lead up to the huge error for which I now make a very public apology, or would make a public apology, but to do so would injure the already injured parties even more.
But I cannot undo the errors I have made. I can only move forward and try, despite my many failings, not to make the same mistakes again.
My apologies to readers who have no idea what I am talking about. But I just don't feel up to blogging, right now I just feel profoundly awful, bad enough certainly that I just can't be bothered to write something new and exciting.
Those people involved in and hurt by my mistake know what and how I did what I did.
Mea Culpa!
Swallowing pride and apologizing is not something I am particularly inexperienced with. I actually know a great deal about it, having done it many times (I am only human and very error prone at that). But it still sucks.
I would like nothing more than to go back in time and undo the mistakes I made that lead up to the huge error for which I now make a very public apology, or would make a public apology, but to do so would injure the already injured parties even more.
But I cannot undo the errors I have made. I can only move forward and try, despite my many failings, not to make the same mistakes again.
My apologies to readers who have no idea what I am talking about. But I just don't feel up to blogging, right now I just feel profoundly awful, bad enough certainly that I just can't be bothered to write something new and exciting.
Friday, December 21, 2007
On Optimism
Yesterday I lamented the loss of optimism and wondered if it would ever return. I wondered why I felt, in 2001, that things were improving but today they seem to be on such a wrong course. Perhaps because prior to the decline of the Pax Americana we could delude ourselves into believing that the End of History was just a matter of time. Could it possibly be that thanks to bad work of the current presidential administration we find ourselves in a world where optimism is dead? I am not big fan of Mr. Bush, but it seems unlikely to me, despite all of his failings, that the work of one man, or even one administration, could be responsible for the depressed state of world affairs. But could the One - Two punch of Bush and Bin Laden have done the dirty deed? I doubt it.
I suspect in the days to come I will spend much effort exploring why optimism is dead and if in fact it was ever really alive. I hope, that in this exploration I can find a new optimism, for without hope I suspect my blog might become a particularly dreary place.
On a totally unrelated note, while I was working on this blog, Kilu the cat, of his own accord, jumped up into my lap and has now firmly planted himself over my writs, forcing me to type continuously. For one should never disturb a cat that has decided your lap is an acceptable place to rest, especially if the cat is purring up a storm. Ironically as I typed that, Kilu got up and walked away, but I must admit, it is nice whenever a person gets attention, not matter if it's their cat or the company of another human being, we all need to feel loved.
I suspect in the days to come I will spend much effort exploring why optimism is dead and if in fact it was ever really alive. I hope, that in this exploration I can find a new optimism, for without hope I suspect my blog might become a particularly dreary place.
On a totally unrelated note, while I was working on this blog, Kilu the cat, of his own accord, jumped up into my lap and has now firmly planted himself over my writs, forcing me to type continuously. For one should never disturb a cat that has decided your lap is an acceptable place to rest, especially if the cat is purring up a storm. Ironically as I typed that, Kilu got up and walked away, but I must admit, it is nice whenever a person gets attention, not matter if it's their cat or the company of another human being, we all need to feel loved.
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