Blog Archives: Thoughts
$18.9 billion
I don’t write about political issues very often on my blog, but this is one that’s been nagging at me for a while.
Earlier this month, Canada’s Parliamentary Budget Officer issued a pre-budget reporting predicting the Federal government would have an $18.9 billion structural deficit in 2013-14. Government ministers say the number’s not right, though the PBO has been good at predictions in the past. Regardless, there’s going to be a big deficit.
What bugs me is not that there’s going to be a big deficit. Rather, I’m annoyed at the idea that we can eliminate such a deficit by tightening our belts a little bit. Getting rid of an $18.9 billion deficit will be very difficult. Neither the Conservatives nor the Liberals is willing to mention tax increases (and understandably, as voters don’t like the idea of paying more). But it’s something that should at least be in the discussion as we choose from a variety of unpalatable options.
$18.9 billion is a lot of money. With the large numbers thrown around over the last couple of years in stimulus spending in Canada, the USA, and around the world, it’s easy to lose sight of how much a $18.9 billion deficit really is. Remember, that’s $18.9 billion in the hole, every year.
I did a little bit of research and found some examples of how much $18.9 billion is. I’m not promoting any one of these options — many of them are ridiculous on purpose — I’m just using them to exemplify how big that number is.
Click on the graphic below for a high quality PDF version.
If you find an error in my calculations or better data, please let me know and I’ll be happy to correct it.
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Books I’m Reading
Well I seem to have already lost the momentum from last week’s post-a-thon. But here’s an attempt to at least keep rolling. I thought I’d share a list of a few books I’m currently reading. I used to be pretty good at starting a book, finishing it, and then moving on to the next one, but now I seem to have half a dozen or more books on the go, some of which I’ve been “reading” for years.
- The Death and Life of Great American Cities, by Jane Jacobs. I only became aware of the author after reading her obituary in the Economist. As an nonacademic New Yorker in the 1950s and 1960s, she wrote this book, considered a fundamental shift in urban planning, based on her day-to-day life in Manhattan. She then moved to Toronto and opposed the development of expressways in Toronto (anyone who has ever seen Gardner expressway would know how right she was). The book was nearly impossible to obtain here in Waterloo: while the library system has more than 6 copies, all were checked out, and I expect my copy to be recalled soon.
- Kicking Ass in Canadian Politics, by Warren Kinsella. As Chrétien’s attack dog, Kinsella knows the business of politics and what it takes to be successful. Some good insights so far into negative advertising, with reference to the Daisy commercial from Lyndon B. Johnson’s 1964 campaign, one of the first significant political commercials, and quite chilling.
- The No-Nonsense Guide to Fair Trade, by David Ransom. My housemate Lana has convinced me to buy fair trade hot chocolate (which actually tastes quite good), and this is the book to go along with it. Certainly not an unbiased look at fair trade.
- Paradise Lost, by John Milton. I’ve been reading this book for about 16 months now. It’s the last part of my “foundations” series of literature; I’ve already read the Iliad and Odyssey, Virgil’s Aeneid, and Dante’s Divine Comedy. This is the last one in the series, although there are still a few more classics I ought to read.
- Random Graphs, by Béla Bollobaś. In case my supervisor ends up reading this, yes, there are some research books on my list.
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Reading season
Well, it’s that time of the academic year again, when squirrely graduate students finish their papers and step out from their labs into the harsh sunlight, see their shadow, and run back into the library, desperately seeking anything to keep them from facing the real world. Accordingly, I’ve spent my last few days reading, taking advantage of the offerings of various libraries and bookstores here in Oxford.
Symphony no. 9 by Ludwig van Beethoven. I remember thinking Scott was a bit crazy back at Waterloo to borrow scores from the library and read them, but then I decided to try it myself and discovered that it’s a good way to re-experience music you think you know. You see (and correspondingly hear) parts that you’d never noticed before and gain a better appreciation of the structure of the piece.
Hamlet, by William Shakespeare. This is in keeping with the “best … ever written” theme started by Beethoven’s Ninth, combined with the “going to Stratford to see that Scottish play” a few weeks ago. I’m almost done this one, just one more act to go; I wonder how it ends? I bet they all live happily ever after.
Free Culture, by Lawrence Lessig. Lessig is a Stanford law professor. He filed suit against the US government, arguing in front of the US Supreme Court that continued copyright extensions were unconstitutional (he lost). He founded an organization called the Creative Commons aiming to provide authors and creators with flexible copyright terms, in the same vein as open-source software licenses. He spoke last summer at a Sun Labs event and gave a fantastic presentation about the challenges of balancing intellectual property rights to an audience whose primary metric of performance is numbers of patents filed and papers published. The book is available online for free, and is also in bookstores.
Dancing Barefoot, by Wil Wheaton. Wil Wheaton played Wesley Crusher on Star Trek: The Next Generation, and has since become a writer and voice actor. The book is short stories based on his life experience. In one of the stories, he writes about how fans’ negative reactions to Wesley Crusher affected him personally and how it took him a long time to get over it and come back to liking Star Trek. Wheaton also has a great website / weblog, wilwheaton.net, which is fun to read if you truly enjoyed TNG, not because he talks about it a lot, but because the same mix of optimism and reality that the show embodied winds its way into his postings. Plus you get to hear cool stories about Star Trek.
No Logo, by Naomi Klein. I’m only half way through this book so far, so I won’t give too much opinion on it yet. Published in 2000, it’s the prototypical left-wing activist book. It made a big impact when it was published, and I often thought of purchasing it, but never ended up doing so, perhaps thinking that it was too clichéd to buy. (Instead, I’m reading it in spectacular Radcliffe Camera reading room of the historic Bodleian library.) My one comment on the book so far would be that it feels dated. It reads as if most of it was written before the dot-com crash (which, to be fair, is probably true). That could just be the first half of the book. We’ll see tomorrow.
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Just a few more minutes
All packed, all organized. Now: sitting… waiting… watching the digital clock count off the last few minutes before the vacation starts. Hoping for sunny days, warm weather. Checking email once more; no new messages. Just two minutes left… one minute… time to go! Hasta luego!
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Sir Harold Kroto lecture
Harold Kroto “Hey, it’s Doc Brown from Back to the Future.” That shouldn’t be your first thought when meeting a Nobel laureate, but can you disagree with me?
Earlier this week I had the pleasure of attending my first lecture by a Nobel laureate, Sir Harold Kroto, co-recipient of the 1996 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his discovery of the C60 molecule, buckminsterfullerene (“bucky balls”). (I didn’t post a picture of a bucky ball molecule because I’m betting one of my readers has an origami model that they could send me a picture of.)
During the first part of his talk, Kroto spoke about doubt as an attribute of human civilisation and the role doubt plays in the job of a scientist, and that nothing should be taken on faith but believed only because of demonstrated and demonstrable evidence. (He acknowledged that he didn’t know how to resolve this contradiction for scientists who are not atheists).
He went on to argue that he believes sustainability is the most pressing issue facing the world. I’m sure some readers can give a better explanation of sustainability arguments than I can. With only two possible solutions, societal change or technological advancement, and only the latter being likely, scientists have a vital role in solving the problem, he claimed: the most important problem in science is that of splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen.
I don’t know enough about energy and sustainability to evaluate whether there are other equally viable solutions. The fact that I don’t know hit me during the talk, and made me think about the difference between scientists and mathematicians. (In fact, at the beginning of his talk, he asked how many scientists were in the room; I didn’t raise my hand.) Scientists are directly or indirectly working on problems (arguably) for the benefit of humanity, with a few exceptions. That’s why a chemist can say meaningful things about sustainability. But mathematicians work on problems that are at best spuriously connected to practical problems, and seem to take a subtle pride in that. Is this, an active shunning of the proverbial real world, a flaw of mathematics culture? Should the brainpower of math researchers be spent on chemistry and physics? Is it selfish of mathematicians to insulate themselves in the abstract algebras and constructions?
Ugh, too much thinking for me. Time for some very abstract category theory. Double ugh.
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Obligatory Navel Gazing
I’m glad that I have friends who make me caterpillar birthday cakes, and friends who will read children’s stories to me. I’m glad my mom worries about whether I’ll get to the airport on time. Some friends send me emails that aren’t very coherent yet make sense if you read them enough times, and ones that call me on having done something wrong. A crazy aunt who gives me cufflinks from beyond the grave, and another crazy aunt who takes me to coffee to talk about participating in medieval wars. Even the “friends” who put my face on student government propaganda aren’t so bad. And who can complain about allergenic “kids” that get Christmas photos at Petsmart. Age-old enemies turned friends and friends who remember more stories of your life than you do. Family, friends, and family friends. If the next twenty-five are anything like the first, it should be a good ride.
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Bush’s Depressing 21st Century
I generally avoid politics on this weblog, but I feel particularly inclined to write briefly about a quote from an article in this morning’s Globe and Mail. Like most international news in the past few days, the article is about Bush’s visit to the United Kingdom. The last day of Bush’s tour centred around a visit to Tony Blair’s constituency in northern England.
From the article:
Talking to reporters at a school, Mr. Bush heaped praise on Mr. Blair, saying that Britain is “fortunate to have a Prime Minister who’s clear-sighted about the threat of the 21st century.”
I’m disheartened to see that the so-called leader of the free world views the 21st century not as an opportunity for humanity to excel but as a threat, presumably to America and its ‘coalition of the willing’. I’m sure Mr Bush and I agree that we ought to try and make our future the best it can be, but I don’t believe that painting it as a threat to resist will inspire greatness.
The article goes on:
“Terrorists are trying to intimidate the world,” he continued, “and this man [Mr. Blair] will not be intimated [sic] and neither will I.”
One definition of intimidate reads: “To coerce or inhibit by or as if by threats.” If one feels threatened, as Mr Bush does, by the future, I fail to see how one is anything but intimidated.
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Early to rise
It is now my opinion that the adage “Early to bed, early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise” is false.
Evidence: I had to get early this morning for a Applied Probability tutorial.
Result:
- healthy: I am now coming down with a cold, which only started to manifest itself after the tutorial.
- wealthy: With international student tuition at Oxford with the US Dollar at its lowest rate compared to the Pound in the last ten years, wealthy? I think not!
- wise: According to this study, recently published in a highly respected serial, grad school actually makes you dumber.
The alternative conclusion would be that statistics is bad for your health, but I’m scared of what will happen to me if I make that conclusion.
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