the darkerside to rants

иконографияI admit it, I do believe people should not be told what to do with their own bodies or minds if they do not endanger others in the process.

Having said this: I have an ethical problem / dilemma when it comes to immunization.

Here’s the deal. Immunization works because everybody gets the shot. This creates a protection for the group (society) as a whole and even protects the few that are falling through the cracks (herd immunity).

The problem is that lately in the US (where else?) there has been a war on immunization. The arguments against it range from the paranoid fringe who perceives the immunizations as an attempt by the Government to control us to the fears that it causes autism. Unfortunately it seems more and more people all over the Western world seem to come to the same conclusion and as a side effect herd immunity is quickly disappearing and the rise of former vanquished or at least mostly controlled sicknesses like measles are making a come back. This is obviously not good at all.

So here is my ethical dilemma. I do not think we should force people to do something they do not want to do, but in this case? The cost in human life and economic impact is enormous. So should we go and force people to get their children immunized? Should we just tell them that it is their choice and live with the consequences?

I think the whole thing would be easier for me to answer (no, they shouldn’t) if the arguments of the vaccination opponents had any merit in a scientific kind of way. But they do not. So here I am now, wondering if there should be a limit to self-determination.

I guess I could make the argument that not having most of the children immunized poses a risk to others and as such my initial stipulation (as long as they do not cause anybody else harm) has already been violated, but is this really enough to force people to inject their kids with something they oppose?

Opinions welcome.

икониFollowing the online “discussions” with regard to the events happening at Fukushima it seems that society is split into two groups, roughly in the middle.

On the one side you have the people who perceive nuclear energy as inherently evil and in essence “we’re all going to die”. On the other hand you have “experts” (I put this in quotation because it is at times hard to assertion the credential of someone online) who perceive the risks as overblown, if I want to step down to their rhetoric I would call them the “reactor hugger group”. The general consensus on this side has changed from: “They are much better engineered than Chernobyl and the Japanese have it all under control.” to “Well, look at how well they were engineered, they survived the earthquake and the tsunami!” or if they wanted to be really fastidious: “If a dam breaks thousands will die too!”

I think both sides have it wrong, but out of different reasons.

Let’s first deal with the con argument here.

Most of the anti-nuclear crowds argument stem from two things:

1. Chernobyl
2. Mushroom Clouds

The Chernobyl comparison is somewhat apt, although only to a certain degree. Yes, a reactor did blow up and spew it’s fuel over a large area and contaminated vast stretches around the world with radiation, but it is also true that the design of the reactor was different. This doesn’t mean that a Chernobyl like event couldn’t happen in any other power plant, but the odds are lower. How much lower? That’s the big question here.

The mushroom cloud on the other hand is completely silly. Granted, it is the symbol for the nuclear age and it is a vivid image at that. But the reality is that there never will be a mushroom cloud over a nuclear reactor unless someone detonates a nuclear bomb at a reactor. The “worst case scenario” is the Chernobyl type disaster where the fissile material gets ejected from the core and spread over a wide area. This would be known as a dirty bomb. You know, the one the US is so afraid of someone could set off in the US.

So what about the proponents?

I think here we have to split them into two groups:

1. Politicians, Internet Commentators, Industry spokes people.
2. Engineers and Scientists.

The first group tends to be either misinformed as much as most of the opponents or has a vested financial interest in keeping the Status quo and downplaying any risk.

The second group though, the engineers, had me scratching my head for a bit as I couldn’t quite figure out why they were so adamant about downplaying the potential risks. It only occurred to me on Sunday that the reasons is rather simple: If you design a technology at one point or the other you have to be convinced that you have done a good job, as close to perfect as possible. Engineering always has worked on these principals, we design something with as many safety ideas in place as we can think off, and then when something goes wrong we go back to the drawing board, identify the point of failure and find a solution from this happening again.

In essence: Engineers need to believe they are Gods of their own creation and they can and will only admit they aren’t when proven otherwise.

This is an inherit human condition: We all live our lives that way, if we wouldn’t we couldn’t get out of bed in the morning out of fear that something bad could happen to us. We get into our cars or walk down the street ignoring the dangers we are in because we realize the odds are stacked in our favour, until they aren’t.

Out of this behaviour comes the rationalization right now in the pro nuclear camp why everything is not bad, but actually rather good: The reactors survived the initial earthquake and tsunami and only later failed.

This is an interesting way to look at the current problem. The reason why we now seem to have at least two melting cores is that the power that is needed to keep the cooling going until we can fully arrest the nuclear reaction has failed. This is a condition that could happen in other places as well, with or without and earthquake and a tsunami.

The engineers and scientists who write their fingers bloody right now with this line of argument on why all the other reactors are safe (no earthquake / no tsunami) fail to understand this though, or rather, they believe in the multiple backups that they have installed at all the other plants. Unfortunately Fukushima did have 300% redundancy as well. In the eternal words of Murphy: What can go wrong, will go wrong.

Yes, nuclear reactors have triple backup for these kinds of events, but cascading failures have happened before, there will always be a risk, we can lower it, but it will always exist and to deny this is doing us all a disservice.

Risk vs. Benefit

Which brings me to the real question that we have to answer when it comes to nuclear power: Are we, as a society and as a species, willing to take the risks with nuclear power? Are the benefits we gain from using it outweighing the risks?

Nuclear technology is still “brand new” in human technology terms. We have steam power for around 200 years, we have the petrol engine for a bit over a hundred and nuclear power is only slightly older than 50 years.

In these 50 years we had Windscale in Britain, Three Mile Island in the US and Chernobyl in the Soviet Union and now, it seems, Fukujima in Japan.

Add to this dozens if not hundreds of smaller accidents and incidents all over the world and you understand that the technology is far from fool proof. We’ve decided to run a marathon before we could really walk.

What’s worse on that count is that whereas with the rupture of a dam we can see the damage right away, in a nuclear disaster we may not know for generations the true cost of the accident.

On the benefit side: Japan could not have become what it is today without the use of nuclear power. China’s growth would be much lower as well. Other places like the US, Europe and Russia also benefited economically greatly from the use of nuclear energy. There is only so much fossil fuel, rivers and landmass that we can use to create electricity after all.

To Nuke or not to Nuke?

What is needed now, globally, is a debate over the use of nuclear for energy generation. This requires homework, by both sides.

The No side needs to educate itself over the real risks that are posed by nuclear power plants. The impression of the mushroom cloud over a power plant is neither realistic nor helpful.

At the same time the group also needs to come up with a list of things they, as a whole, are willing to give up if we remove the nuclear power input, at least until we can (if ever) replace it with an alternative energy source. Just turning them off and continuing as before is not an option.

On the pro nuclear side there needs to be an end to pretending that we have the technology fully under control. Eventually there will be a disaster. No human technology is infallible and honesty from the side of the pro-atom lobby would be more than refreshing.

We also, as a species, need to address what we want to do with all the spent fuel and old reactors. This is something we will have to deal with regardless if we continue using nuclear for energy generation or not. So where are we going to put all that highly radioactive garbage?

This is not a black & white scenario regardless of how either side wants to paint it. Both sides have valid points and both sides also have valid arguments in their support. The question really is: Are we willing to possibly risk future generations for our current prosperity?

God either wants to eliminate bad things and cannot, or can but does not want to, or neither wishes to nor can, or both wants to and can. If he wants to and cannot, then he is weak – and this does not apply to god. If he can but does not want to, then he is spiteful – which is equally foreign to god’s nature. If he neither wants to nor can, he is both weak and spiteful, and so not a god. If he wants to and can, which is the only thing fitting for a god, where then do bad things come from? Or why does he not eliminate them?

Epicurus (341 BCE – 270 BCE)

I just sent the following to Apple via their Feedback form, but I figure it would be nice to keep a copy for the rest of the world to see as well.

May I ask when Apple will join the 21st century and abandon the failed approach of using a monolithic file to manage a database?

Two years ago you guys sent me a questionnaire about my iTunes use. Including how many tracks I had in there. Well, I tried to tell you guys back then but you didn’t let me, your stupid web form maxed out at 30K tracks.

As it stands at this moment I have 78K tracks in iTunes (not counting video) and iTunes becomes more and more unusable by the day. It has gotten to the point that when I edit data in an album I have to shut down iTunes and start it up again so that it actually manages to read the changed data.

It is utterly broken and you guys keep stuffing more “features” into it without addressing the underlying performance and usability problems.

So how about this: Instead of enhancing it for the next iTard expansion you get two guys to write a SQL backend for it that allows me and others to store our data in MySQL or Postgress.

After that, feel free to go back and add useless features to sell more trinkets to some hipsters.

So for the past few days I have encountered this a few times:

The interesting thing is: This only happens in Google reader. if I go to the site (e.g. BoingBoing), the video plays just fine.

Seriously EMI, what’s your problem? Afraid that people may actually LIKE the stuff? Idiots.

Oh, and here is the (rather cool) video, presuming you can play it from this blog:

If you ever follow any real-estate “debate” in Vancouver sooner or later a bullish person will use “It’s different here because…” and then give you a variety of reasons. Be it the rich Chinese that seem to be lining up to buy property here or the lack of land.

But this is not what this is about, this is about something else, the question on why it is so hard for people to make changes that are necessary, or rather why most people only do things they can no longer avoid.

We are at a crossroads right now when it comes to humanity and how we will go from here. We clearly have risen, as a species, higher than anything else on this planet before (as far as we know) and we are now having to decide which direction to take. The one that will continue our dominance of this planet or the one where we will eventually be reduced to small groups and settlements.

Sounds negative? Maybe, but let me give you a rough overview on what we are facing.

Currently we are under “assault” (all mostly self made) on three main fronts:

- Finance
- (Cheap) Energy
- Climate Change

Let’s tackle those one by one.

1. Finance

The current and most pressing matter (and the one that will have an impact on the other two as well) is the financial situation.

Now, depending on what side of the line you fall you either think all will be well soon or the current system as we know it will collapse. Personally I am in the middle. The current system clearly has failed, if it will fail catastrophically and completely implode over night (it is a possibility) or if it will be a slow decline will remain to be seen. For now though it’s pretty clear that we cannot continue the way we have.

So what caused this? There are a few reasons, chief among them are two though:

1. Greed, pure and simple (it is a bit more complex but that would be an entire book to deal with all the finer points, for this discussion I just go with that). Short term gain without any regard for the long term future. This isn’t just something that is done by big corporation, it’s also a trademark of our politicians and those they represent (that would be you and I).

2. No idea what Money actually is.

Okay, so it comes in coins, paper notes or as a number on a piece of paper or computer screen, but that’s just a representation. What money really is is a representation of work. You work, you get paid money which you can trade for other goods and services, like the new leather jacket I bought the other day.

Debt on the other hand is a promise to work. Every time you use that Credit Card and don’t pay it off right away or you go and get a mortgage or a loan you essentially promise the lender that you will work for however long it takes you to pay back the lender.

The problem is: In most of the western world we have completely forgotten that distinction and are using debt like money. Out of obvious reasons this can’t end well.

2. (Cheap) Energy

If you pick up a history book and read through the last two thousand years something should jump out at you: Technological advancements didn’t really start until we started replacing human and animal power more and more with fossil fuel energy. Yes, we have used water power, and in some places wind, for millennia but those are geographically locked energy sources. Coal though allowed us for the first time to use the energy input were it made the most sense. It allowed us to build railways and large factories where people worked and consumed their goods, in or near cities.

With this came quick scientific advances as we slowly entered an age of prosperity, and boy did this take off in the early part of the 20th century when we finally found all these uses for oil which just literally shot out of the ground and wanted to be used.

Fast forward 100 years though and we are quickly running out of cheap energy, not to mention the environmental damage we have caused by burning all these fossil fuels.

The problem is though: Without cheap energy our way of life cannot happen. Think about: Every time you flip a light switch, turn over the ignition of your car or right now when reading this on the computer. Our entire way of life depends on cheap energy. If it wouldn’t be cheap oil (and it still is, despite what you may think) those Strawberries that you eat in rainy Vancouver, freezing Edmonton or snow covered Toronto in the middle of January would not be possible. Neither would your vacation in Cuba in February be a possibility.

Your cushy office job? Not a chance, you’re more likely to be tilling a field behind an ox or a horse or do hard manual labor in a factory.

In short: None of our gadgets would work if we wouldn’t have had cheap energy for the last 100 years. So far, we have not invested heavily into alternatives to the fossil fuels. Not in the least because the current oil companies have no interest in being priced out of the market by alternatives. So for now we’re lumbering along in, as it has been called, the long emergency.

3. Climate Change

Let’s not talk about if we are at fault or if it’s just a natural cycle. The reality is sea levels have been rising, glaciers are retreating and growing seasons are shifting. Not to mention that pests are migrating further north and are surviving winters here. Just ask BC and northern Alberta about the Pine Beetle to get an idea on what this could mean.

The problem is: We are not dealing with the fallout of this. Vast investments in infrastructure need to be made as rising sea levels are threatening coast lines and billions of people and their livelihoods. An increase in droughts and floods will continue to take a toll on food production and other resources.

What I did not mention here are two other things: Peak Soil and Peak Ocean. The first one being the rapid loss of arable land due to either desertification or just plain lack of nutrients in the soil, and no artificial fertilizer is not the answer, not on the least because many are derived from fossil fuels.

Peak Ocean is the realization that we have essentially overfished vast amounts of it, and continue to do so. Will we be able to let fish stocks recover?

CHANGE WE CAN BELIEVE IN

This was Obama’s slogan during the 2008 election. I am not going into US politics here, but I think this slogan is a good example of the problems we’re facing.

First and foremost after two years you’ll realize that Obama has achieved little of what he promised. The “Big Change” did not materialize. Why is that?

I am sure his opponents will say that he just isn’t as good as he made people think he is, but this is a bit too easy an explanation, plus it’s blame shifting.

So instead, let’s think about this for a moment.

As it is January I am sure many of you have made new years resolutions: No more fatty foods, no more drinking, get back to the Gym etc.

We’re around two weeks into the new year now. How are you doing? Have you stuck with them? Or are you already finding excuses? Are you doing all you could do to achieve your goal are you just doing token actions to “feel better”?

Going to the Y at least three times a week I have to admit I found myself a bit surprised to note that it seems the traffic has not picked up, so maybe the new years resolution for many is not to get fit. But a few weeks ago I ended up going with a friend. She made it clear to me that she needed to do something to get fit. All fine, but the moment we were at the Gym the overarching theme was this: “I don’t want to be sore tomorrow.”

“Ah,” I thought to myself, “typical girl.” Yes yes, call me sexist, but I have been around gyms often enough to have heard that song, mostly with the: “I don’t want to be too bulky”. Those are interesting statements out of a simple reason:

a.) As a girl you’d be hard pressed to bulk up with normal training.
b.) Soreness is a given if you go from a couch potato lifestyle to an active one. It’ll pass.

Point b.) is what made me realize something. She isn’t the only one who has this attitude, I know a few guys who have a similar attitude, they do “token workouts” but nothing that really challenges them. Why? Because they don’t want to “sweat” or “hurt” etc. In other words: They want the benefits but not do the work. If this would be the Matrix, most people would take the blue pill.

But here’s the reality too: Change is painful. There will be a phase of chaos, then a phase of pain as you adjust to the new way and then it will be just like before, just different.

But this bred in inertia, this “comfort seeking” is what is holding us back on all three levels right now as well.

The bailouts the Governments all over the world have performed over the last few years, and continue to do, are not really solving the problem. They are the “token workout” that many people are doing. Just enough to look as if they are serious about it but not hard enough to really create a change or cause them discomfort.

On the energy front it is similar, in order to make the cheap energy we currently have to last longer people need to use less of it, be it by eating more local, less driving their car or turning down the heat or AC or turning off the lights when not in the room. Instead people are told to buy hybrid cars and CFLs or get a more energy efficient device. All designed to force us not to change our lifestyle.

Same goes for Climate Change, in order to prepare for it, resources need to be reallocated, people moved etc. You get the idea.

The reality is we are failing on all three points out of the same reason: We don’t like to experience any discomfort. So people who see the writing on the wall either become activists (and in the course mostly alienate most people) or tell themselves pretty lies, like most of the real estate bulls in Vancouver, that it is “different this time”.

A short story from my past: When I started doing Triathlon and aiming for Ironman I hired a trainer. One of the first things he told me was: “Pain is weakness leaving the body”. This statement, although somewhat hollow, has a certain ring of truth to it: Once you’re over the pain you are stronger, more capable and, in a way, a different person. The old adage of “What doesn’t kill us, makes us stronger” applies.

So where does that leave us? We have three large problems that all require us to change the way we live our lives. Many people I think realize this but do not want to make the effort. If the choice is giving between no car or a hybrid, people will chose the hybrid. Not because they really necessarily need a car but rather they don’t want to have to deal with all the chaos and change that would ensue would they not have the car.

Or finances. The debt to income ratio in Canada right now is quickly approaching 1:1.5, BC’s own Government shows in their statistics that 1/8th of the Province’s GDP is generated by people buying houses / apartments / condos to live in. Think about this, 1/8th of the entire economic output is people borrowing money.

So why are people so reluctant? For one it is really the avoidance of “pain” and “suffering”, at least in the short term. But the much bigger problem is that people do not really understand the world we’re living in. We are meant to live in small groups, anything above around 30 people and we cannot emotionally attach to what happens to the individual. As Stalin said: “One death is a tragedy, a million deaths is just a number.”

Cynical? Maybe, but also pretty close to the truth, who here truly feels bad about all the people that day on a daily basis of preventable diseases or violence?

Then there is another reason: Until recently (~60 or so years ago), life in general was rather harsh and hard. We were also quite limited in the amount of resources each individual had access to. These days though we in the west have an abundance of stuff, quite often pillaged and plundered from other parts of the world. So we are “programmed” to hold onto the things that we possess. Furthermore, disasters / problems in the past were usually limited to the small group you were in. If things didn’t work out, say you ran out of water, you could pack up and move to another place where there was water, and people regularly did.

This time around though we are facing global problems, all three of the ones mentioned above, and for most people this is something they cannot really process. By the time the problem will land on their doorstep it will be too late to react and we won’t have the option to move to a different place to escape the problem.

So what’s the take-away? I guess: Be aware, prepare and hope for the best. There are forces at work right now that are away beyond the individuals control.

It truly is different this time, but not in the way many think (hope?) it will be.

I am sure I am not the only one who, when looking at all the bank accounts and assets finds himself not being where they really want to be.

So, the only plan I have made to 2011 is to get where I want to be (and a few smaller things on the side as well, but this is the biggie).

In order to get there a plan was needed and here I am giving you an insight on how I plan on accomplishing this, maybe it will be useful to you as well.

1. Understand the Problem

Everything starts with an analysis. In this case you want to know where it is you actually spend the money.

For this I kept a log for a month, writing out any expenses that I have, so that included Rent (or Mortgage), Internet etc. all the fix costs are added up, then looked at. I found little I could cut, mainly because I already stripped my budget a few months ago.

I then looked at all the other expenses I had, that included food etc. But I was more interested in variable spending, that is, stuff I spent money on that wasn’t really all that useful. Seeing how much, for example, I had spent every month on eating out was a bit of an eye opener (though this is something I had already done earlier in the year as well and pared back accordingly).

Lastly, I set up a spreadsheet. In this spreadsheet I listed every single debt that I had. I brought out the whole amount, how much I paid off that month, and most importantly, how much I paid that month on interest.

So, any CC, Mortgage, LOC etc. that you have goes into this spreadsheet.

It tallies up the totals, how much outstanding debt (too much), how much I pay in interest every month (way too much) and then I added up how much I had paid off this month (not enough).

The reason for this is to show just how expensive debt is. I realized that over the last few months that only half of my payments went to serve the outstanding debt, the rest was interest payments. This number will go down as time progresses (and this part of the idea of keeping the spreadsheet) but for now it is a reminder just how stupid one can be by taking out a loan.

Also: Add up the amount of interest you pay and just imagine what you could be doing with all that money. Once the debt is gone, you will be able to use that money (interest alone!) to do nice things.

Motivated yet?

2. Make a Budget

Now that we have all of this sorted out and know how bad (or not so bad) we are off it’s time to make a budget and a plan.

The budget is rather easy, you take your fixed expenses, those you will not be able to par down much I would presume, though if you can, cut it down. Do you really still need Cable TV? I didn’t so it went out the window.

Make a budget for food, and also important, give yourself an entertainment budget. If you par it all down the odds are you will still be spending and then just be mad at yourself, plus, if you give yourself a budget and come in under you’re better of.

So my budget for entertainment beginning January is going to be $100 a mont. This does not include food, but it does include eating out.

Pay Cash

This is a biggie, and I am not the only one who had this idea: Stop paying with your Bank card or Credit Card. Why? Because it makes money less real. It’s just a number. Although you may see on your spreadsheet what you have just spent money, the reality is that it won’t sink in until later.

As such: give yourself a weekly money budget to spend, then carry this around as cash. Leave your CC and Bank Card at home and only take it with you when you know you need it (e.g. if you have to pay for a large item). Other than that, keep them in a drawer, the less temptation, the better.

Make a shopping list

If you sit down at home first, then write a list out of the things that you need you’re less likely to stray from it, this is also a cost control measure as you’re less likely to give in to impulse buys.

Make a payback plan

This is another biggie. I get paid once a month. The temptation is there to just make your debt payments right then and there. But, psychology, if you pay back more than once a month (say, every two weeks), you get a “benefit” out of it. you will see how your outstanding balance goes down twice and this is a very rewarding feeling.

I did put the spreadsheets etc. in place as of December, so I already had a “test run” and I can tell you to make the payment and then updating the spreadsheet is deeply satisfying. Pay back early, pay back often, see how you’re doing better.

Be Tax Smart

Oh, I am guilty of this. I never really bothered with writing stuff off. I spent the last month looking at all the things I could have written off but never did. Obviously you don’t want to do that yourself, you want to find yourself an accountant that can do the tax return for you. But in order to make this fast and less painful make sure you sort your invoices etc. I admit, I was very very bad at this too. I spent the last two months going through my “filing box” and shredded and filed a lot of paper. It was annoying and boring, there is a reason why I am not a bookkeeper or accountant, but if you want to take control of your finances you need to know where you are.

See the money you’re getting back from your tax return as a good way to pay back your debt even faster.

A good example of this is the MSP here in BC. I pay this myself and it is $57/month, which means I pay $684/year on the MSP. Rule of thumb is you get around 30% back on your tax return, so $205 just on that. Nice.

Likewise other things can be written off, get an accountant, talk with her or him and see what else you can write off.

This also means to try and max out any (income) tax shelter you may have, that is for example the RRSP here in Canada that you could and should max out if you can.

Savings

I admit it, I have a very very serious plan to be debt free, as such I have delayed / ignored any logic that would dictate to put money away. As I am single the risk is pretty slim but if you have family it may be a good idea to not be as aggressive on the payback as I am. For example, take your tax return and put it in a savings account, a Tax Free Savings account is a good idea (I will write about this a bit more in the next few days, but for now see it as this: As you already paid income tax on it, any profit you make in that account is yours to keep. While taking money out of the RRSP will incur income taxes (it is only deferred) anything you take out of the TFSA does not. So for a “rainy day” fund this is the better option.

Be aware though that there is a contribution limit of currently $5000/year, so you cannot save more than that in it, if you have more than a normal savings account will do as well.

Be Honest

This is the most important thing. Be honest to yourself about your financial situation. How much you own, how much you pay in interest and how long it would take you to pay it off at your current rate.

If you want to finance something new, calculate how much it is REALLY going to cost you, that is: How much will you pay on this item REALLY when you factor in all the interest you’re going to pay on it. This also leads into my final point:

Wants and Needs

This is probably the biggest. Advertising and peer pressure has turned many wants into needs. Learn the difference.

Crude example:

I NEED to eat and cloth and have Shelter.
I WANT that new iPhone / Computer / Game.

So, everything you currently spend money on is something you should examine based on this. Do you really need it? Or do you just want it? I mentioned above to make more than one debt repayment a month, the rational feeds straight into this. Reducing your debt has become a need, buying new stuff has become a want.

There is enough research that shows that if we go out and buy something we do get a “reward” in the brain, so a lot of the spending we are doing is based around this. Making these repayments is a way of getting the reward without causing any additional cost.

If you want, make debt payment every week, even if it is smaller amounts you pay back every time you will get the gratification of “buying” something and thus are less tempted to pay for other things that only get you deeper into debt.

Plan for the Future

Okay, it may take you a year or two to dig yourself out of that financial hole you’re in, but that should not prevent you from making plans for the future. This includes investments.

Do you have a pension at your job? If so, will it pay enough for you to live on? Where are your assets? (Note: If you have a Mortgage, you don’t own the house, so don’t count it as an asset it’s a liability until paid off, and even once it’s paid of you still have taxes and repairs to consider).

On how much could you survive? The rule of thumb is you should be paying no more than 1/3 of your income for shelter, how much will your house cost you once you’ve paid it off (taxes, repairs, utilities etc.). You get the idea.

Find yourself a good financial advisor once you’re done. Keep in mind: Diversification is the name of the game, don’t keep everything in one asset otherwise you’re badly exposed (this is also were the TFSA can come in).

Lastly a disclaimer: I am not a Financial Advisor, nor a Financial Professional. I have done a lot of reading about this over the last few years though and so far this plan works for me. I am also a single guy, I have no dependents and the only one I need to take into consideration when I make any financial decisions and the effects they have is me

Lastly, my longterm goal (two years out) is a simple one: I only want to need to have to work for six months out of the year, this does and has made an impact on how I live my life, but I am much more relaxed about this.

Life of course is unpredictable, so who knows what happens in the next twelve months, but the goal is that by the end of 2011 I will be in the situation that I am at the point where I only need to work nine months in 2012 if I so chose.

Your Turn.

I am sure the internet, as always, will be full with “this was 2010” or some such, not to mention the “traditional media”.

So why not?

On the global scale, things that I am aware of but that don’t necessarily directly affect me I would have to say the biggest news was Wikileaks. Not so much because of what they released (or are releasing) as in the way the media and politicians have reacted.

To put it mildly: It was and is a pretty shameful spectacle.

Like or don’t like Julian Assange, but at least the man seems to have principles and stick to them. He also gave Wikileaks a face and that seems to have galled some of the earlier Wikileaks supporters.

The good thing that may come out of it next year is another leak site, if they will be as principled as Wikileaks seems to be under Assange remains to be seen.

But I still wonder how much of an impact this will really on our day to day lives. It seems the internet is split between people who support Wikileaks and it’s mission and those who (mainly) see it as an attack on the United States. Again, I am sure, 2011 will give us more answers to that as media and internet loudmouths will jockey for a new position trying to either take Wikileaks down or support it.
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I admit it. I came late to the “new” TopGear hype, not until late 2008 did I discover Jeremey Clarkson’s ode to the automobile. I had heard of it before, but I thought it was pretty stupid (a motoring show that is). And you know what? The first season of the re-designed TopGear really wasn’t all that great, it was very much like what you would expect from a motoring show but then there were hints of greatness.

Fast forward eight years and 15 Seasons later and TopGear, the original one, is apparently the most downloaded program on the planet. Now that’s an achievement. Not only that but TopGear has gone on to spawn copies in a variety of places, Russia, Australia and now (again) in the US.

So what is it that makes the original TopGear so great? The answer to this of course is probably different for everybody but I think there are a few core principles that TopGear has nailed:

The Presenters

In it’s currently lineup they are together since Season two. You have Jeremy Clarkson as the “leader”, Richard Hammond as his sidekick and James May (aka Captain Slow) as the resident Geek.

What all three of them have though is really good Chemistry. They are all “boys at heart” and TopGear clearly plays on and off this.

They all are accomplished journalists too and although Richard Hammond is hosting Total Wipeout he still writes columns and does serious stuff as well. Overall the Team just works.

The Presentation

There is a remarkable amount of work that has been put into creating TopGear, the production values seem high, and not only because they have high-end sports cars but rather really good cinematography, editing and scoring.

In part the BBC’s blanket music license helps in creating this feeling, but kudos have to be given to the editor and director of photography (DP).

It is FUN

Yes, it needs to be stated here. The three presenters are big kids in a candy store and they aren’t ashamed of having fun. This is where it clicks the most with me, those guys get to do things that most guys watching on TV would LOVE to do. We live through their experiences. How can this not be a great program.

Enter TopGear USA

There were already two aborted attempts to bring TopGear to the US, as of this November the History Channel of all places has commissioned one series. The show follows very closely the original, which on the surface sounds like a good idea, but in reality it makes it hard not to compare the two. So far, the strengths of the original have proven to be the weakness of the US version.

The Presenters

The US version has Adam Ferrara, Tanner Foust and Rutledge Wood as the presenters. I admit: The only person I knew (somewahat) was Adam Ferrara, though not in the context of motoring.

Those three are clearly modelled on the original cast, with Ferrara filling in for Clarkson, Foust for Hammond and Wood for May. The only problem is: They aren’t.

I don’t mean that they aren’t those three guys, obviously, but the archetype that is associated with the three original presenters isn’t there either.

Ferrara is not Clarkson. Their personality and attitude is completely different. Where Clarkson has a lot of hard corners and in general is a very imposing person Ferrara comes of as being washed with too much fabric softener. The writing on the show tries him to be “the tough guy” but you can see he is struggling with it. He just cannot be mean like Clarkson can without coming off as a complete asshole.

Then there is Foust, a Hammond (aka Hamster) he is not. He clearly fits better into his role than Ferrara does but I mostly put this down to a similar physical type (albeit taller) than Hammond. His presentation and talking still comes off as someone who is reading someone else’s script (more about this a bit later).

Which brings me to Wood. He clearly is a copy of May, he is a geek, but not a car geek. He comes off as the little kid that was always teased in school but now finally is in the limelight and is so awestruck by it that he can’t help but constantly have a stupid grin on his face announcing to the world: “I can’t believe they let me do this.”

So, individually they are not living up to the expectation / character, but it gets worse, there does not seem to be a lot of chemistry. Yes, TopGear (the original) is a scripted show, in the sense that they do lay out the course of a “race” or “event” and they have certain “presentation segments” but the difference seems to be that the original cast gets to write it’s own lines. The US team though seems to rely on other writers and it shows. The delivery is coming of as wooden most of the time, it doesn’t matter if it is a “flippin remark” or a presentation. Wood especially comes off as “wooden” in most of his presentation to a point where I am wondering why they actually hired him in the first place.

None of the US presenters seems to feel comfortable in being in the limelight, they all come off as stiff and uncomfortable and although some reviewers said it is getting better beginning with Episode three I can’t quite see that. Last nights Episode four was just as bad as previous ones.

The Presentation

Okay, so we have the presenters out of the way which gets me to the visual presentation itself.

Firstly, there is a huge change with the music, not too surprising considering that music licenses are expensive and History isn’t that big a network, fine, I can live with that.

Where it gets painful for me though is when I look at the way the show is shot. This starts from camera angles to focus pulling to general “look” of the show.

My reaction after the first episode was:

“TopGear (UK) is high gloss (car) porn, while TopGear (US) comes off as a cheap webcam show.”

Unfortunately this hasn’t changed. Watching last nights episode (and then briefly skimming through some older (Season eight) episodes of the original TopGear makes this quite clear. Where the original has smooth focus pulls, nice use of gradient filters and a flow to each of the videos the US version comes off like a high school project. Fast snap focus, jump cuts and an overall feel of aimless editing. It all feels disconnected and badly edited.

I know many people are saying that the first two Seasons of TopGear UK weren’t that great either, and they are right. But the difference is this: TopGear UK started anew, they tried to create a new type of car show and they succeeded. TopGear US does not try to re-invent the show format, they are trying to copy it for the US market and they do fail miserably in the process.

It is NOT Fun

Which brings me to the final verdict though. The show just isn’t fun. The things mentioned above are a big part of it, but worse to me is that judging by the shows I have seen as well as the preview for the rest of season one I can’t help but feel that someone at TopGear US went through 15 seasons of the original and then decided which episodes / stunts / films were cool and then set out to re-create them with a much more limited budget.

So, having seen the original a lot feels like a re-hash. Maybe that’s not fair to the show as I am sure there are many people in the US who have never seen the original (though it has been broadcast on BBC America), buy for me this is a problem. Not only because it is a re-hash (which is fine, there are only so many things you can do with cars) but rather because it allows me to directly compare how they have done things and the reality is this: The US remake comes off cheap and amateurish.

So what would need to change?

That is an excellent question. I think a few things are in order:

Presenters 

Have them write their own material, forget about the archetypes that were established in the UK version and let those guys find their own inner “petrolhead”.

Get a decent DP

Seriously, or if you can’t afford one, then have your current one watch all of the original UK episodes. What makes TopGear look so good is not expensive cameras or special effects, it’s knowing how to light the scene and use the camera.

Get Creative

Stop aping the original show (now there’s a theme going) and start thinking of your own stunts / ideas. Come on America, you went to war to not be beholden to the Brits and now you’re just aping them?

Also: What makes the original work so well is that Clarkson is the top dog. No doubt about it, he has the arrogance to pull it off. TopGear US lacks a “core”, find one.

Final Verdict

If you don’t know the original, watch it, there is much worse out there (especially if you’re a car enthusiast), if you have seen the original…. Well, I’d say don’t bother. I think after four episodes I am done with it… Besides, the new season of the original starts soon.

Darkness before the light?

For many years, Harris Decima pollster Allan Gregg has asked respondents whether they consider themselves conservatives, liberals or centrists, and he’s also asked them how they vote. In recent years, he told the Manning Centre conference, the number of self-identified conservatives has been growing. But what’s almost more interesting is that the political allegiance of self-identified centrists has shifted, too. In 1997, 41 per cent of centrists voted for the Chrétien Liberals. In 2008, 48 per cent voted for the Harper Conservatives. Two things have happened. As the population ages and is buffeted by polarizing events like the struggle against international terrorism, the centre has shifted rightward. And the Harper Conservatives have pushed the Liberals, sometimes with their hearty co-operation, off-centre.

Gregg found that 89 per cent of respondents, nearly everyone, agrees that “nothing is more important than family.” Sixty-seven per cent agree that “marriage is, by definition, between a man and a woman,” 60 per cent that “abortion is morally wrong.”

This is interesting to me for a few reasons.