The Social Animal

TVO's great series Big Ideas has an excellent talk this week by journalist David Brooks entitled How Success Happens. The talk is based upon the research he did for his book The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character and Achievement. One of the things he mentions in the talk is Karl Popper's continuum of predictability ranging from clouds to clocks. One of the topics that EWB devote a lot of time is the same notion of being able to distinguish between complex and complicated things. Clouds are very complex and hard to predict; clocks can be very complicated, but ultimately they are extremely predictable.

Santa's Carbon Footprint

Sadly, it seems Santa is just another net contributor to our cultural conundrum.

Brain stimulation research

There is a four minute video on the NSF site that explains some research called decoded neurofeedback that essentially can insert data into a subject's brain. It is extremely primitive, but so was ENIAC. Someday, perhaps, some aspects of movies like The Matrix or Brainstorm will be possible.

The American Thanksgiving

For anyone who has visited or lived in the USA during November, you probably understand that Thanksgiving is a truly great tradition. While Independence Day may be more significant, American Thanksgiving is when the best of American character is demonstrated. Speak with someone who has visited or lived in the U.S. during this time of November and you will likely hear a story of being invited to spend the day with someone's family. In my time at RPI, every year someone made certain that I wasn't spending the day alone. Few people will disagree with your desire to ignore Easter or spend a New Years quietly at home, but if you even hint that on Thanksgiving Day you plan to just watch football alone in your apartment, you are going to be dragged over to a colleague's place for a huge turkey dinner.

In contrast, Canadian Thanksgiving just doesn't have the same cultural roots for some reason. Both cultures like to eat turkey, perhaps because settlers in both countries extirpated the tasty bird throughout many parts of the continent. Many Canadians feel the day is nothing more than a welcome day off work in October, a time to close the cottage or have one last canoe trip for the year. Certainly there are plenty of family dinners, but in my experience, Americans really nail the thanks in Thanksgiving by being so quick and insistent about welcoming people into their families. Way to go Yanks ! And thanks to all the people who have made me ... homesick for the my time spent south of the border.

The Grand River survey

Lots of people come to our area to enjoy the Grand River; here I am on the Nith with friends from the local canoe club.

Please spend a few minutes to take this survey and provide your perspective on the Grand River watershed.

Brigade regrouping

Three years ago during my first Brigade experience there were two Paddle Canada crews - PC1 & PC2. This past summer there were twelve alumni participating so one day we put together a "PC3" crew so we could all paddle together again. We also sent a thank you message to Eric Williams who made it possible for the two crews to paddle in 2008.

In the photo from PC2 are Sharon, Bill and Richard (sequentially from my left) and David who is wearing a PFD. From PC1 are Ross, David and Jay on the far right. Missing from the photo are Janice and Tanya who were teaching kids how to canoe when this shot was taken; Eloise who was driving down to rejoin the Brigade; and Robbie Bates who could only get two weeks off work.

In a few weeks some of will be together again for the official launch of the 2011 video. That probably means I will get the itch before long to assemble some of my 2011 video so I have something to show. Therefore I predict a few marathon video editing sessions in the not too distant future.

Geek Squad CEO interview

There is an interesting article about Robert Stephens the founder of Geek Squad. He says "not having money can be a real blessing.” One of his lessons was “before hiring a PR firm, do your own PR — you will realize what is good and be a better consumer to PR firms. ... In 2000, I called up Best Buy—I wanted to take over their service department ... They liked the idea. We dated for two years and got married in 2002.” In 2010, Stephens was named Best Buy’s Chief Technology Officer.

Cellular carriers lie

Telus is my cellular service provider and I recently called them before I went to Europe to ask about the cost of using my BlackBerry while I was traveling. I was told that I would pay $10 per MB for data and based upon my daily usage in Canada, I was able to predict my cost because I wouldn't be using the browser like I might here in Canada. Perhaps I would get about 20 emails per day, and each email might be at most 5K so I might expect to consume 100K per day, or about a dollar per day.

What they don't explain is that every hour I would be billed 20K to maintain the convenience of a real-time data connection. Back in Canada, that connection is maintained for just 1K per hour. So I was billed an extra 450K (24 hours x 19K), or $4.50, per day in unexpected data!! Telus claim that they are billed the 20K from the foreign carrier, but those networks are running modern 3G networks and they would have as advanced billing capabilities as any carrier here and the data usage would be the same. Therefore, the carriers are charging a HUGE premium, perhaps in Europe, but perhaps by agreement between carriers on both sides.

If you want the convenience of having email arrive immediately while you are in Europe, then you are forced to pay $0.20 per hour and it would be advisable to turn off the device when you sleep which I never do here in Canada. Telus may not have told a direct lie, but they do misrepresent the cost of operating their devices outside their network.

Hubble movies

Normally we think of images made by the Hubble Space Telescope as being static views of galaxies or stars far away. But 14 years of images stitched together into short video clips provide a very interesting view of how stars form.

Famine is a crime

A year ago I was getting ready to go to Malawi and my other blog discusses a few of the complexities of international development that I encountered. Disaster relief efforts, such as the response to the famine in Somalia can be even more complex. For example, it would be simple to imagine a boat load of surplus North American food, perhaps bags of wheat, being shipped to Somalia. But imagine being a farmer near the drought zone seeing his crop value drop as the market is flooded with free imports. Dumping a commodity in Canada would result in a trade dispute, but that dispute mechanism is not easily activated by a rural farmer in east Africa. Hopefully the dollars being directed to help people in Somalia through aid agencies in the developed world will be used to purchase food produced within east Africa so as to stimulate, not crush, their agricultural sector.

Someone recently asked me what I thought was the cause of the famine in Somalia . . . actually ... that isn't true. This person simply stated the cause was too many people. I noted that my great-grandparents lived in a society where big families were the norm and most of the developing world is based upon a similar agricultural economy. My response was perhaps a small education, but it makes me wonder how is it possible for Canadians to get the impression that the famine in Somalia is just an agricultural production problem? It seems to me that the media is explaining there is a long lasting war. But perhaps the difference of circumstance is so far beyond our cultural context that most people are incapable of imagining the situation. I went to a refugee camp when I was in Malawi and I can't truly comprehend what is happening in Somalia.

The Foreign Policy article linked here presents a more complex story of food insecurity routed in political extremism. Just like Stalin starved people to death, so too have extremists conducted a similar campaign in Somalia. Imagine being a logistics officer with Doctors Without Borders and consider what it would be like to negotiate with weapon-toting radicals as you attempt to get food to people who are starving to death. I support a couple organizations that are capable of delivering thoughtful action and I hope you will also give generously -- Doctors Without Borders and CARE