Blessed by the Potato

I don’t know what to make of all this fuss.

Supposedly, there are a lot of people out there that mishandled their TFSA accounts, ended up contributing more than the $5000 allowed in 2009, and are now being assessed the 1% per month penalty. This has lead to much wringing of hands and wailing over the fees (especially since if you opted for a savings account, you made 1% per year in interest on your over-contribution).

On the one hand, it was the first year of the TFSA, and people over-contributing to savings accounts with paltry interest were clearly doing so out of ignorance and not trying to out-earn the penalties, so perhaps there could be some leniency in the penalties assessed.

On the other hand, it’s not that complicated an account. The contribution room was $5000 for everybody — the RRSP has a similar over-contribution penalty, but people seem to be able to track their contributions for that (and there everyone’s contribution room is different!).

Indeed, before each of my blog posts on the TFSA I summed up the new account in just seventy words, which covered both the limit and the having to wait a year part:

“You can contribute money to it ($5000 per year) to grow tax-free until you feel like taking it out. While the banks might charge a fee to withdraw, there’s no tax penalty (unlike an RRSP), and you can recontribute any withdrawals in later years so you don’t lose the tax shelter space (again, unlike RRSPs) so it’s a great account not only for retirement, but also for medium/long-term savings goals.”

Other blogs and newspaper articles had similar summaries all throughout the introduction, I don’t know how people aren’t getting this.

At least the fuss over the penalties should give the issues prominence in the media so in the future, people will get it!

The Globe and Mail looks to have been taken in by a perpetual motion machine type scammer in today’s article “Texas university has eureka moment for coal-to-gas”.

I’m not saying that there’s necessarily anything wrong with the main topic of the article: it is possible to make gasoline or other liquid fuels from coal, and researchers in Texas may have found a way to do so economically. What I take issue with are these lines:

“Far better, he said, to capture CO{-2} right at power plants and convert it into crude on the spot. ” … “Assuming, arbitrarily for the moment, that Texas has struck oil in a huge way yet again, UTA’s announcement shows that energy research has finally begun to move in the right direction – simultaneously toward clean coal and the commercial exploitation of carbon dioxide. The reasons are obvious. The world has enough coal reserves to last for centuries. And it has enough CO{-2} – used as an abundant new raw material – to last forever. Harnessed together, this cheap coal and this greenhouse gas could drive the global economy for hundreds of years. “

Carbon dioxide is the product of burning fossil fuels. You have some energy-carrying molecule, you release the energy, and you get carbon dioxide. In order to take carbon dioxide and turn it back into an energy-carrying molecule (oil, coal, sugar, whatever), you have to have a source of energy to get the energy back into the system. For biofuels, this reaction takes place inside plants using energy from the sun. To think that you can simply take the carbon dioxide from a power plant and convert it to crude on the spot is ludicrous — akin to the perpetual-motion machine ideas like putting a windmill on your car.

On top of that, it doesn’t sound like much of a breakthrough: a tonne of coal has something like 15 GJ of energy. To turn that into 1.5 barrels of oil would reduce that to something like 9 GJ of energy, and only about 25% of the mass. Where has the other 1500 lbs of coal gone? Probably used up to supply the energy for the conversion, and out as carbon dioxide. It may be economical (due to the cheap price of coal vs oil), but it’s not particularly green or efficient. Except for rare cases where liquid fuels are needed for range (or where you need to keep the tanks in the blitzkrieg rolling, no matter how much of your total energy reserves it eats up), for transportation purposes it would be far better to burn the coal to make electricity, and then use electrified transportation, than to convert it to gasoline at that kind of conversion ratio.

Update: I contacted Mr. Reynolds at the Globe to inform him that something wasn’t right in his article. He provided me with the original source, which still is missing that key ingredient of how this isn’t just a perpetual motion machine:

“Though refining the technology for converting coal and oil shales to oil is a CREST priority, converting smokestack carbon dioxide to hydrocarbon fuels is also high on the research list.

“The idea that we can dispose of massive quantities of greenhouse gases like CO2 by piping them underground or into the oceans is not very practical,” Rajeshwar says. Better to capture carbon dioxide at power plants and cement plants, convert it to carbon monoxide and then add hydrogen from a renewable source like the water trapped inside lignite coal to make what’s called syngas.

“What’s produced is a liquid hydrocarbon fuel—synthetic oil—from which we can then make any conventional fuel, like gasoline or diesel,” Rajeshwar says. “The oil produced is very similar to that produced from coal.”

These are not the only ideas making the rounds at CREST. Others abound but are not as advanced.

“This is not hypothetical academia,” Billo says. “What we’re doing here is producing real solutions to this country acquiring sustainable and affordable energy.”

I’m sure you’ve all heard it before me (since people have been telling me about it while I haven’t been watching/reading the news myself lately): a Prius in California went out of control, and the police had to issue instructions over the loudspeaker to the driver, who then managed to safely stop the car.

I (and many other Prius owners) are anxiously awaiting the full report to try to find out what really went on. I don’t want to prematurely pass judgement one way or the other (on the car or on the driver) while the facts are so thin (and a media in full-hyperbolic frenzy is not usually reliable when it comes to small details).

The biggest questions in my mind immediately were:

1. Why did he not turn the car off?

2. Why did he not put the car in neutral?

Indeed, these are two of the steps that have been widely publicized as ways to stop an out-of-control car as the Toyota recall mess has progressed. An accelerator could become stuck in any car, not just a Toyota, and drivers should know how to manage that situation! It’s possible that he had a rare problem crop up, but poor crisis management lead to it becoming national news.

Now, if he did try these basic steps, and the car didn’t obey those inputs, then we have a more serious problem on our hands. That would represent two levels of failure, and be an extreme safety concern.

Since, at the direction of the officer, he was able to shut the car down and stop, I have to initially suspect that he did not try to turn the car off or shift to neutral (or use the emergency brake?!) until after he spent several minutes on his joyride, which to me clearly indicates at least some driver-error interaction in making the whole situation worse (though a mechanical/electrical/computer problem may have initiated the cascade of failure). **And how did he stop the car eventually? By turning it off under direction of the CHP officer.

So, until a level-headed report with all these facts comes out, the take-home message: learn how to control your car in an emergency situation. CAA and Young Drivers, last I checked, offered one-off refresher lessons if you need it. Or, educate yourself: how do you turn off your car and/or shift to neutral if the throttle sticks? What happens if you do that? For most cars, there is no harm in trying, under safe conditions (i.e., no other traffic — better yet, get some friends together and rent some time on a closed track) to get up to speed, shift to neutral, and stop. Do it. Find out what happens (if anything) to your power steering and brake assist while you’re in a calm state of mind and in control of the situation. You won’t harm your car*. At the very least, look it up so you know academically.

* – probably. I wouldn’t hurt your car. But who knows what you‘ll do. ;)

If you are in this situation and want to use the brakes, apply the brakes hard and do not try to slow gradually because you will overheat the brakes and experience brake fade. Try to stop completely in one go.

One interesting twist is that the Prius (and many other newer cars) has a push-button start, rather than a conventional key-turn. That means you can’t just turn the key to turn it off, you have to push and hold the button for a few seconds if you want to power-off the car while moving (in park, you just tap the button). Now, this is the same behaviour as nearly every personal computer/cell phone/etc. on the market today. Push and hold to power off. In an interesting bit of user-interaction ergonomics, Toyota is reportedly considering adding “rapidly tapping the button” as a method to turn off the car, since that’s what people may attempt in a crisis.

Update: Someone posted a link to the 911 call at http://10newsblogs.com/audio/prius-911call.mp3 — the 911 operator does instruct him many times to shift to neutral and how to turn the car off, and he doesn’t respond. In fact, most of the call consists of her telling him to shift to neutral, and he just swears and tells her landmarks he’s passing. Don’t know yet if he didn’t hear her, if he tried and it didn’t work… but people are starting to suspect that he’s a hoax. Now I really can’t wait for a real report on the whole thing…

In a recent post, I tried to explain that hysteria around vaccinations is uncalled for — they’re not perfect, complications do occur, but they’re generally much less risky and preferable to a pandemic. The idea that the government is out to get you with them is silly.

Ben raised the point about corporations being out to get you, and manufacture hysteria. Just so I don’t give corporations a free pass, let’s explore that idea. First off though, I’m going to say that I really doubt that the flu shot is the vehicle for a corporate takeover of the world. Even with big volume (trying to get 50%+ of the population vaccinated), vaccines aren’t a huge profit centre — governments place the orders and negotiate to shave profit margins, and vaccines by and large aren’t patent protected like many medications (i.e.: there is some competition, and they are not a product with retail markups).

Flu drugs taken after you get sick are a beast of a different nature. On the one hand, they seem like a miracle of modern science: long after we had a full spectrum of antibiotics to use, we still hadn’t developed terribly effective antivirals. On the other, this is where the corporate profits at the expense of the little guy story seems to take hold, if only a little. These drugs are of limited effectiveness (they won’t make your flu go away overnight), and the viruses can rapidly evolve resistance to them. They have a much worse risk profile than vaccines; though that’s not as important because you take them after you get sick. Cancelling that out is the fact that you have to take them so soon after you start displaying symptoms that there’s a high chance people who weren’t/wouldn’t be very sick (or who were running a fever for a non-pandemic flu reason) will be popping them anyway — or contrarily, people who are quite sick won’t get them because it’s silly to go to your doctor the first day after you get a cough.

They are very handy drugs to have stockpiled, especially to keep the front-line healthcare workers on their feet. But Canada purchased 55 million doses — or perhaps to keep the anti-corporate slant going, Canada was sold 55 million doses. A typical course is 10 doses, so that’s enough to treat 5.5 million people, 16% of our population, which IMHO is probably overkill. The figures I have say that in a typical flu season ~20% of the population gets sick; even if that’s more like 30% for H1N1 (even after the vaccination program), we’d have to have half those people see a doctor within a very short time after starting to have a fever, and be willing to take a fairly new-to-the-market medication (after all, these will likely be the people who didn’t want the vaccine). I just have a hard time seeing that happening. I think our government might have been too afraid to be seen doing too little to prepare, and was over-sold the antivirals (which is an easy pitch for the corporations to make in this environment), or was sold them for prophylactic use. Of course, some of those antiviral doses could ultimately be destined for 3rd-world countries as part of our foreign aid efforts, in which case over-stockpiling makes some sense.

The US government has about half as much per capita at the moment, but their stated goal is to have the reserves to treat up to 25% of their population.

Now, all this ranting about Tamiflu over-use is a little two-faced because unfortunately, Wayfare has come down with ILI (Influenza Like Illness — fever, coughing, body aches — they don’t bother to run the lab tests for H1N1 any more since according to the health unit, it’s the only strain of virus on the go at the moment). So, knowing the limitations of Tamiflu (having to start treatment early), we rushed off to the hospital even though she wasn’t that sick. She had a chest x-ray and was prescribed Tamiflu (as well as an over-the-counter sinus cleanser such as hydrasense — I thought those things were pure quackery at first, but apparently there is some belief that they help). Given how scary this strain of flu can be in young people, it seemed like a prudent thing to do. The government even gave us the Tamiflu for free!

As for me, I had my shot on Monday, but it takes 10-14 days to build up immunity, so I’ve got a small window here where she can infect me. I’ve just got to stay holed up in my office for another week…

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The Daily Show (an often surprisingly level-headed source of news and commentary) had a little bit on the H1N1 vaccine last night which I recommend you give a quick watch (available online for Canadians at http://watch.thecomedynetwork.ca/the-daily-show-with-jon-stewart/full-episodes/the-daily-show-with-jon-stewart—october-15-2009/#clip223053 — Americans can watch Hulu, the bastards).

This reminded me of a question one of my cousins asked recently about the vaccine: what’s an adjuvant, “’cause I’m not able to find much positive about it.”

Indeed, if you just search the internet for information about the health effects of the various adjuvants used in vaccines, it looks like pretty scary stuff. That’s because an adjuvant is designed to trigger an immune response; to make your body’s immune system go into over-drive so that it will recognize the viral matter in the vaccine and produce antibodies against it. The risks include getting a fever or other flu-like symptoms, an allergic reaction, or even a very remote risk of developing certain autoimmune disorders like rheumatoid arthritis. If you just read up on the adjuvant alone, it sounds like something you’d never want to have in your body — but it’s only a small amount, and it’s necessary to make the vaccine effective (esp. in a single dose so you don’t have to keep going back for booster shots, which might work for hepatitis or tetanus vaccines, but doesn’t fly in the face of a potential pandemic).

“So if I don’t want those risks, don’t take the vaccines.”

Ah, well, there’s the tricky part. The risks are remote (aside from the mild cases of feeling unwell or having an acute allergic reaction), and the benefit is that you don’t get the virus you’re vaccinating against, or carry it to pass on to other people (such as seniors or those with compromised immune systems). On an individual level it can be a tricky mental calculation: on the one hand, psychologically it’s less desirable to subject yourself to something with risk before you have to, especially since it’s unknown and kinda scary. Whereas hey, you’ve had the flu before, how bad could it possibly be? Plus you can take steps to prevent yourself from getting the flu, such as wearing a space suit, or never leaving your basement, but once that shot is in your deltoid, that’s it cowboy, enjoy the ride. These psychological factors can really skew the perception of risk from the actual risks. It doesn’t help either that it’s new so there isn’t the years of testing that other vaccines have, or that there are people out there spreading the conspiracy theories that the government has put mind-control drugs in the vaccine (what, you think if they had those they wouldn’t have put it in your MMR vaccine as a kid??).

Of course, from a societal stand-point it’s a no-brainer for virtually every vaccine, including the one for the flu: society is better off when a large part of the population opts to be vaccinated. Even on the individual level the actual risk arithmetic (as opposed to the perceived risk) is also usually soundly in favour of getting vaccinated.

Update: LOL, Ben actually beat me to it with a post on the swine flu vaccine. He takes the opposite POV :)

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