Blessed by the Potato

I am continually amazed at the lack of critical thinking in the general population and the media. I know that I’m a scientist and am therefore, you know, a perfect human being, blessed with capabilities mathematical and analytical in addition to citation searchical. Ok, maybe not quite perfect, but I will acknowledge that I perhaps possess a leg up in the critical analysis department due to inclination, training, and experience. Nonetheless, I’m amazed at some of the nonsense that floats around there in the ether.

For instance, the CNW “study” that just. won’t. die. Here’s where the big disconnect between common sense and reason lead to a meme that endures. The “study” in question claimed that a Hummer used less “energy” in its total lifetime (from design to daily driving to disposal) than Prius. That is something that goes against our common sense, kind of makes us sit up and take notice. Now, what’s supposed to happen is that one’s critical thinking and reason is supposed to kick in and say “hey, this really goes against our common sense: how does a vehicle that costs more money and uses more materials up front, and also uses more gas in an ongoing fashion, possibly use less total energy? I should check this out to see if it’s a neat factoid or total bullshit.” Then a quick fact-checking mission demonstrates that this is, in fact, total and complete bullshit and the thing dies there, and anyone who brings it up is mocked as a rube. Instead, the rubes pass it on without questioning it, and the illogic only serves to help draw attention to it. “Wow, Prius sucks, I’ve got to alert the Intertubes!” Whatever happened to extraordinary claims requiring extraordinary evidence?

I can forgive people for reading too much into patterns sometimes. For instance, nearly anyone who bothers to know anything about fuel economy knows that cars (regular cars — not talking hybrids here) are more efficient on the highway than in the city. But they have real trouble believing that driving slower on the highway saves fuel. After all, doesn’t going faster, like on the highway, save gas compared to going slower, like in the city? Ah, you point out, but there’s a point where the car is most efficient: 90 km/h, say. Going faster than that actually uses more gas. They think for a second, and the light goes on behind their eyes “Oh,” they say in a condescending way “I’ve heard that before, that’s why the speed limit was 55 in the States during the energy crisis. But that was for old cars. New cars are much better and can go faster.” Which, I have to admit, is exactly the right thought process, just the wrong result.

Likewise, for about 4 years there, housing was the best investment one could have: better than the stock market, briefly better even than oil. So you could forgive someone for lusting after a house, repeating nonsense like “priced out forever” and “renting is throwing your money away” or “real estate never goes down”. You might even forgive the same person who scoffed at the “payback period” for a hybrid car not running the same calculation for a house. The media didn’t even surprise me with their house porn and almost exclusively positive coverage of the bubble. I was, however, taken aback by the actions of our government, especially by easing the “margin requirement” (down payment) for a house. I know that they’re dumb promise-breaking neocons [ok, I won’t go there just now] and all, but still, someone should have known better. Then, as the real estate slowdown looks to finally be under way, a study comes out about the most over priced markets from UBC… and the markets it says are over-priced are not the ones people would think are over-priced. This is because of how they did their analysis: they included in their valuation a measure of how much a market has gone up since the last cycle: markets that went up more are not considered to be “bubblier”, but rather, more fairly priced in their estimation since they’re counting on further rapid increases. So the cities with the most rapid increase in prices are supposedly the ones that are less overvalued…

I recently chewed into Netbug about a post of his on environmentalism. He was arguing that man couldn’t cause global warming because, as a documentary that aired on BBC4 argued, we can’t compete with the sun. That’s just the sort of thing that’s great at misleading people (even otherwise smart people capable of Googling, like Netbug) — it has just enough ring of truth to it to make you believe it. This documentary makes a number of points which are true, but not important or worse, wrong-headed. Then it sprinkles in some minority opinions, a fair helping of conspiracy theory (global warming is a conspiracy by Maggie Thatcher to break the unions! Scientists take the dirty british money, but not the money of oil companies — no, if they did, they’d be richer and wouldn’t be doing some slumdog documentary film!) and some selective editing to sucker people in. Then Netbug finished off his post with a statement about how stupid the environmentalism movement has gotten with a clip from Penn & Teller about circulating a petition to ban water at some green rally, and all the people who signed it. Of course, that says less about the environmental movement in general, and more about people’s willingness to sign something they didn’t fully read or understand while at a rally.

I first reviewed Astraweb back in 2006, shortly after Rogers cut off newsgroup access. Things have really only gotten better since my last review: speeds have picked up considerably (I can just about max out my connection now at certain times of the day, and the average is well above 300 kB/s, and well above 100 kB/s even in peak times), retention is longer, and the deal is now 120 GB for $25 US, which covers about 8 months of my downloading habit, and is still the best value-for-money I’ve found. What made me think of revisiting my already positive review was that I ran through the end of my last block of credits tonight, and they actually let me go over so that my download finished up. I only went a few MB over, and I have no idea how long they would have let me keep going (I doubt I could have set up a 30 GB download to run with just enough credits to start and they would have let that finish — maybe it only checks every few minutes or so), but it was nice that they didn’t stop it immediately when the digits rolled over to zero. I naturally signed up right away for another 120 GB, which should take me through to late summer (though if I don’t start using the VCR/TV to watch TV I might run out before this TV season ends in the spring).

Thanks to CC, I got my hands on a copy of Findependence Day
by Jonathan Chevreau to review. Findependence Day is the fictional story of a couple starting out with oppressive credit card and student debt, and how they learn to properly manage their money to reach financial independence (or Findependence), learning about RESPs, RRSPs, TFSAs, stocks, and frugality along the way.

It’s not a great story, but it doesn’t have to be. It’s short, and the lessons are there but not beat-you-over-the-head obvious. It’s basically an extended parable/anecdote for learning purposes. It’s edutainment. If you have the attention span and inclination to read a non-fiction personal finance book, then I recommend you do that, you’ll get a lot more information that way; the story is not compelling enough to recommend it purely as a work of fiction for those that all ready know the basics of their financial lives. However, if you (or someone you know) is not inclined to read up on financial planning (whether through books or blogs), then this is an excellent way to introduce them to the topic.

I was going to try to get my sister to read it next — she badly needs to start learning about how to manage her money. She doesn’t have the slightest interest in reading texts on the topic, so this might be a good way to trick her into learning this stuff… Except I realized that she’s 18. She needs to learn how to balance her chequing account and pay off her credit card, not how to grow her savings tax-free. This book isn’t actually going to help her at all at this point in her life. So instead I’m going to pass it on: if anyone would like to read it next just leave a comment and I’ll pass it along.

It’s only been a few days, and the only decision we’ve made on the HDTV front is to wait to see what boxing day sales bring.

One thing I’ve been thinking of is that so many reviews say that the physical screen itself is not all that different between brands, and that 1080p vs 720p is not such a big deal. However, the scalers and other software can have big impacts on how the final image comes out with a source that isn’t matched to the native resolution (and what might contribute to SD looking like crap) and things like step artifacts. So I was wondering, is it possible to create a test DVD/blu-ray to take into stores to see how various screens handle certain test patterns and video at different resolutions? I obviously don’t have a blu-ray burner, and I don’t know how possible it is to make a high def video clip (h.264?) on a DVD that will play on a TV, let alone one for different hi-def formats and framerates, but it could be a useful tool to make up.

An email I just got from the hospital administrators:

[the new MRI is] expected to be operational by January 26. The [current clinical MRI], meanwhile, will be up and running again by January 12.

Optimism!

(I’ve told anyone planning on coming down for an MRI to not expect anything until February; we’ll see how that goes…)