Bounded in a Nutshell

Have I mentioned how much I love the Toronto Star editorial page?

Carol Goar has an article today regarding a U of T study that purports to measure the value of the institution in terms of return-on-investment. Goar's point is that, as well as the university seems to do, both the methodology and the underlying assumptions of the story are suspect.

I'm an academic and therefore probably biased in this respect, but I have to say that I think Goar's point is well taken. Mainstream economics concerns itself principally with money: how it's earned, how it's spent. Money is nice to work with because it's measurable and discrete and, most of all, numerical. That's important from the point of view of establishing economics on a scientific basis, because physics and chemistry, particularly, are highly amenable to numerical descriptions. There was (is) a strong current of thought that says that science should be quantitative: numerical data, mathematical relationships.

Now I'm not knocking mathematics here; I admire the fact that my discipline has proven so useful to the natural and social sciences. At the same time, reducing everything to numbers tends to miss the point, and that's clearest in the science of economics. The value of an education is based on the increase in one's expected earnings? The value of the environment can be measured by how mch it would cost to clean it up... or worse, just ignored altogether?

Intangibles are hard for clasical economics to work with, and so -- the technique that kick-started physics as a numerical science -- they get simplified out of the models. If economics was a science of money, that would be fine. As a social science -- the science of human choice, to paraphrase my old econ professor's slogans -- I think that the essence gets lost very quickly.

Separatism: it's not just for les habitants anymore.

The Western Canada Concept is apparently a twenty-plus-year-old separatist group for western Canada; they feel that the four provinces west of Ontario, together with the territories, should secede from confederation. Assuming it's all right with the citizens, of course.

Their basic raison d'être (if you'll forgive the use of the dreaded Other Official Language) is laid out here. Their stated principles are really quite astounding; they include:

• An end to immigration to preserve our environment, culture and stability.
• Equal rights for all, with no special status for any race, or ethnic origin.
• Preservation of our Christian culture and European heritage.

I'm sorry, but am I the only one who sees a certain level of fuzzy thought in any group that simultaneously maintains all three of these precepts?

There's something almost tragic about some of the rhetoric on the site; for instance, when they make the point that every majour political movement for change has come from the West. The point being, apparently, that had the reformers had their day then all of Canada's problems would have been fixed. But they weren't given a fair shake, and so at this point we might as well just end it all.

I guess I just don't agree. I don't think that Canada is past hope, and I don't really think that life in a "free West" would be as pastoral as they party's website paints it. (For one thing, I'm wondering if the party founders have taken a really close look at Vancouver lately.) Canada without the West would certainly be a poorer thing, but so would the West without the rest of Canada.

While reading an interesting discussion thread at Ruy Teixeira's Donkey Rising, I came across a commenter who used the word "vaselated" in reference to the voting record of a candidate. I believe that this is the best new word I've seen all month.

I mean, OK, it's pretty clear that the individual meant to say "vaccilated": drifted back and forth between different positions, never strongly committing themselves to a point of view. I'm not entirely sure that this is really a legitimate criticism of a politician -- it's either vaccilate or become an ideologue, after all, and out experience with the latter breed recently has made me question their value. But I'm certainly willing to entertain the argument.

It's the conflation with "vaseline", though, that really does it for me. Not just drifting back and forth, but squirming, slipping from viewpoint to viewpoint, petroleum-jelly-coated body twisting and turning. Any attempts to pin the individual down would just slide right off!

I'm not saying that this is true for the pol in question; really, I don't know enough about his voting record to say. But it's just an evocative non-word that I had to point it out.

I'm pleased to see Richard Gwyn in today's Toronto Star getting it so publicly. As much as one might try to deny it, it is a fact that, since the Earth is finite, the amount of any given non-renewable resource available on the Earth is also finite. So the idea that we're running out of easily-obtainable oil... maybe as soon as this year... well, it bears at least a modicum of consideration.

I'd like to see some actual projections comparing the costs of building and maintaining renewable energy plants with those of developping more sources for fossil fuels. It seems to me that there will come a point where -- no matter how expensive is it to set up a working windfarm -- it will be a better use of our remaining oil reserves than any attempt to try and replenish those reserves.

Or hey, I suppose we could just start developping a working time machine. Six or seven million years into the future, you figure that supplies of fossil fuels will have built themselves up again?

OK, so I admit it: I'm something of a geek when it comes to doing taxes. As soon as I've got my various forms from the government, I start to calculate my taxes.

This doesn't necessarily mean that I then go and file my taxes immediately; in fact, often I'll fill out my draft forms, nod with satisfaction, and then forget about the whole ridiculous enterprise until April. (Also, for the past few years my tax situation has been sufficiently tricky -- two countries, one or two states, and a province -- that if I don't get started right away, I might never overcome the inertia associated with that much paperwork.)

This year I decided to try something new. My Local Banking Alternative has a deal with TurboTax on the web so that one can fill in one's forms, and submit them to the various federal and state governemnts involved, on-line. From the point of view of instant gratification, this is great. Given that I now have a very simple tax situation, ten minutes ago I opened my one and only W-2 and now I know how much money I'm getting back from the federal government.

Or almost.

See, I know a few things about computers. One upshot of this is that I don't necessarily trust computers. They do exactly what you tell them to... no more, no less. And I don't know who's told these particular computers to do what.

So -- as a purely precautionary measure -- I'm going to go home in a few hours, pull out the various 1040s and 40s and whatever other forms I need to look at, and do my taxes myself. I don't doubt that the web program's right... or, at least, not much... but the fact that I can't see the calculations makes me a little bit nervous.

Upon getting home from campus today I checked my mailbox, as I frequently do. Found a bunch of magazines and an envelope from the BMV of the Midwestern State where I live. Marked "Legal Document". Important-looking.

I was puzzled, because the last time I received one like it was back in September, prompting me to renew my vehicle registration. Now, renewals in this state are alphabetical, and since my surname falls fairly late in the alphabet I have to renew by mid-October of any given year. So why am I getting a renewal notice in January?

Because that's precisely what it was. While I was pleased to see a significant reduction in the fee -- let's hear it for depreciation, I guess -- I couldn't figure out why the State was changing the rules and requiring my renewal this early.

Only they're not. The form says that I have to remit payment by September 30th.

So I can only assume that this is some low-grade scam to collect money for the State coffers now and earn the 3% interest or whatever that they can accrue over the next eight months. That, or the people who send out the notices have been on a five-day amphetemine binge and are in the middle of polishing off their workload for the rest of the year.

I've been having telephone troubles lately. I called the Local Phone Company, and after determining that they can't figure out what the problem is from their headquarters they set me up an appointment with a repair tech. Of course, they can only block a visit to within a four-hour timeslot. And not just any four-hour timeslot; it's either morning (8-12) or afternoon (1-5).

Now maybe this isn't, as it appears to me, entirely unreasonable. Maybe the large majority of households meet one or more of the following criteria:

• There's someone who stays at home during the day.
• There's someone who can easily take a half-day off of work.
• There's someone who's willing to blow off their job for the sake of their phone.

And hence maybe, I -- as a single adult with a day job that I'd like to keep -- am the rare exception here.

Or maybe not. And so, if by some chance anyone who runs a phone company (or similar utility service) is reading this, I present to you an idea: have repair techs who work evenings.

I'm watching the American presidential election this year with great interest... as, I suspect, are a lot of other people. Since I didn't grow up in this country, I'm still trying to puzzle through how the whole primaries/caucuses system works.

One thing that's been mentioned over and over again is how the Democrats have switched to a limited proportional representation system: a candidate who gets at least 15% of the vote in their state gets a proportional (roughly) number of delegates. Which is fine, as far as it goes; I'm not familiar enough with the political system on the ground to say what the impact will be, but I'm generally in favour of PR-type systems.

This thing I don't get is why people keep talking about who's going to "win" Iowa or New Hampshire. Because it's not winner-takes-all anymore.

I mean look, check out the numbers in the latest Zogby poll for Iowa. We've got four different candidates who are above the magic 15% mark, and still something like an eighth of the voters are undecided. It seems unlikely that there's going to be a "winner" at all; rather, we should expect that the Iowa delegates are going to be split at least three ways. Or is there something about the caucus proceedings that I'm missing?

There are times when stereo separation is more trouble than it's worth.

I don't know if it's just me -- I have a number of small neurological quirks, it seems -- but unbalanced stereo placement upsets me. Physically. I was watching a movie with some of the usual crew at the old cmdo headquarters (of which the less said the better), and the way it worked out I ended up sitting with my head half-outside of the five-speaker stereo zone that had been established. I found this sufficiently disorienting that after ten minutes I was actually dizzy.

I mention this now because I'm trying to listen to music at work through my crappy little computer speakers. There seems to be a small bit of faulty wiring, because the balance keeps tipping between speakers. This makes me sad, because it's proving a sufficient distraction that the original purpose -- helping me get work done -- is being lost.

So for those of you playing along at home, I'm back in the Midwestern Industrial Hub that I call home at the moment. I had a good vacation -- three weeks, but it seemed much, much longer, and in the best possible ways.

Still, there are certain things to be said about home. I don't have to connive to find a place to sleep tonight, for instance. I have a reasonably stable, rather fast internet connection, allowing me to empty my mail server of the 300+ messages that have accumulated since Wednesday morning. And I have a kitchen, although there isn't a whole lot of, well, food in it at the moment.

Nine years ago, shortly after I started my undergraduate career, a Western Friend of mine remarked to me how stupid it was that they put all this salt on the roads in Ontario. It's bad for the cars, and it's not great for the roads, and people in other parts of the country have better solutions.

At the time I didn't really think much about it; it would be several years until I drove on a regular basis, and several more until I would be doing so in a climate where ice management was an issue. Today I would like to say: O Western Friend, you were absolutely right.

The tipping point came today when I was driving through the eastern suburbs of Toronto. There was essentially no snow or ice on the roads, but there was a lot of salt... as well as a couple of trucks adding to the total. I would have been able to see just fine if it hadn't been for the fine patina of salty grit that kept coating my windshield.

Gotta love it when the solution becomes worse than the original problem...

During the recent round of gatherings that this season always brings, I've been asked by a couple of people if I have any Resolutions (and you can hear the capital letter in the question), or any Goals (ditto) for the new year. And really, the answer's yes and no for that.

The problem is that, while I may well set goals for myself, I don't particularly see this activity as being in any way associated with the change of calendar. I've become very conscious of the arbitrary nature of our system of months and years. And so I find it difficult to require myself to make decisions about how things are going, what to change, etc. right now.

In fact, I feel like I've been drifting away from the conventional ways society has of measuring time for some little while now. Three years in the Deep South after growing up in Canada has mostly wiped away my intuitions about the seasons and how they work. I've experienced three different forms of the academic year in the last five. And I travel around enough that the regular events of any given community tend to drift by me without my noticing.

I mentioned something like this observation to Elbie, and his response was, well, that's why it's important for you to update your blog more than once a week. So I suppose that if I must have a Resolution, then let it be that.