100 bucks says...

What have I done this time? A while ago, my credit limit dropped by a mysteriously inconsequential 4 dollars. A few days later, it was raised by the same amount. I just checked my accounts again, and it seems my credit limit has been reduced by 100 dollars. It's still inconsequential. And still mysterious. Also mysterious is that I have a balance of $30.19, but no recent transactions. Why is it that they bother to tell me how much I am in debt to them without telling me how I incurred that debt?

How do I Get Ontario to Sign Up?

I just read on the CBC that Albertans will soon be paying a deposit on milk cartons. According to the article, they're the only province in the country to do that. Damn those environment hating prairie hicks.

The truth is, I would like to see the Ontario government expand the list of deposit-worthy items from wine and beer containers to all containers, plastic or otherwise.

Now, I must be honest about my intentions. I'm not all that concerned about the environmental impacts of recycling or not. My current feeling, after years of meticulous sorting, is that it's more trouble than it's worth. Kingston made it worse for me when they added grey boxes (for paper, plastic bags, etc.) to the blue boxes (now only for cans, bottles, etc.) already part of their recycling program. I just don't make that much garbage to begin with (I'm more into reducing and reusing than I am recycling). Adding another only slightly less bulky grey bin to a preexisting, bulky blue bin was just enough disincentive for me. With the amount that I could potentially recycle, both bins will always be less than half-full. Great for the pessimist, not so great for the apartment dweller with limited storage space. Not to mention the fact that the bins only go out on alternating weeks, blue one week, grey the next. It just got to be too much hassle for me. (Reports say it did save the city money, so I guess there is one upside to it.) Plus, I've been getting this growing sense that, for all the efforts that people, citizens and city staff alike, put into it, the impact is small. There may be a net benefit from doing it, but it is low, and there are probably better places to put our resources, and our garbage, if our greatest concern is the environment [1].

Now that I've established that I don't put much stock into the Third 'R', let me get to why I hope Ontario will implement a policy similar to Alberta's. Ontario already has a deposit program in place for beer bottles and cans, and wine bottles were recently added. As far as I know, that's it. You used to be able to return pop bottles, back when pop bottles were made of glass (am I dating myself here?) I can't remember the last time I saw pop being sold in glass bottles other than for nostalgia and novelty purposes. I actually don't how many milk cartons get tossed in with ordinary garbage, either in absolute or relative terms. As far as I'm concerned, buying milk in cartons is a hose-job [2]. There is a 10 cent different between a 4 litre bag of milk and a 2 litre carton. Why would anyone buy that? Yet people do. I'll never understand. Anyway, back to the matter at hand. There are things that can be returned for deposit, certain classes of bottles and cans. How often do you see them lying around? Not very often, and if so, not for long. For example, when I was moving out of my last place, I had about 12 empty beer bottles lying around, and two or three empty wine bottles. It wasn't worth the extra 2 bucks or so that I would get to make the extra stop on my way back from the grocery store to return them. So when I moved out, I just left the bottles sitting in the driveway. Within an hour, while I was still inside packing, somebody came by and made off with my bottles. I have no idea who this guy was, but I'm grateful for him and others of his type. He saved me a trip, and he cleans up after other people besides me, all for the low low fee of 10-20 cents a bottle, to be paid by the beer store. I don't even have to supply the dimes! It's great!

Meanwhile, things like plastic bottles are not covered. They could be. Plastic water bottles, plastic pop bottles, whatever. And pop cans too. I often see "Return for deposit in Anywhere But Ontario" on the sides of these things. And no surprise, they are lying all over the place in Ontario. Especially water bottles. My parents would rarely drink bottled water themselves, but they managed to fill up three or four recycling boxes full of plastic bottles from bottled water, just by going for walks. Old neighbours say the neighbourhood has gotten messier since they left. Oh sure, we should be able to count on the good people to not throw out their empty containers everywhere. But we can't, because there aren't many and they're mostly busy somewhere else. We can't really count on there being very bored retired people with nothing to do but pick up garbage either. What we can count on is people who are willing to pick up after those lazy, ignorant slobs [3] for a ridiculously low price of about 10 cents per unit. Not a bad deal in my books. So if McGuinty should decide to target milk cartons, though they don't seem to be the scourge that plastic bottles are, maybe some of those plastic bottles could get hit in the crossfire.

The article linked to above claims that milk producers object because people will stop buying as much milk. Piffle! Tosh! Those who are truly concerned about that extra 10-25 cent deposit can, I don't know, SAVE their empty milk cartons and get the deposit back next week. Also according to the article 90 percent of Albertans are in favour of it. 90 percent! So most people are probably going to be willing to put out those extra few cents. And something tells me that the remaining 10 percent who are opposed to it aren't going to boycott milk because of it. It hasn't hurt the beer industry (for which the subsidies and marketing opportunities are fewer).

So onward Albertans! Return your bottles, plastic or glass! Return your cans! Return your milk cartons! And may Ontario follow you in your hillbilly ways! Yeehaw!

[1] I think, though I am not certain, that the idea of recycling originated was a solution to a logistical problem and not an environmental one. New Yorkers (city, not state) ran out of space to put their garbage, resulting in a so-called garbage crisis. They also ran out of arable land, resulting in a food crisis. Or not. You decide.

[2] And by hose-job, I mean they actually make a profit. Milk is, or used to be, a loss leader. If you walk into the store and buy a bag of milk, they actually lose money. They charge you less than it costs them to get you into the store. So if you want to stick it to Big Grocery, go buy lots of milk in bags.

[3] Myself, I'm just a lazy slob.

Counterintuitive Conclusion of the Day

Conclusion: Jack Layton and Stéphane Dion are effectively extreme right-wingers [1].

The proof is simple, based on two statements I hear a lot and which, based on their commonness, I have no choice but to assume are true without the need to question their validity.

1. All of the parties/party leaders are effectively the same. [2]
   
2. Stephen Harper is an extreme right-winger.

Because Jack Layton, Stéphane Dion, and Stephen Harper are party leaders, they are all effectively the same, by Statement 1. Thus, because Stephen Harper is an extreme right-winger by Statement 2, Jack Layton and Stéphane Dion are also effectively extreme right-wingers [3].

[1] By this I don't mean that Jack Layton and Stéphane Dion are effective at being extreme right-wingers. They are not (well, effectively, they are effective at being extreme right-wingers, as I suppose I have shown above). Rather I mean to say that it is difficult to distinguish one from the other.

[2] See footnote [1] above. Statement 1 has been put to me thus: All parties are evil. The only difference between them is the lies they tell to get elected.

[3] I'm well aware that we could apply the same argument to show that Harper and Dion are leftist moonbats or to show that Harper and Layton are probably not going to lead their respective parties into the next federal election. This effectively reduces the diversity of political persuasions, which are usually described as points on a line or occasionally a circle [3.1], to a point, thus rendering the terms "right-winger", "left-winger", and "centrist" effectively meaningless.

[3.1] It has frequently been acknowledged that a line is inadequate to describe the various political leanings. A circle has been proposed as an alternative. This too, I find inadequate, as a circle is merely a line with the ends connected. I prefer a plane, or perhaps some other 2- or higher- dimensional manifold. A non-orientable one would make things more interesting. But it is what it is, and we can't be choosy with reality now, can we? [3.1.1]

[3.1.1] Oops. I've gone and made the footnotes longer than the post again.

Petty Colours

When I returned to Kingston this evening, there was an email waiting for me in my inbox with the subject line "Are you ready?!..." Am I ready for what? New Month Day was a while ago (or isn't going to happen for a while. We're almost as far from the last one as we are from the next one.), so it couldn't be that. I'm ready for the stock markets to recover. But hey, who isn't, right? So it probably wasn't that.

As a last resort, having exhausted all of my ideas for what the contents of the email could be, I opened it. The contents read "...To watch little coloured bars scroll across the bottom of a TV; for the talking heads; for the interminable wait for results? I know I am!" Indeed, that may be the only good part of the election for me. I'm not really interested in who wins anymore, and unless theis year's thanksgiving turkeys were spiked with ideology-altering amounts of tryptophan, I'm pretty sure I can guess who the winner is going to be. I'm only marginally interested in how many seats the respective parties get.

This election, I didn't have cable, and most of my information regarding the election came from websites of newspapers. My first exposure to election television came this weekend. I consider myself lucky that I managed to avoid it for so long. Party platforms this time around ranged from almost nonexistent to mostly unrealistic. How can I listen to one guy tell me to vote for nothing in particular and another guy tell to vote for a platform almost none of which he could feasibly implement.

Initially, I thought Dion's proposed carbon tax was a good idea, relative to the NDP's and Conservative's ideas, until he actually released the details of the plan (before there was even talk of a premature election). I thought the carbon tax was going to directly affect consumers. A tax at the pump or something. But instead, he wants to go after corporations just like the other two. With a different type of tax structure, of course, but the target of the tax is the same. Corporations, not people [1]. The majority of the population (I think) wants something to be done about carbon emmissions, but not many are willing to do much themselves, even if all they do is agree to suck it up and pay an extra percentage point or two at the pumps. I guess I'm just too cynical, but I wanted to see people put there money where their mouth is. (Elizabeth May has a plan too, I'm sure. I'll pay attention to it some time after her party elects an MP.)

The other major issue (aside from that too-often repeated theme of leadership. It's important, for sure, but for the love of Pete, would you tell us where you'd like to lead us before the election is almost over? [2]) was the economy, about which I have a feeble grasp when it comes to solutions, lack thereof, and their necessity altogether. Dion apparently also has a feeble grasp, since his plan seems to be to ask experts to come up with a plan. Let us know who these experts are, and we shall elect them instead, Mr. Dion. Perhaps someone with a graduate degree in economics, like, oh, say, Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Speaking of Mr. Harper, though, as with the rest his platform, he has a plan, or so he claims, though I don't know what it is. Layton, if his television commercials are to be believed, cared. How nice.

At the end of it all, I don't know who to vote for. I may have to exercise my democratic right not to vote. I don't like not voting. But I don't want to vote for the least of three evils, and I'm not big on protest voting. Perhaps there is no sense to it, but I'd like to have some sort of none-of-the-above type option (spoiling the ballot is more fun, mind you).

Democracy I like. I like driving too. But I don't usually get into the car if I have nowhere to go, and politics isn't something you joyride.

I hope I can watch the little coloured bars on the internet.

[1] For many years, I had believed that the GST was a brand new tax. In part it was. Though I learned earlier this year that it replaced a previously hidden manufacturing sales tax. We were all paying it before the GST, we just didn't know about it. After the GST we did. Dion's Carbon tax would be another hidden tax. You can talk amongst yourselves about the economic advantages or distadvantages of hidden taxes.

[2] ...says the guy who didn't say much about the election until the campaign was almost over. I had thought about some potential posts, but never got around to writing them.

Much has been said about Stephen Harper's strategy of "staying the course" with respect to the Canadian economy. The obvious response is "The economy is doing terribly, and you're going to do nothing?"

One newspaper columnist, Randall Denley of the Ottawa Citizen, made the following comparison. "If our economy were a boat drifting toward Niagara Falls, Dion would form a committee to consult about the wisdom of getting out the oars, Layton would blame the oil companies, May would praise the falls’ green power and Harper would pretend the sound of the roaring water was nothing to worry about."

I would like to offer you an alternative aquatic analogy. Back home, we have the Hamilton Harbour (or Burlington Bay). Due to the geography of the bay and years of industrial irresponsibility on the part of Stelco, and probably other steel mills in the city, there is a mass of waste sitting at the bottom of the bay. One of my undergraduate profs was involved with the over all improvement of the area around the bay, including what to do with this industrial waste. They explored a number of options, and even attempted a few. In the end they concluded that the best thing to do was to just leave it be [1]. It doesn't fix the problem, of course, but it also doesn't make a bad situation worse.

So the economy is either a mass of toxic sludge on the bottom of a bay, or it's a boat floating down a river toward a waterfall. At most one of these analogies fits. I am not an economist, I am not well informed on the conditions that led to the current crisis in the United States, and I have not been examining local and provincial issues for the Citizen for 16 years, first as city editor, and for the last 11 years as city columnist. So I don't know which analogy is appropriate, if any. At least now, though, you have a choice.

[1] It was at least 4 years ago that I last heard him speak on this subject. I don't know what the state of the sludge is currently.

Your Credit Isn't Good Enough 4 Us

For some odd reason, CIBC lowered the limit on my credit card by 4 dollars. This would be quite the reduction in credit if may previous limit was, say, 8 dollars. But it wasn't. It was significantly higher. High enough that the 4 dollar reduction is negligible. So, except for the fact that my credit limit no longer ends in a zero, I don't care. But still, why.

Perhaps spent too much time tweaking credit limits by nonmultiples of 10, by both AIG and Lehman Brothers, thus causing their downfalls.

An Upside to Everything

From May 1 until today, I've been working half-time at Queen's University and half-time at the Royal Military College. Today marks the last day of my employment at Queen's. This fall, or rather next Tuesday (which still seems a season away), I will be full-time at RMC. My duties at RMC are changing from strictly research to research and teaching, and this addition requires a new application process. While I was filling the first forms, the department head said to me, "You're not an employee until you've filled out your bodyweight in forms." That was a couple months ago. He appears to be right. There have been three occasions since then, including today, where I've had to fill out even more forms (and one more before then if you count the electronic submission of my CV and other documents). The process involved traipsing around to at least 5 different locations on the RMC campus, and in some cases more than once. I'm still not done. When I was waiting at security the second time (after seeing the secretary of the math department for the second time), I thought about the stereotypical government [1] inefficiency which was being confirmed before my very eyes, and about the ways in which the process could be made at least marginally more efficient [2].

Moments ago, I turned on my browser, and, courtesy of the Quote of the Day Google Gadget, I read the following quote from Harry Truman

"Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship."

So I guess I should be grateful.

[1] RMC is part of the Department of National Defence, which in turn is, of course, part of the government. It seems to be tied more closely with the federal government than Queen's is to the provincial government.

[2] To be fair to RMC, they've improved things somewhat since I worked there a couple years ago. That time, there were 6 locations that I had to go to instead of 5, and they're closer together now than they were before. Baby steps.

Permanent Gas Tax Vacation

Were it not for a certain friend, I'm not sure this blog would still be funct. While I do get feedback from various people here and there, she is the only one who actively encourages me to write. A few nights ago, I had some spare time that I should have been spending washing dishes, but didn't want to. I thought about writing something to this blog, but nothing came to mind. I mentioned this to my friend, who suggested I write on the gas tax holiday. I had seen this phrase bandied about on the internet, but I didn't know what it was despite a small effort to figure out what was meant. She filled me in. The idea is that taxes on gas would be lowered during the summer months when demand for gasoline is at its peak. I assume the purpose of lowering taxes would be to make summer vacations more affordable, because you can only enjoy vacation if you've driven your car really far away from home (just ask the people who come to your hometown for holidays). But having learned about this policy only at the moment at which it was suggested I blog about it, I didn't think I'd have anything more to offer than what had already been written by those who were following it more closely, so I asked her what she wanted me to write. She suggested I write a Canadian perspective on the issue. I still didn't think that I had much to offer, other than the fact that I am a Canadian offering my perspective. Here is what I concluded: it doesn't seem like a good idea. I can't say precisely why. Or even approximately. Of course, everyone likes to pay less for anything, and lowering taxes is one way to acheive that, though I'm not sure that it effective it would be in the long run. Our Prime Minister doesn't think it would be (and that, my friends, is what makes it a Canadian perspective. The Canadian government told us so). It just doesn't strike me as good policy. My opinion on the matter seems to agree with that of actual economists (I guess that includes the Prime Minister, since he has a master's degree in economics), so I'll leave it up to them to justify my mine.

Besides, if you actually convert gallons to litres, and American currency to Canadian currency (or vice versa), and then dig deeper [1] to see why the prices are so different, you would see that the greatest source of the discrepancy is the amount of taxes that Canadians pay on gasoline. So compared to Canada, every day is a gas tax holiday in the US.

Meanwhile, as American presidential candidates discuss lowering gas taxes, one provincial government and at least one Canadian prime-ministerial hopeful is proposing just the opposite. Starting July 1, British Columbians will be paying 2.4 cents extra per litre on a myriad of fossil fuels, which will gradually increase to 7.2 cents in 2012. Stephane Dion says he's going to propose the same type of policy federally. Dion says a lot of things though. The gas tax is supposed to be revenue neutral in both jurisdictions, so that as taxes on gas are increasing, income taxes will decrease and, on average, the governments collect the same amount of taxes per person, but with a heavier burden being paid by heavier carbon consumers. While the Liberals of BC and of Canada want to tax consumers directly, the federal New Democrat and Conservative Parties are proposing to tax corporations instead. It doesn't surprise me to hear this from the NDP. They (or perhaps it's their supporters) have hardly been shy about their anti-corporate sentiment in the past. I'm not sure why the Conservative Party would go this route, though. I guess they can't copy their competitors, even though a revenue neutral gas tax seems more consistent with their rhetoric of free-market solutions to carbon emissions. Not only that, but it would be inconsistent with their 2% lowering of the GST (why reduce one kind of sales [2] tax only to hit us with another?).

Presumably, paying more tax on gas would lead consumers to use less of it. Or want to. We really don't like to pay taxes, and despite the convenience offered to us by automobiles and home heating and cooling, we don't like paying for gas. Paying taxes on gas just multiplies the unpleasantness. The desire to pay less for gasoline would then lead to a demand for products that use less gas, which would ultimately lead to the evil corporations producing such products. At least that's how I understand it. Of course, it is possible that taxing corporations would have the same net effect, except that it's easier for corporations to get around such measures (a little tidbit I picked up from an econ grad student earlier today). There are probably many factors at play here, and I can think of a few other things that might be relevant, but I'm an armchair economist at best [3] so I'll keep my analysis short. There may be some resulting unintended consequence to higher taxes on fossil fuel in exchange for lower income taxes, but based on the expert opinions I've heard over the last few years on taxation in general, the Liberal policy makes more sense [4].

Perhaps I'm just being selfish, however. I own a car, but I don't drive it much, and now that I'm not a student anymore, I'm no longer protected by the government from paying income tax. Under Dion's plan, I could stand to gain.

[1] These days, a breakdown of the price per litre is given on the receipt or displayed on the gas pump at many gas stations, so you don't need to dig that deep.

[2] Technically speaking either the GST or the gas tax, or both, might not be sales taxes, but rather a value added tax and a Pigovian tax respectively. Taxes are complicated.

[3] Really. I'm sitting in an armchair as I write this.

[4] First I endorse an NDP MP's plan to abolish the penny. Now I endorse a Liberal tax policy. Have I changed my political persuasions? Doubtful that it's me who has changed.

Beer Notes

A while ago, I was at the Kingston Brewing Company with a few friends. It's actually a restaurant, and, as the name of the place suggests, they themselves brew most of the beer they sell. So it's actually a brewpub, and since it's the only brewpub in town, it's The Brewpub. Normally I opt for one of their regular self-brewed offerings. If I'm there long enough to order a second pint or pitcher, I might try one of the "brewer's whims". They aren't as whimsical as the label might suggest, since most of them seem to be seasonal offerings, connected with some local event, like Queen's Homecoming, Kingston Blues Fest, First Capital Day, or Winter. Whimsical or not, though, they're usually tasty. Not everything they sell is their own. You can get Guinness, and a number of lesser-made brews, mostly from Ontario and Quebec breweries that haven't yet been bought by Molsons or Labatts. If I'm in the mood for variety, but none of their whims are sufficiently appealing (or sufficiently existing), I might go for one of these non-brewpub brews. This was the case the last time I was there. One of the beers that they had was a Coffee Porter from Toronto's Mill Street Brewery. The owner (or co-owner) of the Neustadt Springs Brewery had suggested this one to me a couple years ago when they were still selling their beer on site. So I was curious and I finally had an opportunity to try it without making too much of a financial commitment. I was also cautious. While I enjoy both beer and coffee, I wasn't sure that I would enjoy both together. So I only ordered a half pint. I'm not enough of a beer connoisseur to know when a beer is malty, hoppy, or has overtones of anything, so I don't have anything to offer in that regard. All I can say is that I should have asked, "Does it come in quarter pints?" After my first mouthful, I wondered whether I was going to be able to finish the remaining 221.8ml.

A couple years ago, Creemore Springs, one of Ontario's bigger micro-breweries was bought out by Molson. I thought to myself, and probably said to a few people, that I should drink as much of their flagship lager as possible before Molson ruins it. It was a cynical comment, and perhaps premature. When the takeover took place, customers were assured that Creemore Springs would still operate independently, and so there did remain some hope, albeit guarded, that the quality of the beer wouldn't change. A few weeks ago, I had some again, probably the first time since last August. Now it may be all in my mind, but this time it tasted like I was right to drink as much as I could immediately after the buyout. There may be other factors at play. Perhaps they were at the tail end of a keg, so I wasn't drinking their product in its best form. Maybe the onion rings I was eating just before changed the way that beer tasted. It's still not bad, mind you. It just seems that it's not quite as good as it used to be.

This past Tuesday, I went out to the Iron Duke, a new bar in an old location, with a friend for drinks. He was pretty excited for something he called Beau's organic. (Searching for "Beau's organic" on google, however, won't get you very far. The actual name of the beer is Beau's Lug-Tread.) He arrived before I did and had already ordered the beer by the time I got there. The beers that I like tend to be hard to see through. When the pint was poured, I saw that this one wasn't, so I was sceptical that I would like it. I was pleasantly surprised, however, by how good it tasted (again, I lack the expertise to accurately describe what made it taste so good to me). I was also surprised by the spelling of the name, and the size of the bottle that it came in. Only having heard the name, I thought it would be spelt Bows, or perhaps Bose. And the container? It's a behemoth 3.78 L [1] brown bottle with a $4.00 deposit, certainly a sight to behold. Though, at least at this pub, it was not a bottle to be held and taken home. My friend offered the waiter the $4.00 deposit to keep the jug, and then $10. The bribe was not enough, and he went home jugless. You can get it at the liquor store (Though possibly not at the beer store. Ontario liquor laws, you are awesome!), but only in 1.89 L [2] bottles. Questions of spelling and containment aside, though, I would recommend trying this before it gets bought by Molson.

The Iron Duke also deep fries a mean sweet potato fry. Normally I don't like sweet potato fries, but I couldn't stop eating these.

[1] Or 1 American gallon. Canada's conversion to metric has gone swimmingly, don't you think?

[2] Or 0.5 American gallon. Or 2 pints. Once again. Way to go metric conversion.

Penny Problems

Last weekend, I went home. While there, my sister told me that, unlike me, she likes the penny. I didn't think to ask her why. While this disappoints me, it does provide me with a solution to two problems. First, I know what to get her for her birthday. Second, I know what to do with all of my pennies.

Since my most recent post on the matter, I've read a few more things here and there about the potential discontinuation of the penny. I don't feel like looking them up, so there will be many links. There may be no facts as well. In any case, here we go. CTV did one of their online polls, and there was a majority in favour getting rid of it. Some bank type group thinks we should have gotten rid of it long time ago. They suggest we get consider ditching the nickel too (though, according to them, that would mean ditching the quarter and adding a 20 cent coin (a quinter?)). Colby Cosh seems to advocate getting doing away with it, but thinks the reverse of the coin is a fine piece of art (though not botanically correct). I visited Pat Martin's website just now to see what progress the legislation has made. Here's the latest on the topic. It says nothing about the progress, and little about the details.

It's seems pretty clear that, based on the information available, the penny is not all that useful. There are only a couple of reasons for keeping, aside from tradition, which shouldn't have much currency when making decisions about something whose only purpose is to serve as a tangible symbol for how much money you have. Firstly, I agree with Cosh that it would be a shame to throw the artwork out with the coin. Not only that, but the penny does do the most to add some colour to a pile of change. The yellowish colour of loonie and the centre of the toonie just doesn't cut through the silvery colour of the more common coins like the copper of the penny. Now it's unlikely that we'll do away with the nickel just yet, even though that is advocated by the banky types. But let's face it. The beaver's not all it's cracked up to be. Supposedly the beaver is a national symbol in Canada because of it's industriousness, or some such thing. I think if you dig deeper, you'll find that's a crock (it might be the case the the beaver is particularly industrious, but the reason it became a national symbol is not quite so noble if Will Ferguson can be trusted). In truth it's just a rather large smelly buck toothed rodent with only one marketable skill. The beaver's right behind the pig in the make-up line, and ugly or not, at least we can eat the pig. When's the last time you needed a dam built at the level of sophistication that a beaver can provide? Never. That's when. So I propose that we stop embarrassing ourselves by lionizing the glorified rat, ditch the penny, make the nickel out of copper, and replace the beaver with the maple leaf that currently adorns the penny. Problem solved.

Out for the Penny, Out by Pounds [Updated]

Further to this post, NDP MP Pat Martin has finally introduced his private member's bill on the elimination of the Canadian 1 cent coin. The man himself appears not to have caught wind of his introduction of the bill in parliament. As of the writing of this post, there is not a mention of it on his website.

Despite my best efforts to spend my pennies, the number in my possession still seems to be increasing. At the very least, they're not decreasing nearly as fast as I would like them to. So get on it folks. Call your local MP and urge them to vote with Mr. Martin, before I can no longer manage my accumulating pounds of pennies.

[Update:03/04/08 11:24am] According to his website, Pat Martin has learned of the bill he has introduced. Good for Pat. Also, the poll of the day at CTV.ca (look at the right, near the top, just below the banner) is on whether or not the penny should be scrapped. As of 11:26, 56% say yes. The rest say no.

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hat tip David Koyzis

Season's Greetings!

Happy Statute of Westminster Day!

Question Answered

Many times I've been asked "How much wood would a wood chuck chuck if a wood chuck could chuck wood?" though I never knew the answer. In fact, I didn't think there was answer, like that other age old question "What is the sound of one hand clapping?" Courtesy of Oscar Leroy from Dog River, however, I've finally learned that a "A wood chuck would chuck all the would he could chuck if a wood chuck could chuck wood."

Farewell insomnia, and good riddance.

Happy Day Off Day

Well that time of year as come again where we celebrate... we're not sure what. Nevertheless, we celebrate it by taking a day off. "Civic Holiday" they call it in most of Ontario, and some other provinces. Civic Holiday is also a generic term for... a day off! Perhaps we are supposed to spend that day figuring out why we are taking that day off. I'm not sure, really. It's celebrated in 8 of our 10 provinces, and 2 of our 3 territories, and goes by different names depending on province, or, in the case of Ontario, depending on municipality. So, whatever it is that you're celebrating today, if anything, have fun celebrating that.

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How am I celebrating it, you might be wondering? I'm working. It's not as bad as it sounds. I'm finding it strangely satisfying.

Copper Stop

A proposal to scrap the penny. It's not the first. It probably won't be the last, as long as that crimson coin continues to circulate.

The mint itself is clearly not nearly as enthusiastic about the penny as they are about other coins. The only special reverse that it's ever had was in 1967, to commemorate Canada's centennial, and that was quite a while ago, long before the current binge.

I myself rarely use pennies. They might get tossed in with the tip on one of those rare occasions when I pay for my meal at a restaurant with cash and one comes with my change. Even then, it seems kind of rude. I feel like I'm just offloading an unwanted encumbrance. "Here. In exchange for your exquisite service, may I offer you the burden of carting around some copper discs that may be worth more in copper than their value as currency." Plus, I like nice round numbers, even when giving tips, and if I'm getting pennies with change, my bill wasn't round, so neither would be the tip. If I happen to have one or two of them in my pocket, they might get used to make giving change easier for a cashier. Otherwise they get tossed in a container with the rest of my change, unlikely ever to be used. So, while my change wouldn't be quite as colourful, from a practical standpoint, I wouldn't miss it much.

Australia gave up their penny in 1992. Our currency and theirs are often fairly close, relative to the US Dollar. If they can live without it, why should we be so attached? They also melted down the copper to make bronze medals for the 2000 Olympics. We've got some Olympics coming up here in a few years, of which we know the mint is aware. Perhaps, if our legislators get on it quickly enough, the mint can make a more sensible contribution to the Olympics.

If we actually went through with it, those evil people who run businesses could round up to the nearest nickel, thereby increasing their ill-gotten gains up to four cents (not four pennies, for they would be no longer) at a time. Certainly this could be cause for revolt! (Why revolt? Why wouldn't we just protest the legislation before it passes. One quote says it all: "I moved here from Canada, and they think I'm slow, eh?") Then again, before or during 1973, when our precious penny was worth what a nickel is now, there weren't pleas for the production of a 1/5th of a cent coin on the basis that those shady shopkeepers were rounding up to the nearest penny. In fact, that would have been absurd! So really, rounding up is immaterial.

Of course, in contrast to Australia, our penny does bear our national symbol, the maple leaf, which might make it tough to sell (or not to sell, as the case may be). Theirs only had the feathertail glider. Is that even a real animal? Probably not! Surely the coin must stay on this basis alone, even beyond the point at which the nickel has diminished in value so much as to warrant its abolishment!

According to the article, it's not like it would save the mint a mint, though. $30,000,000.00 is quite a lot for you and me, and even quite a lot for the Liberal Party of Canada to launder. But it's peanuts in comparison the national budget. So even the purportedly penny pinching party presently in power may not be persuaded on the premise of pecuniary prudence. If it is a good idea, it probably won't happen since, just like annexing the Turks and Caicos Islands, it's just not a priority.

Some other facts about pennies:

• I have $2.12 in Canadian pennies. Or, better, I have 212 Canadian pennies. Giving them a dollar value is misleading, since I am unlikely ever to spend them (except perhaps to a copper depot in exchange for twice their face value). One of these pennies is a centennial penny, featuring the rock dove.
  
• When I was in high school, one of my classmates would chase after pennies if someone rolled them down the hallway. This was discovered when some of my other classmates, having discovered already then that pennies were more or less worthless, would flick them at people. After people noticed this, they would bring bags of pennies to school for the sole purpose of throwing them down the hallway to watch my classmate chase them. It seems cruel now, but still I don't think he minded all that much. I think he really enjoyed the candy that he would purchase with his hard earned money.
• In Canada, a penny was known as a copper. It is not surprising that a penny would be called, but it is surprising that only Canadians would call it that. But perhaps I am inferring too much from my source. I discovered this after I chose the title for this post, while looking for an archaic sounding phrase involving the terms "two bits" and "fortnight", neither of which have anything to do with copper or pennies, aside from the fact that 25 pennies, all of which contain at least some copper, are worth two bits.
  

This week in review

[unedited for your proofreading enjoyment]

Well the 168 hour period that began a couple hours from now last week is almost up, so I should get to posting, before it's too late and this is old news. The weekend started like any other. I was sitting at home doing nothing on a Friday night, in anticipation of doing something on a Saturday. Well, not completely nothing. I typed up an email in order to make sure I didn't show up late for Saturday's early afternoon of mayhem. Then I sat glued to my computer waiting for the reply. Actually, I don't remember what I did. Maybe I wrote another email. Who knows?

Anyway. I was told to show up at 10:30. I was planning on showing up late, but decided not to, since one of the participants is rather quite punctual, and seems to get visibly irate in the presence of minor delays which could turn out to be very inconsequential even in the short term. I had forgotten about his girlfriend, however, who isn't quite as punctual. In fact, before the early afternoon of mayhem, I hadn't met her. I showed up a minute late, and was worried that the car would have left without me. It turns out that 3 out of 5 of us weren't even there yet. Sooner or later everyone showed up and we were on our way. Three of us were jammed in the back seat of a Honda Civic, and I got stuck in the middle, which meant that my legs were squeezed tightly against each other. In a way that was a blessing, since I had consumed a large coffee in my way there.

We arrived at Sandbanks at around 12:00. We sat around for a bit, and then threw the football around, until such time is a tried to catch the football with the tip of my finger rather than the palm of my hand (well hands, I guess). I decided that throwing the football around wasn't fun anymore. My friends decided the same. What power I wield, I never knew! We sat around a bit more, absorbed some sun, and then decided to toss the frisbee around for a while. This I could do with one hand, mostly. It was rather windy, however, and after some time, I was having a difficult time getting the frisbee to go where I wanted it to (other than that, they were great shots). The person that I was playing had very good aim, though pretty much all of his throws were on the ground, and rolling sideways by the time they reached me. We decided to switch positions, and magically, we also switched errors. Moments later, we decided that playing frisbee was also boring. We sat around some more, and headed for home at about 3:00. Perhaps 15 minutes into the ride, it began to rain quite heavily, so we had picked a good time to end the mayhem.

The rest of the day was spent doing not much at all. I started a blog post, but my finger got the better of me, so I saved the draft, and haven't touched it since.

On Sunday, I went to Ottawa with an old roommate (who is from Ottawa) to celebrate Canada Day. Among the things I did to celebrate was drinking enough beer so that I could bend my finger without it hurting, and also enough that that seemed like a good idea. Other things included taking a ridiculous number of photos with my recently acquired digital camera, walking around listening to a friend of the roommate complain about what clearly appeared to him as some sort of fascism regarding the manner in which Ottawans were expected to celebrate the initialization of their country, and watching the fireworks under the watchful eye of our apparently fascist overlord's servants, the RCMP. We killed a bit of time, and eventually made it back to my roommates house. I think I lost five dollars somewhere in there.

The next day we headed back to downtown to do some touristy stuff. We had intended to go to the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography, but it was closed, so we went to the Modern Photography exhibit at the National Gallery of Canada instead. Highlights of the Gallery included a giant sculpture of a spider (which was inspired by sculptor's mother. How flattering.) and a number of photographs that were similar in style and content to some of my own (not that I'm trying to draw any comparisons about my photo skills). Also amusing was the fact that taking photographs was not allowed at the photography exhibit, while it was elsewhere in the museum (not everywhere else mind you). We ate lunch, made our way back to his house, and eventually drove back to Kingston, mostly taking back roads.

On Tuesday, the swelling in my finger had gone down enough that I was getting some movement back. Accompanying that movement, however, was a clicking feeling that I'm pretty sure wasn't there last week. I decide that this warranted a visit to the doctor. She decided that it warranted a visit to the X-ray department at the local hospital, and so I spent a good part of Tuesday afternoon waiting around for X-rays. I also finally made it back into the gym.

Not much happened on Wednesday, except that I weighed myself for the first time since April, which is also the last time that I went to the gym before Tuesday. Turns out that, after all that laziness and bad eating, I actually lost weight.

Thursday, nothing really to report.

Today, while walking to school to run some errands, I ran into a Japanese friend. She didn't think much of Kingston's 10 minute Canada Day fireworks display. I told her that Ottawa's was 20 minutes. You could tell that she didn't want to hurt my feelings by telling me what she thought of that. She told me that they're usually an hour in Japan. Oh I see. Come to think of it, 20 minutes is kind of lame for a fireworks display in the nation's capital on the day which is supposed to celebrate the birth of the nation. Municipal governments can't necessarily afford to put on huge displays, but if the city of Hamilton (yes, it's my hometown, but I'm under no illusions) on it's own can afford a comparable display, then I would think the feds could have given us a whole lot more than a local government could. In any case. I had to main orders of business on campus today, both of which involved paying fines of some kind. The library's fine extraction system was malfunctioning, so I didn't pay that one. I was going to pay a fine at the doctor's office, but I decided to try dispute it instead. It was a pretty hard sell too. First off, the women didn't come across as someone who was easy to bargain with. I blamed it on a dead watch battery. I showed up for the appointment when my watch said that I was supposed to. According to their records, though, I was on time for another appointment earlier on the same day as the missed appointment. Why was the watch a factor for the second and not the first? Not only that, but the appointment was a long time ago. Why didn't I come in within a week or two to dispute it? Nevertheless, in the end, I was successful.

I returned home, and kept myself busy trying to gain some insight into an open problem from my thesis. I looked at a related paper that I had picked up quite some time ago, and realized that, even though the main result of the paper is rather complicated, parts of it are simple enough to cover almost everything in a special case of the open problem, the few things that it doesn't cover can be dealt with separately (vague enough for you?). It doesn't actually solve the open problem, though it does make another more central open problem "easier" to solve. And that's not nothing.

And, to end the excitement of the day, I got a call from the doctor's office regarding X-rays. It turns out that I fractured my finger. I've been instructed to splint the finger, or else tape it to the one beside it (or is that the same thing?) for at least 3 weeks. Currently I'm doing the latter, which means that two of my left hand fingers are pretty much useless for typing, which makes typing a bit difficult (though clearly I'm getting a lot of practice with 6 finger typing). So, until this thing fixes itself, blog posts will be short, if they happen at all. I'll save my typing energy for electronic forms of communications that are more interactive.

Minty, Not So Fresh

When I was a kid, I was always excited to get a "horse quarter", one of
the quarters issued in 1973 to commemorate the centennial of the Royal
Canadian Mounted Police, in my change. A lesser thrill, though a thrill
nonetheless, was when I would get one of a few other coins with
something other than their usual reverse, most
of which were issued at Canada's centennial in 1967, or one of the 12
sided nickels (1942-1963). Basically anything that stuck out from the
standard issue was of interest to me.

Since 1992, however, the Royal Canadian Mint seems to have gotten a bit
carried away. In that year, they issued a set of 12 circulation coins,
one for each province or territory, to commemorate Canada's
sesquicentennial, or 125 year anniversary. I did enjoy collecting these
coins, though it seemed a bit strange to me at the time to celebrate 125
years (less strange than, say, 137 years, mind you). Perhaps the board
of the Mint concluded that Canada would cease to be an independent
country in the face of the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement or the then
upcoming North American Free Trade Agreement which superseded it, and
they thought that they should celebrate an anniversary while they could.
Who knows?

They were mostly inactive until the turn of the millennium when they
issued 24 quarters, one for each month of 1999 and 2000. I'm not sure if
striking a series of coins was what Prince had in mind when he said he
was gonna party like it's 1999. I guess fun is relative though. Some of
the designs I like. Others are corny, and a few are downright hideous in
my opinion. I managed to collect them all, though I did it mainly for
the sake of completeness, and not so much because I enjoyed the designs.
It did take me at least until late 2002, and probably as late as Winter
of 2003, before I ever saw the January 1999 coin, which was the last coin
I needed to complete the set. I got two of them not too far apart from
each other, and haven't seen one since.

Nothing special was produced in 2001, but from 2002 to 2006, there were 8
different commemorative quarters introduced (not to mention the various
special pennies, nickels, and dimes, loonies, and toonies).

About a month or so ago, I received in my change yet another variety of
quarter. On taking a closer look, I saw that coin was commemorating the
2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver. I think this was the point where I
concluded that the Mint has become just a bit too obsessive in producing
commemorative coins (I had been on the verge of concluding this for at
least a year now). Up until this point, the coins they've issued have
celebrated anniversaries, like centennials, or else were related to
current events, like remembrance day. But this time, they've issued a
series of coins in recognition of something that's happening 3 years from
now, and really isn't all that special in comparison (recognizing those
who served and died in various wars, finding a cure for breast cancer,
vs. an amateur athletic competition). Now if a series of coins is to be
produced before the actual year of the event, then I suppose that this is
the year to do it. Last year was too soon after the 2006 Winter
Olympics. If they were introduced next year, they would interfere with
the 2008 Summer Olympics, and I'm sure that they've got something planned
for that too. 2009, only one year before, is not soon enough. So 2007
would be the year, if any, to issue the coins. But I just don't get why
they thought it necessary to introduce a series of coins in advance of
the games at all. I know that they're going to be in Canada this time,
but, as entertaining as they are and as cool as that is, they're not that
important in the grand scheme of things. Adding the small logo for the
Vancouver Olympics to the regular circulation coins is enough. Strike
the usual Olympic loony that gets issued during the games, and put out
the funky quarters at the same time as that.

I shouldn't be too hard on the Mint, though. I'm just as obsessive about
collecting the coins as they are about making them, and these will be no
exception.

Saturday Night Lyrics

In honour of the NHL playoffs that I'm not watching, I'm offering up some hockey related content.

A humourous addition to Stompin' Tom's well known Hockey Song due to Tim Hus and performed by Corb Lund.

Well goodness me,
Fox TV
where did you get your sight?
Can't you keep track,
the puck is black
that's why the ice is white.

And that big red glare,
that you see up there,
well we've seen that for years
Heaven sakes,
all it takes
is a couple dozen beers!

----

The Hockey Monkey
By the Zambonis

all the scientists are running around
looking for the monkey but he can't be found
cause he's down by the pond playing hockey with the kids

and all the mothers are running around
looking for their children but they can't be found
cause they're down by the pond playing hockey with the monkey

and its 1..2..3.. the kids love the monkey and
4..5..6.. the monkey's got a hockey stick
7..8..9.. havin a good time yeaaaa

national guard is running around
looking for the monkey but he can't be found
cause he's down by the pond playin hockey with the kids

and all the teachers are running around
looking for the children but they can't be found
cause their down by the pond playin hockey with the monkey

and its 1..2..3.. the kids love the monkey and
4..5..6.. the monkey's got a hockey stick
7..8..9.. havin a good time yeaaaa

it's 1..2..3.. the kids love the monkey and
4..5..6.. the monkey's got a hockey stick
7..8..9.. havin a good time yeaaaaaaaaa

Idiot Strings

Upon finding my blog (ie. being ordered by me to read it) most people ask "What are idiot strings?"

I can't blame them for not knowing. When I used idiot strings, I didn't have a name for them, and it was long after I used them that I learned that that's what they are called.

So what are they? They're the strings that are threaded through the sleeves of your winter jacket and tied to your mittens so that you don't lose them. (I'm not an expert on parenting, but I imagine it's probably best not to call them idiot strings to your kids).

It's probably a good thing that I had them. Even still, at least once per year, I would lose my mittens if I didn't have a friend around to act as virtual idiot strings. Not only that, but it seems that I could use them for a few other day-to-day items. She with whom I am in most regular contact knows that my pen frequently goes missing, sometimes for days at a time. Just this morning, I got a knock on the door informing me that my keys were still in door to my apartment, and the front office staff in the math department recognize the "I've locked myself out of the office again" look.

According to my dictionary (Canadian Oxford), "idiot string" is a Canadian term, even though few Canadians seem to actually know what they are, and before my blog became the online hit that it is (averaging 11 page loads and 7 unique visitors per day! w00t! Take that google, microsoft network, and yahoo!) googling for idiot strings brought you to a bunch of sites all of which seemed to be located in the US. Hooray for national self-misconceptions! (I think we can be pretty sure that "toque" will always be ours though.)

Meanwhile, nobody on the internet seems to know what idiot handles are. You get a prize if you can (a) give the correct definition of idiot handle and (b) find an internet site where the term is used correctly.

Yikes!

The Quebec election results are in. The Liberals get 48 seats, the ADQ 41, and the PQ 36. I'm surprised to see Dumont's ADQ with 41 seats, considering that they only had 5 in the last provincial parliament. I had expected, based on no expertise whatsover aside from a poll I glanced at a few weeks ago, that the Liberals would have a strong minority. The ADQ would have enough seats, low 20s perhaps, to make up an informal coalition of sorts with the Liberals. It's good to see the separatist PQ with so few seats. Apparently it's one of their worst showings since their first election. Haven't quite figured out what Dumont's stance on the role of Quebec in federation is, aside from a sense that it's a compromise between federalism and separatism. We won't ask to let us leave, but we hope you'll treat us as if we have. Something like that. The word autonomy is used quite a lot. Spain has a lot of autonomous regions. So many in fact, I wonder if the Spanish president isn't just the mayor of Madrid, but with a fancy title. I've learned a fair bit over the last few years about federalism across the globe, and realized that there are many more models besides the Canadian one, which isn't really inspiring and tends towards a unitary state rather than a federation. So maybe Dumont's ideas deserve a look.

Well, it's getting late so that, though incomplete, is all that I will say for now. Better informed but equally useless analysis and opinion can be found in the pages of our print media.