A long time coming...

Hey everyone,

It's been a long time coming for this post, but the last several weeks my head has been focused solely on getting set up for the new job, which starts Monday. Now I can relax, and enjoy the last couple days of my time off.

I was also on a trip to the Eastern United States splitting time between the great cities of New York and Boston. These are the types vacations I prefer, as opposed to resort type vacations in the winter. As you would expect it was a great time, and I lucked out with watching a Blue Jays and Yankees brawl and a Lewis Black appearance on a Daily Show taping.


This was my 3rd time to NYC and my second time in Boston. I've said numerous times that New York is a great place to visit, but I would live in Boston. A very active, urban, and walkable town with excellent public transit and a safe downtown core. Living in a city like that facilitates being active. My friend even said that she thought she needed to run while there just to fit in. Politicians that are in charge of urban development should be required to visit Boston to see how a vibrant urban life can be built. Calgary and Edmonton really missed the boat when they grew their cities to be more suburban focused. I see Saskatoon going down this road as well. Our council says they want a vibrant core, and at the same time permits big box developments with three large Wal-Mart stores spread around the outskirts of the city. In a city of our size, it is very difficult to have both.

Oh yeah, and U2 kicked ass.



Cheers.

Michael Vick

Hi everyone,

Here's a topic that I'm sure has been blogged about and discussed to no length over the last couple years, and it is now being talked about again. Michael Vick, who most people know served nearly two years in prison for running a dogfighting ring out of his home, has finished his sentence and has recently signed on with the Philadelphia Eagles. With this, the discussion on whether Philly should have taken him and a discussion of whether he has paid his debt to society has been ongoing.

With something like what I'm going to talk about, I have to preface this and say I do like dogs. Not all dogs (yappy purse dogs annoy the hell out of me, and the huge dogs just seem excessive), but overall I do like dogs.

If you remember back when this dogfighting ring came to light, the public outrage was widespread. It wasn't just groups such as PETA, but everyday citizens who rallied against what Vick had done. I can understand the outrage, as people probably looked at their family dog and imagined some of the tragic things that happen to dogs in a dogfighting ring happening to their own dog.

While Vick deserved to be punished, no doubt, 23 months in prison has always seemed incredibly excessive to me. The typical standard in the USA for a more common underground activity; cockfighting, is a fine and a maximum of 6 months in jail. Why the discrepancy? Roosters and dogs are animals. Regardless that we have largely personified dogs over the last several decades, I don't believe that animal abuse laws are written to be specific to a type of animal.

So, now the question is - should they be? If Michael Vick ran a cockfighting ring, he would have likely not even seen the inside of a jail cell and been playing football that same year. An episode of Seinfeld was based on cockfighting, and it was a very funny episode. That same episode with "Little Jerry Seinfeld" being a dog would not have been funny at all.

So, if society has applied a higher standard for certain animals, should the laws be written to provide harsher sentences if people abuse these certain animals (dogs, cats, and horses are the three that come to mind immediately). Even though I personally agree that the idea of a cat, dog, or horse being abused is much more distasteful then abuse of a pig, cow, rooster, rat, or gopher. In the prairies, a common summer pastime is shooting gophers for fun. This is an idea I personally find distasteful, but our Western culture overall does not and nobody is ever going to be arrested for killing gophers on a farm.

Some food for thought...

Cheers.

More on Healthcare

Hey everyone. A Sunday post after a fun filled August long weekend and the annual street dance/buffoonery in Speedy Creek last night.

Our friends to the South continue to furiously debate the issue of health care reform. Through town hall meetings, talk shows, the debate has become increasingly vicious and the dialogue has been enhanced with some increased vitriol. It has been very tough to find an educated debate on this issue with points of view from both sides. Real Time With Bill Maher this past Friday was a refreshing exception.

In the debate, the inevitable comparison with the Canadian health care system has come up, and the mention of our system's trouble spots, such as elective and non life-threatening surgery wait times. However, the continued comparison and criticism of Canada's health system by opponents of Obama's reform bill is a red herring. The United States system was ranked 37th in the world by the World Health Organization. Canada's however, was only ranked 30th. To me if the Americans are looking to spend billions to reform healthcare they should be looking at other large industrial democracies that are ranked much higher such as France (1), Italy (2), and Spain (7). It is important to note that the United States system costs much more per capita ($6600) on healthcare compared to other large Western democracies ($2500 - $3500) such as France, Canada, Germany, Spain, Italy, and Great Britain.

The Boston Globe provided an excellent article highlighting the French system. The French system is a public/private hybrid system. Insurance companies manage the public health insurance system, and citizens have a choice of providers. Like Canadians, the French also can have relatively inexpensive supplemental coverage to look after the areas not covered by the public system. Doctors are given full professional control over their practices and medical decisions, which all but eliminates both rationing (common in Canadian and British systems) and the interference of private insurance common in the American system. Also interesting is that the French have greatly reduced the overhead required for practicing Doctors with a very simple billing and reimbursement system, eliminating the need for a large amount of non-medical support staff (which is very common in the States).

The Boston Globe article also touches on a very important issue that the debate in the United States has largely ignored, and that is medical liability litigation. A major reason why care in the United States is so expensive is the practice of "defensive medicine". This is the practice of ordering expansive and unnecessary tests to "cover all bases" to avoid litigation. Naturally, this is very expensive. The medical malpractice tort system needs to be overhauled in the United States to accomplish any real reform and to also get costs under control. Punitive damages and huge rewards have caused medical malpractice insurance premiums to skyrocket, often in the hundreds of thousands per year, per practice. According to a lot of legislators in the States, tort reform is not in Obama's package.

Why is this? Why isn't a main cause of high healthcare costs being reformed in Obama's bill? Simple. Trial Attorneys. Medical malpractice claims is a cash cow for personal injury law firms, and the trial attorney is a powerful lobby in Washington. Trial attorney associations are also a key contributor and supporter of the Democratic Party. The Democrats would have a tough time swallowing a bill that would lose them support and contributions of trial attorneys. Canadian and French systems in general only allow for economic damages in malpractice suits, which are typically significantly less then the punitive/pain and suffering awards given in the United States.

Some food for thought, and the coming weeks will continue to be very interesting in this debate.

Cheers.

Health Care Reform

Happy Monday everyone. Back from a fun weekend in Regina where I ran into a lot of friends and watched a good football game despite the result.

The American news in recent weeks has been talking about a bill to reform their health care system. Naturally, this is a very emotional debate that contains a lot of rhetoric and not a lot of information of what this reform actually entails. The "Con" side of the debate often involves vilifying "socialized" systems in countries like Great Britain, Canada, and France. I won't get into that today, but in a later post this week I will discuss the comparisons between various health care systems in industrialized nations.

No health care system in the world is perfect, our system and the American system are glaring examples of that. The American system is a reflection of their culture in that everything should be profit driven. The argument is that being profit driven increases efficiency and fosters creativity and innovation. Health care is not a typical industry however, and the Americans have missed the mark incredibly on efficiency. Currently, the US system costs more per capita then the Canadian "socialized" system does.

However, where they haven't missed the mark is innovation. US companies are by far the leaders on innovation in the health care industry for new surgical techniques, tests and pharmaceuticals. It is likely that the drive for profit has fostered this. The US healthcare industry has places such as the Mayo Clinic and Cancer Centers of America who are specialized care centers that provide care for cancer and other deadly diseases that is second to none in the world. Are these centers cheap? Not by a long shot. However, it is nice to know that this care is available.

What has happened over the last several decades is that the rest of the industrialized world has piggybacked off of American health care innovation to make their own systems better. I remember twenty years ago, my father was very ill and one of his three surgeries to fix him was to remove a benign tumor off his adrenaline gland (the tumor, although benign was causing issues with blood pressure and creating chemical imbalances in his system). The surgery to fix this was very invasive, and he still walks around with a large scar that surrounds nearly half his torso. Today, that same procedure can be done via an incision a fraction of the size and lasers. The new technology is more expensive, but the greatly reduced recovery time makes for a much reduced hospital stay and cost savings. Not to mention the improved quality of life afterwards.

I am not against parts of health care being a "For-profit" enterprise. However, the struggle for the United States will be to ensure that any much needed reform does not stymie innovation. As distasteful as it is to some to make money off the suffering of people, increasing profit margin is a much better motivator for innovation and efficiency than cost savings. If the current administration can accomplish quality health care reform that genuinely makes the system better for the majority of Americans, it will be a monumental achievements. Think of the stakeholders that potentially have something to lose by health care reform - insurance companies (both for healthcare and malpractice insurance), trial lawyers, pharmaceutical companies, and big healthcare management firms such as Aetna. All incredibly powerful lobby groups that have an interest in keeping the system pretty much the same.

That's all for today.

Cheers.

Misguided Creativity

Hey everyone, hope the summer is going well. My self taken "teacher's summer" is getting very boring. I should be starting work again next week or the week after for a long time, and it can't come soon enough. I, in general, really enjoy what I do and I realise that although my last gig was not a good fit I do identify my work with who I am quite a lot.

Anyways a quick, fun post today. I'm sure everyone has one or two groups of good friends that in the course of the usual buffoonery, come up with some good ideas. Or, stupid ideas that are still very creative. My post today is about my friends and I and misguided creativity. You know, something very clever that is done, that while funny really adds nothing to the betterment of society. Here are some examples. I will not mention any names, but everybody knows who they are.

1. Grade 12. Having decided on a career, I purchased a top of the line computer for the time in 1996. It even had the Internet. Aside from looking at porn, my good friends and I made a series of commercials and short audio skits with sound effects and everything. It included:
a) A Chrysler Cordoba commercial - which involved it exploding and hurling off the side of a cliff.
b) An ad for a weapons seller ("Bazooka Hut"), who's main selling feature was giving local farmers the ability to blow up a hutterite van.
c) A news cast where we shot down the helicopter.

2. In University and looking for cheap entertainment, some friends and I would pass time by playing croquet a couple times a week. One said friend, in the middle of studying for finals, developed a 10 page croquet manual from scratch which included our take on the game. It had logos, graphics, colour, and was done in PDF format. Very professionally done. Why? I'm not sure.

3. As payback for a previous joke, a friend needed a method to get back at one of his female friends. The payback? Rewire her car so that whenever she hit the brake, the horn would go off. The truly cunning part? They had an attachment that they could take out to return the car to normal, so when she tried to take the car to the garage it would not repeat the behaviour.

4. Invention of the game "death-beer". Again, this is myself and my old college roommates. Fill up a tub with water, ice, and beer. One beer is an empty filled with water with "XXX" written on the bottle. To grab a beer, you must close your eyes and reach in the tub to grab one. Whoever grabs the death beer must drink the 1.14L bottle of Colt 45 in the fridge.

5. Ambient bathroom music. One of my college roommates decided to wire up a walkman with a pair of speakers in the bathroom. Whenever the light would turn on and the door would close, music would come on. As soon as the light turned off or the door opened, the music would stop. This was a big hit at parties.

I'm sure everyone has stories like this about groups of friends and goofy stuff like this. Feel free to share. The requirement? Has to be clever, and contribute a disproportionate amount to the betterment of society for the amount of effort involved.

Cheers.

Mid July Musings

Hope everyone is enjoying their summer so far. Been a while since my last update, and there is enough to talk about.

Of course, the big story recently is the death of Michael Jackson and the extensive media coverage that has followed. I didn't grow up with "Thriller" and "Bad" so I've never been a big Jackson fan. I respect what he did for music, and music videos especially, and tip my hat to the fact that he did put out some good tunes.

I am fascinated by the overwhelming reaction however. Here is a man who is a very tragic figure; he could have been the lead character in a 5 act Shakespearean play that we studied in high school English. A talented and beloved person whose life turned into a punch line in the last years of his life (even without the legal troubles). I think what this speaks to is the affect music has on people, and this is an affect I am having trouble relating to.

Anyone who knows me well knows I am a music guy. I listen to it constantly and I also play it. I don't have many DVDs and half the ones I do have are of concerts. I have a wide ranging taste in music, and finding new music that I like is my primary hobby. That being said, I can't compare any one of my favourite artists to the passion millions of people feel for Jackson. If my favourite artist, Bono, passed away I would be bummed out for sure but nothing close to the reaction that Jackson is getting.

A common cliche you hear about artists like Jackson or Elvis is "he shaped my life". I'm not sure what that means. Good music will trigger good memories of childhood and teen years. However music being a memory trigger doesn't really mean that is was responsible for someone's growth as an individual. I've went to a lot of concerts since the mid-90s and most of them were great experiences and a lot of fun. To say that those artists shaped me into the person I am is a stretch. My friends, family, and education hav been responsible for that.

The closest example in my lifetime I can relate to this is the death of Kurt Cobain. I was 14 I believe, but I do remember a lot of strong reactions by my fellow classmates. To a point where some guys wanted to "win this hockey game for Kurt!". Again, a common quote was "His music spoke to me!". I don't know how Cobain's anti-establishment angst grunge music spoke to middle class white kids from Swift Current, but maybe I just needed a more open mind.

Not sure what the point of this one is completely, other than I'm looking for some help in understanding how a music figure can ellicit this type of reaction.

Cheers.

Saskatchewan Uranium Development

Hey folks,

In the last couple weeks, a public consultation forum on uranium development in Saskatchewan has been traveling the province, gathering input from citizens on the further development of the uranium value chain in the province. This discussion is looking at the Uranium Development Partnership's (UDP) report and recommendations to the province on what should be done. The trigger for this process is the strong growth our province has seen in recent years, and the forecasted future growth. With growth in the economy and population comes increased power demands. On June 15th, I attended the forum in Saskatoon.

SaskPower is a part of this process, because by 2020 between economic growth and retired assets they need to come up with an additional 1700 MegaWatts (MW) of generating capacity. A nuclear reactor can make up 1000 MW of this gap, which is why this discussion is happening right now.

I'll come out and state where I'm coming from. In the decade that I've been working in professional jobs, 6 years have been spent in the nuclear industry in Saskatoon. I believe that while the industry did not perform well in the 50s and 60s with regards to the environment, the necessary environmental and regulatory framework is in place to ensure these types of projects show the utmost care for the environment. The industry has numerous professionals that work with regulators on environment assessments and licensing.

That being said, I'm not completely sold on the idea of building of a reactor based PURELY on the economics. Nuclear reactors are big and expensive, and I'm not sure with all the associated upgrades required to our grid we can afford it. That being said, the forum was interesting, although the "anti-nuke" crowd was there in full force. A lot of what was said was informed dissent and gave me some pause for thought, and a lot was based on misguided assumptions or simply fear mongering. My favourite example was the idea that nuclear material is altering our DNA through soldier's semen. Not an exaggeration.

Here are a few discussion points I'd like to make about this:

1. Many people at the forum seemed to think this was a choice between nuclear and other cleaner power options such as wind, solar, and hydro. That is not the case. There is still 700 MW of capacity that SaskPower needs to come up with, and renewables will be part of that mix. Wind and solar are social no-brainers, which is why large public forums like this one are not required for renewables.

2. Many people also had the impression we are not looking at solar and wind as options, and that is not the case. The province currently has 170MW of wind turbines scattered around the Swift Current area. As a former resident of Swift Current, I can't think of a better place for wind power in our province. SaskPower is looking at expanding this capacity all the time.

3. Some folks in attendance are convinced that wind, hydro and solar power can replace our fossil fuel generation completely. Unfortunatly, with current technology this is not the case (unless we use nuclear as well). The technological issue with wind and solar right now is energy storage, and I'll outline why this is important. As I'm writing, the temperature today is forecasted to approach 30 degrees. When the hottest part fo the day hits, air conditioners in homes and offices will be working the hardest and consuming the most power. To manage this, power plant operators forecast this and will bring increased capacity online to cover the spike in demand. This is done by consuming more natural gas or coal to run additional turbines in a power plant. Right now, this demand management is not possible with wind or solar. If we have a windy day of 80km/hr but the additional power generated is not required it can not be saved for the calm hot day. Operators can not turn on the wind or the sun to meet increased demand. Can wind and solar be an integral part of our energy mix? Absolutely, but natural gas, coal, or nuclear must also be part of our mix for the purposes of demand management.

4. Nuclear is often touted as a clean energy source, and compared to fossil fuels it is. However, a good point is raised that the mining, transport and construction processes use a lot of fossil fuels (namely diesel). This is true, and is a valid argument. However, one must remember that solar panels do not magically appear, they have to be manufactured. Components in photovoltaic solar panels use precious metals (such as cobalt, cesium, and platinum) in their manufacture. These metals are mined, just like uranium, and most of it comes from areas such as South America and Africa. So, once the product is mined and refined, it has to be transported to the United States, Mexico and SouthEast Asia where it is a raw material in the manufacturing of solar panels. A lot of fossil fuels are consumed in this process as well. This is not saying that solar is not a viable option, but it is a comment that the manufacture of most products has an extraction and transportation component to it that uses fossil fuels.

Thats all for today,

Cheers.