I haven’t had the time to properly read and write/rant about BC’s upcoming carbon tax, but I have to say that the idea sounds good to me: it’s a not-too-oppressive, revenue-neutral, slowly-incrementing carbon tax. Sounds like it could become the model for the other provinces (and possibly even the states!).
Westjet says in a Globe & Mail article that it’s considering moving away from Air Miles and starting its own reward program. This seems to me to be a pretty rough move from the customer’s point of view. Air Miles is handy because it can be collected from so many places and redeemed for so many things. Air Canada’s Aeroplan has sucked monkey balls for years, and while recently it’s become possible to collect Aeroplan points in other stores (such as Futureshop, some gas stations, etc), there’s no reason to think that WestJet’s own plan would do the same, so it might be a very inconvenient, useless plan indeed, unless you fly a lot. If they were to go it alone, I think I’d prefer instead that they just cut the price a bit, since airline reward systems are generally just quagmires waiting to happen.
Borrowing a page from Shoppers’ playbook, Mr. Durfy said WestJet envisages stimulating travel demand by issuing bonus points to passengers who fly on slower days, notably Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays.
“There’s some neat stuff that you can do if you have control of your own loyalty program. The sky’s the limit,” he said.
Ok, that is not a reason to leave Air Miles. You can already offer double Air Miles or bonus 100 Air Miles for features — other retailers such as A&P do all the time. Buy 4 pineapples, get 3 Air Miles; buy a carton of milk and a box of cereal, get 10 Air Miles; Sunday double bonus Air Miles day!
And finally, a quick comparison of Air Miles vs. Aeroplan:
Air Miles are worth approx 14 cents each (based on getting a $20 gift certificate to A&P). Aeroplan miles are worth approx 0.74 cents each (based on redeeming for a $100 gift card). For a direct flight to Victoria for a conference this summer, both Air Canada and West Jet are having a seat sale so it’s $264 each way, total of $528. Air Canada will give me 176 Aeroplan Miles, or a kickback of $1.30 (it’s actually better to take their offer to knock $3 off the price of the flight and not collect any!). West Jet will give 26 Air Miles, or a loyalty value of $3.64. That’s about a 0.7% loyalty kickback, which is pretty typical for many loyalty programs (Shoppers Optimum, RBC Rewards, etc). When it’s Air Miles they’re giving me, that can add up and I can use it somewhere. If they switch to their own flight rewards system, then it’s likely I won’t be able to redeem for anything until I’ve collected hundreds of dollars worth of points, which even flying a few times per year would never happen within my lifetime.
I generally do like taking advantage of loyalty points programs — who doesn’t like getting something for nearly nothing — however, I start getting really pissed off and uninterested when each and every individual store has their own, separate points game. At that point, unless it’s somewhere I shop a lot, I’d just rather they just cut the prices or improved the product/service and stuff their loyalty programs. West Jet certainly fits here: West Jet has slightly better service than Air Canada, as long as the prices are close, I’m going to pick West Jet. The few dollars worth of points in Air Miles are not swaying my choice, and a more restrictive West Jet exclusive program would have no influence.
I spend my Saturday afternoon at a workshop for science PhD students who may have an interest in working in industry called “Does your science degree prepare you for industrial careers?“. The workshop was to focus on “transferable skills” — that is, when a newly minted science PhD goes to work in industry, they are rarely hired for the specialized knowledge they gained in the course of their thesis. Rather, they are hired on the basis of their transferable skills, which can be applied to other subjects. For example, a PhD student whose thesis was on the migration patterns of unladen european swallows will probably not find a job directly relating to the migration of swallows, but may be able to apply their ability to analyze data, observe group behaviour, or load/unload small birds to other subjects of a more useful nature.
This is all stuff that I pretty much knew already, and that was present in the workshop description. I already knew that if I didn’t go into academia, that I could go do research in industry. But I didn’t know what other options were out there in industry. This workshop was part of a day long conference on teaching, so I thought that it might be useful in pointing out opportunities within industry to apply teaching skills, or where those skills might be valued. Sadly, the workshop seemed to have been designed for morons who didn’t even know that industry existed, because there really wasn’t any information provided beyond what was already in the course description. It was a slow, painful process of saying things like “well, if you do computer simulations of plasma, then you know how to use and program a computer, and that’s a transferable skill. If you volunteered as a lifeguard, then you know first aid and emergency management, and that’s a transferable skill.” I would have to say the workshop seems like it was designed for high school students or undergrads (especially since the pre-printed worksheets had examples like what transferable skills could you say you had from volunteer work or working in a restaurant, or what transferable skills would be gained from classes such as PSY131). It wasn’t the least bit specific to science, to PhD students, or to industry, despite the title and description.
I should have known that nothing good comes from waking up early on a Saturday. Ok, there was one interesting tidbit: a slide about the impressions that business leaders have of people with science PhDs:
Strengths:
Weaknesses:
This was quite interesting to see. They’re the perceptions of business leaders, so it gives PhD students an idea of the sort of biases they have to push through. So rather than being moronic like the facilitator was suggesting and saying things like “my experience in this field shows that I’m a quick learner” or “my thesis work gave me X particular laboratory skill” or “I got a 99% in a class presentation which proves that I’m good at communicating” [I cringed when she suggested to the ESL kids that they say stuff like that in interviews to prove things] — one could leave those things mostly alone unless one really need to sell oneself. There’s a good chance that the business person already thinks some of those things about a PhD student, and instead one must push to show that they have strengths (or do not have weaknesses) in the other areas.
Some of those biases may be inherent to doing a PhD: it’ s a pretty risk-averse and time-wasting path to take. If you had a big picture perspective and good long-term planning and thus knew you wanted to work in industry all along, you probably would have gotten an MSc and a job. So for me, I think that means that I’ve got to focus on building a record of good people skills (d’oh!), project management, and moving beyond personal curiosity to… err… well, what exactly is there beyond personal curiosity? :)
It’s been a rough new year, and I haven’t been able to shake a vague feeling of being “loser-ish”.
First up has been paper rewrites. This one has been particularly grating since I’m a good writer, damnit. I was supposed to have finished this while at my parents house over the break, but didn’t even look at it there. In the process of writing the paper the first time, I had to keep it very succinct so a lot of stuff from the first draft was cut out. After being rejected from the first journal, I should now stretch it out to about double the length so it’s an appropriate length for our second and third choice journals. However, it’s not a simple as just going back to the first draft and cut & pasting some of that information back in. For the most part, I was convinced that what was cut should have been cut, and I don’t like that text any more. I also need to tailor the text to the audience of our target journal, which means I largely need to pad out the introduction and include some topical references, and that’s the part of scientific writing that I’m the worst at. Particularly since I don’t have the references I want to cite handy, so I’m doing literature searches at the same time. All this is complicated by my peculiar “publication performance anxiety”. I don’t seem to have any problem giving presentations of my data to large groups or leading classes, but as soon as it comes to submitting my stuff to a peer-reviewed publication I get all panicky. I worry and obsess over the fact that my work is now going to be part of the body of scientific knowledge in a very indelible way, and fret constantly over my data and arguments, because any mistake is going to be out there for years, misleading scientists who follow in my footsteps, and dangling in front of my detractors as proof of my fallibility. It’s worse with rewrites of course, because I hate rewrites. I’ve always been a one-pass writer. Often, I don’t even read what I write here, just trusting that it came out of the keyboard making some kind of sense, and hoping that no errors creeped in. So wordsmithing a paper to get that exact subtle meaning, to include exactly what we want to convey and waste no words on anything extra can be quite painful for me.
I’ve got two other drafts to work on as well, though neither one is really even at the “outline” stage yet. Plus some short story ideas I could work on. Usually having a number of things to flip between works well for the scatterbrain spazzy writer inside of me, but this week it just seems to be paralyzing me. I don’t want to write any of them, so I stare at my word document, like a deer in the headlights, then decide to let that one go and open up another one, just to also draw a blank.
The weather hasn’t helped much. To stave off winter, the hospital keeps the heat on. Really, really on. Most days in the office I’m so hot even in just a T-shirt that I can barely think straight. Oddly enough though, I don’t sweat through it like I do in the summer. At home though, I’ve been getting cold, which is very unusual for me. Usually Wayfare gets so cold so quickly that the thermostat creeps up enough that I’m quite comfortable in a T-shirt at home, as long as I have nice thick socks on. The last few days, I’ve been layering up in sweaters and blankets in front of the computer, which doesn’t help fight the desire to put my head on my desk and take just a little nap.
That loser-ish feeling hasn’t been at all helped by the other things in my life, either. I’ve been really sucking at curling in the new year (though admittedly, one night I was so tired I could barely stand, let alone curl). This is particularly disturbing since it was not too long ago that I was starting to think of myself as really hot shit out on the sheets, even thinking I was good enough to try out for competitive curling. I thought I made a decent showing at the varsity try-outs, and while I didn’t make the team, I figured with a bit of practice I could have a real good run in a few spiels. This week though, I can’t even hit the house, let alone the button. To think, they used to let me teach new curlers the sport!
At work, we had a very important grant rejected. I don’t know how much I’m allowed to say, but suffice it to say we were not impressed with the tragically mis-informed reviews we got back on the proposal.
And of course, the stock market has been an absolute nightmare in the new year, yesterday in particular. I feel pretty stupid for buying on the way down and not listening to conventional wisdom about catching falling knives. There were a few stocks that looked like they were priced at more than fair valuations last week (TSE:RUS and TSE:YLO.UN in particular) that I snapped up, only to watch them fall much further just a few days later. I spent some time researching the financial sector and came away really liking TD, especially at the $65 price point it was at over a month ago… after buying it I was proven right by a decent rally, only to find all that and more wiped out yesterday. My dad says that I picked the right company for all the right reasons, but the “macro environment” is just hammering financials, and the good ones are going down with the bad. And the pain is not over yet, with indications that today is going to be just as bad. I’m trying not to panic, to stay the course, and to remember, as Wayfare tells me a few times a day, that it’s just a paper loss. As long as the Accord doesn’t die on me I won’t need the money for at least a few years, and by then the market should have rallied. However, that doesn’t make it hurt any less when I look at the sheer magnitude of that “paper loss”, or when I look at my portfolio update and see nothing but red numbers all the way down the column… nor does it make me feel any less stupid for seeing that my most recent buy, at what I thought was a great value, is one of the worst stinkers in the lot.
Buying opportunities should be ahead, and for those who aren’t in the market with some cash, and a long investment timeline (i.e.: the young people who actually read my rants) this might be a very exciting time. I’ve decided to pace myself much more than I have been. I’ve cancelled most of my “bargain basement low-ball” standing bids which turned out to be a little too optimistic about the bottom of the market. I put a sticky note on my monitor with the word “patience” on it. I was in a “stock picker” mentality last week when things were looking pretty bad but figured I could find the gems with real value in there, the stocks that may have been unfairly oversold. After yesterday’s crash across pretty much the entire board, those TD e-series index mutual funds are looking a lot more attractive again. While they make up a small part of my portfolio, I’ve been steadily buying them up every 4 weeks here (with my 3rd round of buying due in ~2 weeks), $100-$150 into each of the Canadian, US, and International indexes. For the long haul, I think those are pretty good bets, and the small, steady buy-ins save me from some of the pain of the markets going down and at making any effort to call the bottom.
Remember: even if I may spout advice, it is generally useless. This is particularly true for financial advice: while I’m learning fast, I’m terrible at this. Don’t listen to me, just go off and do your own research or consult a proper advisor. For those curious, the “lowball” bids I haven’t cancelled are NAL.UN at $12.50, which I might very well get today, GE at $27.20, which I doubt I’ll get. Feel free to laugh at me for being foolish, either right now or in the coming months.
Canada has been at the forefront of nuclear research right from the very beginning. We also had some of the world’s first nuclear accidents at Chalk River in 1952 and 1958, and those early mis-steps lead to an incredible culture of safety in our nuclear power industry. No matter the cost over-runs, the delays in a project, or the engineering required, safety was always the highest priority, and our nuclear watchdog the CNSC was there to make sure that safety stayed priority number one. The CANDU, our series of Canadian-designed nuclear reactors were designed from the ground up to be as safe as possible: using natural uranium means the core can’t naturally go critical (and has non-proliferation bonuses), and heavy water as a moderator can be easily drained/evapourated in an emergency to shut the core down, etc. This reactor has also been sold with some success around the world (granted, we engaged in some fancy lending practices to sell it, and the design may owe as much to a concern about safety as it does to our position as a major producer of heavy water).
I’ve been a proponent of nuclear power for a while: sure, waste is an issue (though again, less so with the CANDU design) for the long term, but for the medium-term (10-50 years) nuclear power is really going to be our only cheap, GHG-free source of electricity, and I think we’re going to have to rely on it until other renewables can get off the ground. (I also think it’s better to plan to build one over the span of ten years and start now than to realize 8 years from now that oh shit, we need another nuclear power plant, like, now!).
Now, the Harper neocons have forced me to possibly reconsider that. First, they interfered with and politicized the issue of the NRU shutdown, and ordered it back up with a bill in parliament (yes, the other parties supported it, but they were also in a bit of a hard place with that). That move I thought was possibly the right thing for the moment: there was a big backlog of nuclear medicine tests because of the lack of isotopes. In the greater scheme of things, that might have been a time to forgo absolute nuclear safety, let the reactor run as it had been for a while, stockpile some more moly-99, and then shut it down again for the upgrades in another month or so. Beyond the moment though, it was a very dangerous move for the government to take. Once that step is taken of a government stepping in and overruling the nuclear watchdog, how hard is it to do again, for increasingly trivial reasons? Sure, this time the greater good may have been served by letting a downright ancient reactor run in a somewhat risky state (and note that this is one of the very few reactors in Canada with a design that will allow it to meltdown in a failure mode) to help thousands of patients. But what about next time? Will they overrule the CNSC again just to cut corners and get a steam-generating nuclear station set up for oil sands extraction? Maybe a bill to let another nuclear project run without safeties just because it’s too gosh-darn expensive to install them? (After all, they’ve got some taxes to cut!)
Out of the blue today, they fired Linda Keen, the president of the CNSC. This has gone way too far now. She was just doing her job as far as I can tell. No matter what Lunn might have to say about it, her job is to make sure that nuclear energy and isotopes in Canada are handled safely, and to regulate that. That’s it. Her job is not to balance safety with health concerns and isotope availability. If the ancient NRU somehow became the only source for Moly-99 on the continent, and hospitals all over are facing shortages, well, that’s above her pay grade, and the short-sightedness of people who should plan that sort of thing is not her fault. The reactor is not safe, so it doesn’t come back up. Even under pressure from the government, she kept her chin up. The government can (and did) do an end run around her in the case of a health crisis/isotope shortage, and that’s fine. It was a special set of circumstances beyond the scope of her agency. But there’s no reason I can see for firing her. In fact, reading her letter it looks like the CNSC was trying to work with AECL to get a modified license to bring the reactor up without the backup equipment, but the ball was dropped by AECL (whose chief resigned already).
There are a few choice quotes from the Globe & Mail’s article about Lunn defending his decision:
Bloc Québécois MP Claude DeBellefeuille accused the Minister of undermining public confidence in the CNSC.
“You have shaken the confidence that people should have in this independent watchdog for nuclear safety. You have sown doubt about this body,†she said.
The article doesn’t have an answer to that one from Lunn, and that is an exceptionally valid point. The parliamentary override, as controversial and short-sighted as it was, could have been done with a lot less name-calling and finger-pointing. Most importantly, it could have been done with a lot less politicizing, which might have given people some reassurance that this trouncing of the nuclear watchdog, just doing its job, was a one-off affair, and not a recurring madness in our government. Either way, this episode is going to strengthen the arguments from those opposed to nuclear power.
Asked by the NDP’s Catherine Bell if he would resign if censured by parliamentarians, Mr. Lunn replied, “No, I serve at the pleasure of the Prime Minister and I have his confidence.â€
I predict that in a few days, Lunn is going to find out just how fleeting the “confidence” of the PM is. He’ll tear up a key campaign plank and break a promise, like taxing income trusts, and sow havoc in the markets about random, unjustified government intervention in the marketplace, on a complete whim. When he’s got as much political pressure as there is now to axe Lunn, and when Lunn has been as embarrassing to the PM as he has been, well… loyalty and confidence count for very little in the neocon party of Canada.
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