Blessed by the Potato

Ok everyone, I’m going to start a weekly feature here. You’ll probably find it dry as toast, especially if you only know me via the site. Unfortunately, until you guys start clicking on some ads, I really don’t care what you think (kidding! I kid… though some non-spam comments at least would be nice. I’ve got an ego to feed here, folks.).

First up, I’ll share my change for the better progress for the week, then later share some links and random thoughts that I didn’t manage to turn into full posts earlier in the week.

Workout: Considering it was the first week, I’m rather disappointed in myself. The weather was bad, so I only went out biking twice, and not very long for either trip (one of which was to Shoppers); I only did my basic workout three days — I was busy, and sore the day after the first day, but still, I was hoping to do better the first week!

Diet: Creme Eggs, half price at SDM. ‘Nuff said.

Links:

SMBC, what keeps you up at night?

TVO’s the agenda had a sober discussion about climate models. If you have an interest in global weirding and have no idea what a climate model is, it’s a decent little introduction, but if you already have a clue, I’m not sure it’s worth the time commitment. There are four other parts I haven’t had the chance to watch yet.

The Ontario government announced changes to how the government will pay for generic drugs, and that will likely lead to pharmacies becoming less profitable. Shares in Shoppers Drug Mart dropped 12% on the news, and there’s some discussion at Canadian Money Forum as to whether this represents a buying opportunity. Personally, I thought it was overvalued before, so it’s still not a screaming buy in my mind, but I have put in a bid that will get filled next week if it takes another ~6% haircut.

Finally, I’ve been revisiting Freddie Mac. The preferred shares are still trading for pennies-on-the-dollar (and the C$ is at par), and from the more recent results (yes, I’m months late in getting around to reading them), John Hempton’s estimates are looking pretty good (though I didn’t see that pretty graph of defaults, losses, and reserves — they don’t seem to be as interested in producing slick figures under conservatorship). The biggest risk here still appears to be political. Unfortunately, that risk is huge, as so far the US government has shown every intention of setting Freddie Mac up to fail: crushing penalty interest (which none of the bailed out banks that caused the mess had to pay), and even refusing to allow them to pay off some of the loan with their tax loss pools or cash on hand. I’m torn between greed on the one hand, and prudence on the other. My best guess is that there’s a ~20% chance that Freddie Mac might actually pull through and pay back the junior preferred — of the 80% guess at the chances of failure, I’d say 75% is the political risk, and only 5% chance of failure comes from John Hempton’s numbers being wrong at this point (i.e., that the GSE is actually insolvent and can’t possibly earn its way out if given time). Not great odds, but if it happens the payoff is $25, if it fails, the cost is $1.30. That’s a pretty damned good expected payout, and if I had a hundred such bets I’d put all I had into them, safe in the knowledge that I’d be better off from the ones that did make it. Unfortunately, I don’t have a hundred such bets to make, I have just the one (and Fannie is a correlated bet so it doesn’t count as a second). So, as Warren Buffet says, when it’s raining gold, do I reach for a bucket, or just a thimble? Or, should I focus on not losing money, and only gambling as much as I can afford to lose here (i.e., what I already have invested and no more). For now, I’m sticking with the thimble: even though these are very illiquid securities, there will probably be more opportunities to buy as clarity emerges.

As I alluded to in an earlier post, I’ve been making a very mild effort to not let my Hutt-esque physique degrade any further over the last few years. I’ve been exercising a little to stay in decent shape, and not letting my dietary cravings become monstrous (Friday’s cookie samurai episode excepted).

But with spring arriving (and my thesis deadlines looming!) I think it’s time to take the next step and start working harder to not just stay in shape but to get in better shape (especially since it’s so easy for the opposite to happen during thesis season, which is of course how I got here in the first place). I spoke with Netbug about it a bit tonight, and for those who don’t know him, he’s done an amazing job over the years with the whole workout/diet thing.

He reminded me that losing weight and getting in better shape is going to require a healthier diet, and that’s probably going to be harder for me than exercising every day. You see, I like to eat. A lot. I live to eat — what’s the point of life without chocolate and cherry blasters? So I can say categorically I’m not going to go on the kind of crazy diets he’s been impressively sticking to for years. That does mean that I’m not going to experience the kind of fantastic results that he’s seen, and I think I’m ok with that.

What I need to do is make small-ish (medium-ish?) changes to my routine and stick to them. He suggested something called a “Power 90” workout, which as far as I can tell you have to pay to see, so maybe I’ll look into getting that from him later on, but for today I went back to an old standard: the Hacker’s Diet (losing weight and hair through stress and poor nutrition). I’ve made a spreadsheet with 7 basic exercises partly taken from the old 5BX routine, but the cardio is now cycling (since spring is here and I like biking along the Thames), and I added a back stretching exercise from the Wii Fit routine since I want to improve my back health. So I have a plan and a means to track my progress (with a spreadsheet! Which may one day give birth to a litter of adorable graphs!)

Now I just have to find ways to stick to it. And that’s the hardest part, isn’t it? Actually sticking to the plan, whether it’s to diet, work out, stay on budget, or rebalance in a downturn.

So, any tips for stickingtoititude? I find that friends/peer pressure/commitments can help — I’m in two curling leagues in the winter, and you can be damned sure that I’m exercising at least twice a week from late October through to March! However, the summer is always harder for me because of my longstanding rivalry with the Sun*, and of course everyone’s differing vacation/conference schedules (plus, there’s no curling).

* – it burns me, I send up a space probe with a fusion inhibitor… You know how these things are.

Spring is in the air, and the flu season is pretty much over. Colds are a different matter: everyone I know seems to have caught this nasty cold that’s going around. I’ve been fighting it myself for almost 3 weeks now: I’ll be miserably sick for a day or two, then feel almost all better for a few days, just to have it sneak back up on me again when I’m not looking.

The H1N1 seems to have burned itself out in North America, and indeed it’s been months since I’ve even heard it mentioned on the news. Steven Novella over at the Neurologica blog provides an update of how it played out in the US. I believe the numbers for Canada are similar, but I haven’t gone to look them up yet. What’s interesting is that we were hit quite hard here in London with it, very early on in the flu season, but then it fizzled out shortly after the vaccination program/holidays. I can’t say whether it’s because the vaccination (and hand hygiene) program was so effective, or if it would have gone away on its own… but either way, it wasn’t all that bad. What’s interesting is that the normal seasonal flu didn’t look to be as bad this year for us too.

Now I expect people will start to second-guess the vaccination program, since there was so much hand-wringing about it to begin with. I’m still not really convinced H1N1 was “overhyped” that much — it did look like it had the potential to be quite serious, and based on the information I had at the time, I don’t regret at all getting the shot myself.

I’ve been using the same towel for two weeks now, and it doesn’t smell like death. Living mould-free is the way to go, I tell you.

I’ve been amazed at how quickly my desk re-cluttered. Not 3 weeks ago everything was packed up into boxes for the move, or thrown out as junk. For the first week or two I kept my desk as clean as possible so that there was plenty of open space to do double duty as my eating table (since the kitchen table was piled high with boxes of kitchen stuff to be properly put away after the move). Now after just a few days of working on my lecture for this morning, it’s every bit as bad as it was before the move, if not worse. Pop cans, candy wrappers, and papers piled everywhere.

Finally, a teaser: John Hempton at Bronte Capital had an interesting post about the demographic crunch coming our way in a few decades, and what that might mean for socialized medicine. Once I catch up on my sleep I plan on doing a short post on the matter.

One of the first great breakthroughs of evidence-based medicine was Semmelweis (and again Lister) discovering the vast improvement in patient outcomes when doctors wash their hands. “Hand hygene” is one of the cheapest, best ways to prevent disease transmission, whether from doctor to patient, or from the environment to your mouth during flu season. Yet it’s very difficult to get people to actually do it every time.

How often do you see people leave the public washroom without washing their hands? Yes, Penn & Teller demonstrated that your hands were probably dirtier before touching your junk that’s been safely & cleanly ensconced in your undies, but nonetheless, it’s important to wash your hands regularly, and that’s the socially accepted time to do it.

I understand that it is difficult for healthcare workers — after washing my hands 20 times per day I’m definitely reaching for the hand cream when I get home, so up to a hundred times a day has got to be killer. But hey, hazards of the workplace and all. Deal.

Outside of the hospital, soap and water aren’t always readily available or convenient, so alcohol-based hand sanitizers have been installed, which I think can only be good, especially in schools and malls. When these things first came out (around SARS), I had serious doubts as to how effective they could possibly be — after all, even if they killed germs, they’d still leave everything on your hands. Of course, at the time, I was working in a wet lab and was more concerned with chemical contamination than bacterial. For preventing the spread of disease though, they look to work just fine (but I am too lazy to review the literature at this time).

Freakonomics had a blog entry about handwashing compliance and in the comments, one person was concerned about the possibility that all this hand sanitizer use would lead to bacteria developing resistance to it. As one reply so elegantly put it, that would be like humans developing resistance to being doused in gasoline and set on fire. That’s not to say that some bacteria won’t escape, especially if you miss a spot, or don’t use enough to get into the fissures of your skin… that’s just not likely to be an inheritable trait.

Speaking of fire: Yes, alcohol is flammable. Incredulously, I heard that some schools were banning, or considering banning, hand sanitizer for this reason (and also for the “martini dispenser” issue). I wondered though if gelled alcohol was flammable. Sticking my head in the kitchen and uttering those words that always make Wayfare cringe in fear — “Wanna do Science?” — I set out to test it experimentally. With a lighter, I could set some hand sanitizer on fire. That’s still not a particularly good reason to keep it out of schools (I’m not a fire expert, but it didn’t really seem all that much more flammable than paper, and paper doesn’t evaporate in seconds). Vigorously rubbing my hands together (the intended method), did not start a friction fire.