Fog Lights

So with Gas Prices heading towards 2$ a litre every radio station, tv station and website is spending hours, or pages, telling people how to save gas. Everything from removing weight from your car 1-5%, using a lighter foot on the gas pedal 10-35%, or keeping your tires inflated 1-10%. All of these strategies tend to increase milage just slightly which is always good. The issue I have is that I see soooooo many people driving around with their fog lights on, and I can't understand why, having those lights on will reduce your gas mileage just the same are removing some small amount of weight from the car and they can be turned off with the flick of a switch and not require you to remove your safety kit from the car. The other thing is that it's just annoying to have some one in their big truck come up behind you and bathe the whole of your car in the light of all the lamps in front of the truck. It may also be Illegal in some areas. I would love to see car manufacturers take the lead on this they can make cars in which all maner of things have to be turned on each time you start the car, cruise control, defoggers etc. but for some reason they have left the fog lights (something you almost never really need) as a fixed switch that is on forever if you never turn it off. well here's hoping that someone will make that kind of change in a car/truck and stop the blinding/resorce wasting.

Your luck versus other peoples luck

Has it ever occurred to you that when you speak of luck happening to someone else it's more of an expression of "gee well they couldn't have done it on skill". But when you talk of luck occurring to yourself it's more that you feel that somehow your skill helped make the luck possible.

The example would be something like you were lucky to survive a car crash because if you hadn't swerved at the last moment you would have died, showing your driving skill. But someone else was lucky to win the lottery cause they needed the money, showing their poor state of money management.

How to profit from the world rice shortage but look like you're trying to do something good in 5 easy steps

1. Be Wal-Mart
2. Notice a worldwide food shortage
3. Announce that you'll now be limiting consumers to four times the amount of the product that they would ever normally buy
4. Let Panic buying and hoarding set in.
5. Sit back and let the money roll in.
This week in response to a global rice shortage driven by increasing prices, and low production, Wal-mart announced that it would be limiting people to four 10kg bags of rice per visit. Now I don't know what everyone else normally does but I have never in my life thought that I would need 40kg of rice in one shopping trip. Now if Wal-Mart was recording everybodies addresses and limiting people to 1 bag per month that would be some sort of limit. Still I bought 20 kg of rice in January and have yet to make a significant dent in the bag.
Despite the extremely high nature of the limit that they set, it has led commentators to spend hours talking about food rationing and panic buying despite the fact that there is none of this yet. This "limit" will lead to hoarding and panic buying in North America, driving the price up world wide and increasing the shortages in areas of the world that are already suffering. While shortages do exist in the developing world due to trade restrictions and higher prices it's hard to say that the pallets of rice I saw in Costco today really represent a shortage in North America. Though I have to admit stopping and thinking, "should I buy a few bags now just in case".


So Wal-Mart gets 0 Stars out of 5 for making a decision to create a potential for profit out of a crisis. And the Media gets 0 stars out of 5 for trying to raise their ratings by fanning the flames of crisis for their own selfish ends.

For The Long Emergency Somewhere out there an alarm bell is ringing

I've been looking over a book recently called "The Long Emergency" by James Howard Kunstler. The book has variously been called fearmongering and pessimistic and that probably is true. However being pessimistic doesn't mean that you're wrong. Though I guess it's worse if he happened to be not pessimistic enough. "The Long Emergency" details what will happen to the world when we run out of cheap oil, and everyone who can see the gas price can clearly see that his prediction is coming true. The book focuses on what will need to change in the developed world for us to survive the slow fade as we run out of oil and need to adjust our lifestyles to the new economy. But before the long emergency takes hold another emergency will take place. It will happen when the developing world of 2nd and 3rd world countries start to have food shortages as the cost of oil and transporting food rises and as food production land is converted BioFuels. This Emergency is happening now. The price of basic foods is increasing around the world and in some cases the price of staples like rice and wheat has more than doubled. While this will be annoying for people in the west where food takes up about 10% of income, it will be devastating to the developing world where food is around 80% of a families budget. While we in the west can survive a rise from 10% to 20% of our income for food through cutting back on what we eat and choosing to cut out a few extra purchases here and there. In the developing world this is not the case. If food costs you 8000 pesos out of the 10,000 you earn every month you may be able to survive, but if it costs 16,000 pesos out of 10,000 even with cutting back you will not be able to survive. It's hard to know how this emergency will play out, hopefully we'll be lucky and it will be over with quickly but it's hard to believe that at least some more people won't die as a result before we truely see the end of oil.

NHL Playoffs

Well It's that time of year again when hockey fans all over North America (ok who's kidding who, All over Canada) grab a two-four and a bag of something greasy and settle down in front of the TV to cheer for their favorite team, or it's substitue if their favorite didn't make it. This year as my Favorite team the Canucks and my back up team the Oilers didn't make it, I'm going hedge my bets and support 1 team from the East and 1 Team from the West. So Go Flames and Go Senators May you meet in the Final and really tick off Gary Bettman.

Dell to sell out to foreign interests

Now this may seem like a bit of a stretch to suggest that Dell would be no more. Only a few years ago Dell was the worlds largest PC maker. This is no longer the case as it's slipped to second behind HP and may soon slip behind other manufacturers. Dell was once a company with second to none service who's agents would give their best effort to try and fix your problem even if it wasn't with one of Dells products. Now with the Introduction of contracts where even the basic troubleshooting expires at the end of your warranty and the use of Dell On Call to force people to pay for things that were formerly free Dell is no better than anyone else for service and worse than some. So why would I say that Dell will sell out to foreign interests? Well recently Dell abandoned their direct to the customer model and just yesterday I learned that Dell would abandon the customization model meaning that you'd be limited in what you can get from Dell just as with other manufacturers. Now I could have understood a limited departure from the direct to customer model, perhaps Dell could have had their products carried at Costco or other members only warehouse stores. The decision to sell at Walmart marked the decision that Dell's products were no longer special and no longer anything more than just an average computer.
I think the loss of the customization model is the final nail in the coffin for Dell within the next year I see them announcing that HP (who yes isn't technically foreign) or Lenovo has agreed to either take over the company or to a "Merger" where the Dell name ceases to be.