How "Brandwashed" Applies to Motorcycles

I'm going to explain first the humour in the picture at the left, in case you don't get it.  A long time ago, we did not have brand logos plastered over every available square inch of space.  So I took a picture of a long ago motorcycle, and updated it by plastering brand names on it with Photoshop.


I am reading the book "Brandwashed: Tricks companies use to manipulate our minds and persuade us to buy" by Martin Lindstrom.  Martin says this book "picks up where Vance Packard's bestselling classic "The Hidden Persuaders" left off more than half a century ago."  (Note, this is not a final book review, just my pre-emptive first thoughts about the book)

Coincidentally, I did read The Hidden Persuaders about half a century ago. I felt like it opened my eyes to the tricks marketers used at the time (and still use), and it also made me aware of the high powered science and research that goes into marketing.  So over the years I have been on the lookout for new marketing techniques, and although I consider myself a brand skeptic, I also understand that just like everyone else, I can still be fooled by newly invented tricks that I may not see coming.  And I can be fooled by old tricks that I am simply powerless to fight.

Before really getting into the book, I started to wonder about the definition of branding. After all these years of being on the lookout for marketing techniques, I would like to know just how deep I am in the consumer culture.  Martin Lindstrom's definition of branding is quite open. On Page 2  "In my line of work I look at life through a particular lens:  one that sees everything on Earth ... as a brand".

Lindstrom says the band Abba is a brand.  He liked them when he was young, and still likes them now.  But what I find very telling, about Lindstrom's mental state, is that he apologises for listening to Abba.  In my opinion, if you are apologising for some "brand" you like, you are responding to brandwashing just as much as if you were boasting about a brand.  Again, it's only my opinion, but someone who truly does not respond to brandwashing, should neither boast nor apologize for a brand they have.  Boasting and apologizing are simply two sides of the same coin.  That coin is to manipulate your feelings about brands.

Lindstrom says "by the time I was five I was already preoccupied with a handful of brands. Lego, Bang and Olufsen, James Bond, the pop group Abba (I hereby apologise).  .... and later... All right I confess it, I still listen to Abba every now and again.  In my defense, I am Scandinavian."

I should suggest to Lindstrom, that if he ever wants to rid himself of brandwashing, a good place to start would be in not apologizing for listening to Abba.  Not that I am a fan of Abba myself (oops there I go, now I'm apologizing for listening to Abba).

In my own life, I can easily identify a handful of things that I like, I might even say I am obsessed with. Let's start with motorcycles, there are lots of brands involved in motorcycling.  You have the motorcycle manufacturer's brand, then you have brands involved in the accessories, in the fuel, oil, helmets, jackets, boots, accessories of all sorts, tools, magazines, movies (I saw Easy Rider and have the DVD), and owners' clubs.  I am not particularly brand loyal about my motorcycle.  I'm riding a Kawasaki Vulcan, which I'm not even sure that Kawasaki is proud of, as there are very few places you see the word Kawasaki on the bike, compared to Harley Davidsons. The Vulcan is still a motorcycle, but not a highly sought after brand - at least not for that type of motorcycle (i.e. Harley lookalikes).

Although my helmet is a Scorpion EXO1000, I have peeled the logo off it. But that may be a case of brandwashing too, because if it was a really expensive brand like an Arai, I might have left it on.  I also have a Scorpion brand jacket, that is another hint that I might be brandwashed, in that I went back to the same brand for a jacket, thereby showing some brand loyalty.

The way I see it, branding is only a part of the overall consumer culture, where people mindlessly go out and buy things that they don't really need. But when you buy things with a brand name, that are advertised, and sell for a premium price, that you really don't need, then I guess you are really "Brandwashed".

I don't really need a motorcycle either, but I have one or three.  I'm probably brandwashed to some extent, and that motorcycle is the evidence.  It (or they) may not be the top brands like Harley-Davidson, Triumph, BMW, etc. but that does not really matter.  On the other hand, I have not put myself in debt to buy them, and they help keep me from buying Rolex watches and getting obsessed with various other consumer items like winter cruises, big houses, yachts, and Ferraris.  So it's like fighting fire with fire. I buy motorcycle stuff that I don't need instead of more expensive non-motorcycling stuff that I also don't need.  It saves money.  Or so the argument in my head goes.  (arguments in my head are another hint I may be brandwashed)

One thing about motorcycling, that is an anomaly in the marketing world, is that motorcycles are not much of a status symbol outside of the community of motorcyclists themselves.  The many normal North American consumers consider motorcycles something to be ashamed of, not to boast about. Motorcycling itself is counter-cultural, even though it can also be considered a culture of its own.  So maybe that's why I didn't see much about motorcycles in Martin Lindstrom's book.

Towards a Garbage-Free MacLean's Magazine

MacLean's magazine has a new article by Cynthia Reynolds titled "Why are schools brainwashing our children?"

http://www2.macleans.ca/2012/10/31/why-are-schools-brainwashing-our-children/

In this article Cynthia gives examples of situations where children in Canadian schools are being brainwashed into being tolerant and caring for the environment.

Let me take one example.

  "In Laval, Que., a six-year-old boy was disqualified from a teddy-bear contest because a Ziploc was found in his lunch".

Now if I may clarify this a little: It was not a Teddy Bear contest, it was a draw for a teddy bear in a garbage free lunch contest. Yes, the difference is important. What is a garbage free lunch?  It is a lunch that has no garbage in it.  What is garbage? Any throw-away one-use container.  Now, let's go into this a little bit more.  A drink box has garbage (the box and the straw.) An apple core is not counted as garbage.  A candy bar has garbage. (The wrapper).  Any garbage in your lunch means you don't have a garbage-free lunch. A tupperware container is not garbage because it can be re-used.  But if you throw the tupperware container away, it should count as garbage.  If you remove the wrapper from the candy bar at home and put the naked bar in a Tupperware container, the teacher has to make a call one way or the other.  A Ziplock bag is not necessarily garbage.  It can be taken home, cleaned and re-used.  But if it is thrown out after one use, it is garbage.  A fair teacher would accept the ziplock bag as long as it is taken home and re-used, but of course it's impossible to know the truth.  Obviously, garbage free lunch games are not that simple.

Now to explain a little bit about teaching. Teachers generally reward students learning with scores and marks, rarely with material goods.  That's because the school budget does not allow for it.  So who paid for the Teddy Bear prize?  I couldn't find out, but it might have been an old item that the teacher needed to get rid of, and if so, the teacher had found a good way to divert one more bit of garbage from the landfill. Very unlikely to be the taxpayers footing the Teddy Bear expense.

Now what about the ziplock bag scandal? I think a case could have been made for the ziplock bag in a garbage free lunch, but first you have to understand what is going on.  Sometimes six year old kids make mistakes. That's why we have teachers.

Now why do Conservatives (and their propaganda machines like MacLean's Magazine) hate it when children learn about garbage?  Probably the same reason they hate children to learn about tolerance.  Conservative propaganda has two main pillars: support for corporate profits, and hatred for "others".  It suits the conservative agenda to keep people as ignorant and easily-led consumers of throw-away trash.  The last thing conservatives want is for children to learn about the environment, because that might affect corporate profits.

Why would MacLean's sensationalize this simple story?  And does MacLean's do the same kind of one-sided misrepresentation when they are stirring up hate against minority groups?  The answer is yes.

MacLean's is a conservative, bigoted magazine.  I think the more appropriate question would be "Why is MacLean's Magazine Brainwashing Canadians", but I think we all know the answer. Because it pleases their rich owners, and stirring up hatred is the best way to brainwash people.

Next, the goal for MacLean's: Let's try to put out a garbage free newsmagazine.

Picture: Left garbage lunch, right garbage free.  from this website

  http://www.educationworld.com/a_admin/admin/admin406.shtml

The Book "Your Money or Your Life" is now Twenty Years Old

"Twenty years after publication of "Your Money or Your Life" by Vicki Robin and Joe Dominguez, it is featured as one of USA Weekend’s 5 Personal Finance Books for 2012 you can bank on."

I read the book "Your Money or Your Life" about twenty years ago when it first came out. It might have transformed my life, if it did not restate a lot of ideas that I already believed in or gave instructions on how to do things I was already doing. I figure there are really not that many different ways to get control of your financial affairs, so it makes sense that the book's basic methods were very similar to mine.

But there was one significant area that my ideas differed from the book. As I recall, the original edition of the book advised against using a computer to track your expenses. The authors seemed to think that using a computer would be a distraction, and instead they gave detailed instructions as to how to track finances with a manual paper system. But I had started developing my own system, which was very similar to theirs (remember there are only so many ways to accurately keep track of expenses) and I had converted my system over to a computer about six years before I read the book.

Now, twenty years later, one of the authors seems to have softened the anti-computer stance, saying a computer "may be useful" but

"A computer is not essential as both authors achieved Financial Independence without using computers."

In my opinion, people who enjoy using spreadsheets, or can write basic programs, or at least have a spouse who likes programming or using computers, will do better using a computer. I'm not the only one who likes writing programs that serve some good use - and achieving financial independence is one of the all-time best uses of a computer in my opinion.

The problem with using a computer to achieve financial independence, is that you must have a clear idea of what the computer can do and must do to help you, and the computer must not get in your way by either requiring you to do all the work, or making you do extra meaningless work, and in the end not providing the results you really need.

For example, if you check the Internet for home financial spreadsheet templates, you will find that most of them are "budget setting" spreadsheets. You input your monthly total expenses for each category, and the spreadsheet will compare the totals against pre-set budget limits, and highlight the ones you have gone over budget, and calculate what percent you have gone over budget. While this idea may actually appeal to you, I would point out that the computer leaves you to do all the hard work on your own: namely inputting the monthly totals per category of expense. The only benefit the computer provides is telling you how far over or under you are compared to your budget - which is basically a pointless exercise because (a) you set those budget items arbitrarily in the first place (b) you are wasting a lot of time doing something you don't need to do, and (c) provides no real extra insight in your financial affairs.

The remaining spreadsheet templates are of the "Checkbook balancing" variety, where you input all your bank transactions and checks, and the spreadsheet helps you see if any checks have not yet been cashed, or if any checks have been cashed that you didn't write. In this age of instant withdrawal debit cards, I don't see much use in writing checks let alone balancing them.

Here is what I see as the basic requirements of an expense tracking system. The computer must download your bank statements (or credit card accounts) into a series of similarly formatted worksheets. With today's technology. the computer must leave you the task of going through the transactions to identify a category you want each transaction to be included in. (forty years from now, the computer may have enough intelligence to do this for you, or at least to argue intelligently with you about which categories should be assigned, but this is not possible today). Then, once you have had a chance to adjust the data as it suits you, the computer can take care of the job of summarizing the whole thing on a final year-end summary. The final summary is best presented in a classical spreadsheet format: one column for each month, a row for each category. This is fundamentally what needs to happen in an expense tracking system, no more and no less. Any other functions would only be needed for for ease of setup, ease of making ongoing changes, tracking errors, backing things up etc.

In the nearly forty years of tracking expenses, I have progressed from adding things in my head, to electronic calculator, to using a computer and writing my own programs to handle these functions. My latest version consists of some spreadsheet templates in "LibreCalc" the free spreadsheet program in the free operating system of Ubuntu 11.10. And I have written three Libre-BASIC macros that I will put on the Internet as open source, in keeping with the spirit of Linux. Who knows, maybe one day someone will enhance these programs, make them even better, (for example by importing from banks other than CIBC or TD) and I can in turn benefit from their work.

The files are here:
http://www.microverse.on.ca/cd175/Readme.txt
http://www.microverse.on.ca/cd175/LoonieLogger_Sum.bas
http://www.microverse.on.ca/cd175/LoonieLogger_Import.bas
http://www.microverse.on.ca/cd175/LoonieLogger_Details.bas
http://www.microverse.on.ca/cd175/LoonieEmptyTestFile.ods

Here are some quotes from a quick summary of the book "Your Money or Your Life" from the official website

http://ymoyl.wordpress.com/summary-of-your-money-or-your-life/

"B: Keep track of every cent that comes into or out of your life.

So far we have established that money equals life energy, and we have learned to compute just how many hours of life energy we exchange for each dollar. Now we need to become conscious of the movement of that form of energy called money in every moment of our lives — we need to keep track of our income by keeping a Daily Money Log.


How:

Devise a record-keeping system that works for you (such as a pocket sized memo book). Record daily expenditures accurately. Record all income.

Step 3: Where Is It All Going? (The Monthly Tabulation)

Don’t worry. Relax. This program is not about budgeting. Budgets, like diets, don’t work. They don’t work because they deal with the symptoms and not the cause. The cause of fat is not really the calories in the food, its the desires in our mind.

Every month create a table of all income and all expenses within categories generated by your own unique spending pattern.

How:

Simple arithmetic. A computer home accounting program may be useful.

(A computer is not essential as both authors achieved Financial Independence without using computers.) "

A link to a review of this book as a life changing event
http://www.passionsaving.com/your-money-or-your-life.html

Picture: from this blog http://blog.icysedgwick.com/2011/07/friday-flash-your-money-or-your-life.html
"The highwayman in the image that accompanies this flash is the dashing David Marshall, tour guide with Alone in the Dark Entertainment. They're about to start running a new ghost walk around Washington in the north east of England"

The Heartwarming Story of the Wal-Mart Greeter

Forwarded email, the true gift that keeps on giving: Here is the latest one I received and it is almost enough to make me see Walmart in a new light.

WAL-MART SENIOR GREETER

You just have to appreciate this one. Young people forget that we old people had a career before we retired......

Charley, a new retiree-greeter at Wal-Mart, just couldn't seem to get to work on time.

Every day he was 5, 10, 15 minutes late. But he was a good worker, really tidy, clean-shaven, sharp-minded and a real credit to the company and obviously demonstrating their "Older Person Friendly" policies.

One day the boss called him into the office for a talk.

"Charley, I have to tell you, I like your work ethic, you do a bang-up job when you finally get here; but your being late so often is quite bothersome."

"Yes, I know boss, and I am working on it."

"Well good, you are a team player. That's what I like to hear.”

“Yes sir, I understand your concern and I’ll try harder.”

Seeming puzzled, the manager went on to comment, “It's odd though your coming in late. I know you're retired from the Armed Forces. What did they say to you there if you showed up in the morning so late and so often?"

The old man looked down at the floor, then smiled.

He chuckled quietly, then said with a grin, "They usually saluted and said, ‘Good morning, Admiral, can I get your coffee, sir?"

Now for the reaction of the Lost Motorcyclist to this wonderful story:
I have to admire the luck of the Walmart people, to have such a heartwarming story to tell as this. Imagine: A well respected, retired admiral who thinks so highly of Walmart that he will spend his retirement years promoting their store for minimum wage, while being scolded by his much younger bosses. So cute.

I guess it's possible that a retired Admiral could find nothing better to do with their time than greet Walmart shoppers, or that financial circumstances could force him to keep working until his health fails. Especially in the USA, where older people can be bankrupted by health care issues, and may be forced to work on into their seventies. (Although in the USA this does not usually happen to military retirees, who have the Veterans hospitals to care for them.)

I personally might prefer to see an older person have enough financial security to stay active by working for voluntary organizations that promote international justice, or protect the environment, or make the world a better place in some way. Instead of being forced to work at minimum wage for Walmart whose main goal seems to be to drive local stores out of business, by selling slightly cheaper Chinese made goods.

But to get back to reality, I actually used to avoid shopping at Walmart for many reasons, one of them was that I didn't like being greeted at the door by those poor old people. But with this nice story, maybe my whole slightly negative outlook on Walmart will change.

Picture: I wonder who took the trouble to dig up the pics to go with this heartwarming story? Isn't it amazing how different someone can look out of uniform. Or should I say in a different uniform with even more medals.

The Nikon Coolpix S8100 and a History of my Cameras

I got my first camera in 1969, the same year as my first motorcycle. It was a Canon SLR. As usual, I was a little behind the technology curve, as my model had already been obsoleted by the next, which featured a light meter that you could read through the viewfinder. On my camera, I had to look away from the viewfinder to read the built in light meter on the top of the camera body.

I thought that snapping pictures from a moving motorcycle would be a good idea, drive and shoot at the same time. My first picture, which I still have, features a small Volkswagen pulling on to the road directly in front of me. After that close call, I decided to never again shoot and drive.

I still have my ancient Canon SLR, and hundreds of slides and an old fashioned slide projector. Then twenty years ago, I decided to buy a small point-and-shoot film camera because it was easier to take on motorcycle trips. Ten years ago, I made the transition to a digital point-and-shoot camera. The digital camera's major failings were slowness between shots, and short battery life. It also did not reproduce the candy colours of my Honda CD175's very well either.

In about 2005, after missing way too many pictures because of the time delay, I upgraded to a newer and better digital camera, a Canon Sureshot S410. A Lithium Ion battery had not only a much longer time between charges, but it recharged in 4 hours, instead of 12 for the previous camera. This made it more practical for motel room outlets. The Canon also took much less time between shots, and the colours were improved, especially candy red.

But in the last few months, I noticed that my (now old) Canon seemed to be brain damaged. I assumed it started when I took a picture of my blindingly visible new lime green fluorescent jacket. But that might be just a coincidence. Anyway, its' performance is now unsatisfactory. Although I hate shopping for stuff, I decided instead of repairing it, I would look to see how far technology had moved ahead in the last five years.

I was able to buy a Nikon Coolpix S1800 camera for less money than I paid for the Canon Sureshot S410, with quite a bit better performance. It is actually very difficult recognizing the difference between a good camera and a cheap one today. The options, specs, and features are endless. In the old days, you could tell a good camera from a bad very quickly: bigger lens aperture, more adjustments, faster shutter speed etc. Today, these features seem to mean very little. At least half the picture quality in a film camera comes from the choice of the film itself. With a digital camera the "film" is actually digital sensors, and they are built in and irreplaceable, and they are a big part of the specification and cost. You can make up for a smaller lens with better quality digital sensors.

So what makes my new camera better than the old? The most quoted specification is megapixels, and the new one is 12 MPx compared to 4Mpx on the old camera. But that's not the only change. The camera "boots up" in less than a second, and takes less time between pictures. It has an optical zoom of 10x, while the old one had 3x. The viewing screen on the back is bigger, and bright enough to see in daylight. It can take high definition video with stereo sound (the old one took grainy videos with mono sound.)

One of the more obvious features is the 10x optical zoom, which is basically a telephoto lens in a camera no bigger than a cigarette box. Not only that, but the camera has a variety of vibration reducing features to make it possible to get good hand-held pictures at long range (without using a tripod).

It also takes amazing (to me) pictures indoors with no flash. But I was shocked when I tried to take a picture of my cat, as the book case and carpet were in sharp focus, but the cat had disappeared! What happened was the camera took a very long shutter opening, which permitted the moving cat to blur away to nothing. The reason the bookcase was still in sharp focus was that the camera was using its processing power to cancel out the blurring of the fixed objects. With my old fashioned camera, a long shutter opening always meant the background got blurred.

Memory cards are replaceable, and so do not become obsolete as fast as built in features. My most recent Canon memory card was a whopping 500 Mb. But technology will obsolete even the replaceable cards. The newer SD memory cards are smaller, and I bought one for $20 with 4x as much memory as the CF card (which I paid $40 for).

The height and width of the two cameras is almost the same, the weight is the same. The new one is about .7 cm. longer. Technology also removes some features. The new camera has lost the optical viewfinder, much like motorcycles lost their kickstart levers. Now all aiming must be done in the LCD screen.

I have not really scratched the surface of all the computerized features of the camera. But already I can see it is far better than the Sureshot, which could not expose a picture properly if a person was sitting in front of a bright window. When I took a similar picture of Mary Ann with the Nikon, a flashing box appeared on the viewfinder framing her face, the camera automatically set the focus and the brightness to that target. The outdoor view in the background was overexposed, but that's what I would have done manually. It just took a lot less time for the camera to do it automatically.

Nikon did not stop there with face recognition. The camera can recognize faces in profile or head on, from what I saw. It can frame multiple faces at the same time. It has a blink recognition feature, but I'm not sure what that feature actually does. Maybe it tells you to keep your eyes open, then retakes the picture? And now for the funniest feature of all (I think). I'm not too good with the automatic 10 second timer, so I was quite impressed that this camera has the option of waiting for someone to smile instead of going off blindly at 10 seconds.

I cannot imagine what more I would ever want from a camera, but I probably should take another look five years from now.

Picture 1: My back yard, and please no comments about unmentionables hanging on the line to dry. That's how the pioneers used to do it before the invention of driers. Incidentally, this picture resolution was reduced by me for uploading.

Picture 2: Taken from the same spot, but using the full 10x zoom. It's the socks from picture 1, I did not reduce resolution in this picture. (click to enlarge)

Buying a Handbag is Not Like Buying a Motorcycle

I like to examine my motivations in buying a motorcycle, which goes a long way toward explaining the type of motorcycles I buy, but also how many and how often I buy them. I need to know this, because buying motorcycles could easily become an obsession for me. I have spoken to people who said they owned more than 50 motorcycles. If they were lying, their stories held up well under cross examination.

I think of it this way. Do I buy a motorcycle because I need one, or want one?

Let me break it down further. Do I buy a motorcycle for the same reasons a woman would buy a handbag? These reasons, as I understand it are:

- because putting stuff in pockets makes her look fat
- because it goes with her (current) outfit
- because it is the latest thing
- because everybody wants one
- because it is made by the most popular French fashion designer
- because it will make her the envy of all her friends
- because owning one will make her the centre of attention every time she enters a room
- because people will notice her with it on the street.


Or do buy a motorcycle for all the reasons a woman never buys a handbag, which again, to the best of my knowledge are

- because it holds the stuff she wants to carry with her
- because the bottom fell out of the last bag or the hand strap broke.
- or, because the last one was stolen

So one of these sets of reasons would be practical, and the other set is wishful thinking. The wishful thinking reasons are promoted in all advertising, whose main goal is to part me with my money. If this is why I am buying a motorcycle, no price is too high, and I must have a new one at least every year.

But because I think of myself as a practical person, not easily duped, I try to think before I buy (usually). I think about whether I need this motorcycle or not. And by thinking this way, I usually manage to avoid having more than six motorcycles in my garage at any one time.


Picture: One more reason to buy a handbag, to wear it on your head. From the Isaac Mizrahi Fall 2009 Fashion Collection. Women do not usually like to be told to wear a bag on their head, except by famous fashion designers.

Can We Learn Something from Caribou about Environmentalism?

There may be a debate about whether we should use wind power, about whether global warming exists, or if oil is indeed running out. But in that debate, I feel there is no doubt that one side is treating nature with respect, while the other has a superior attitude. As if Man can defeat nature with his immense brain and technology.

There are some lessons to be learned from native people about our relationship to the environment. Here is a story I found in Goliath

http://goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/gi_0199-5961784/Knowledge-learning-and-the-evolution.html

"According to narratives by Chisasibi Cree elders in the 1980s, a disaster occurred in 1910 at Limestone Falls, near the center of the Quebec-Ungava peninsula (Berkes, 1999, chapter 6). Equipped with repeating rifles that had just become available, hunters abandoned their hunting restraints and conventional ethics of respect for the animals, and slaughtered large numbers of caribou at the river crossing point. The caribou had already been in decline along the Hudson Bay coast. Following the event at Limestone Falls, the herd disappeared altogether from the lands hunted by the Cree and did not reappear until the 1980s. The Cree believe that all changes occur in cycles, and the elders at that time had predicted that the caribou would return one day."

You could argue that it was not one bloody and wasteful slaughter of the animals in 1910 that caused the caribou to disappear for over 70 years. After all, the caribou were already starting to dwindle. But there is no doubt that there was a lack of respect for nature in that 1910 hunt with the newfangled repeating rifles. Secondly, the lack of respect that year was a break from the traditional ways of hunting. The subsequent disappearance of the caribou certainly gave people a pause for thought. Over the next seventy years, the story was retold about the arrogance of the hunters in 1910, so when the caribou reappeared in the nineteen eighties, it didn't take too much to convince people to be respectful, and not wastefully kill the animals.

Are we to take this story as an example that being respectful toward nature is good? Or is it an obvious ploy to con the superstitious natives?

There are many such stories told all over the world, of native groups who have either managed their resources carefully, or wasted them. Some have survived, and some have disappeared. Funny thing is, it is not always the natives who manage their resources well who survive, and being wasteful does not guarantee the humans will not survive.

My own feeling is that it is better to show respect for nature than to wantonly destroy it. You may call that a spiritual feeling, because I sure can't prove it is scientific. You could also call it Karma. Something rings true about people who are most boastful, and wasteful, and full of themselves falling hardest.

If we go back to the same time, about 1910, it was believed that the cod on the Grand Banks were so plentiful they would never run out. And we ran our fishing industry on that belief, until the cod actually ran out. Luckily, with our global system of commerce, we can continue to snack on fish that comes from China as easily as the stuff that used to come from the Grand Banks. And as species get depleted, instead of protecting them, we continue to eat them at a great rate. Bluefin Tuna is endangered? Great, I think I'll order some for my dinner. That attitude shows a lack of respect for nature.

I'm sure people have some natural instinct to be respectful of nature, but somehow it is being lost in our modern global economy. Maybe it is propaganda that has got us convinced to consume, waste, throw stuff away without a guilty conscience. Maybe if we had a chance to think for ourselves, we would be cautious, and take only what we need. It may also make us happier people. We are certainly not that happy in our consumer-oriented throwaway society.

But ultimately, we may need about a 70 year catastrophe to convince us to be frugal with out resources. And then, we can just pray for a second chance. Imagine that we ran out of oil for seventy years. Seventy years of hearing stories from our elders about the old days, when people drove Hummers "just for the hell of wasting oil". Then one day, someone finds a new, huge reserve of oil. Do you think it would take much to convince those people to take the bus or a train instead of a Hummer?

How Pascal's Wager Underpins Modern Consumerism

Pascal's Wager, I believe, is based on three principles, which to Pascal seemed logical, but I do not accept. They are

- Black and white choice
- Not possible to know the truth
- Self interest dictates our decision

Pascal's Wager was just possibly a tongue in cheek comment. He was famous for using satire and ridicule in his writing. But on the other hand, he was a convert to Christianity, and was reputed to be quite an angry and morose person, so... probably he meant it.

Pascal used his idea of the wager to convince people that they should believe in God. Ironically, it does not argue that God exists, just that you would be better off acting as though God exists. So he was really telling you to pretend you believe in God, even if you really don't. Or at least start by pretending you believe in God and one day maybe you will genuinely believe in God.

Pascal was interested in gambling, and he invented a primitive roulette wheel. Got into a lot of arguments about whether a vacuum could exist. He opposed the "Rationalism" argued by Rene Descartes. i.e. "any view appealing to reason as a source of knowledge or justification". In politics, this rationalism has led to something between "internationalism" and "realism".

I am beginning to remember why I stayed away from Philosophy courses at University. All these philosophical offshoots seem to be a jumble of ideas that do not follow logically. For example, I might disagree with Pascal's conclusion about the belief in God, and I am more inclined to Rationalism instead. But I don't really see that Rationalism is the opposite of Pascal's Wager, in that Pascal was simply using rational thought about belief in God. In politics, Rationalism apparently leads us to two views, Internationalism, (that I believe in) and Political Realism (which to me seem like just another offshoot of Pascal's Wager).

Internationalism holds that all nations of the Earth are more or less equal and should cooperate rather than try to dominate each other, Political Realism holds that national interest should take precedence over ideology.

Pascal wrote about his wager in the 1600's, and his idea is even more important today as the philosophical underpinning of all spam, lotteries, all propaganda, all consumer marketing, the "invisible hand of the free market" and all of George W. Bush's decisions.

Let's take spam for an example of Pascal's wager, from the point of view of the sucker who falls for it. You receive an email, let's say it is promising you a larger something. First, your mind is focused on a simple choice, which is limited to a binary on/off decision: to have a small one or a large one. Second, you have no way of knowing the truth of any of this: Can this product help you or not? Do you actually have a small one or not? You do not know. And third, your self interest is to be happy, and you are being told that happiness depends on answering this email. Like Pascal's wager about God, you are told you have nothing to lose by answering (money back guarantee), and everything to gain. If everybody was rational, no spam would ever get any replies. But if some people make decisions in the framework of Pascal's Wager, some people will reply.

The converse of Pascal's wager would be something like this.

- There are grey areas in any choice, and other alternatives to the two being presented.
- Ultimate truth may not be possible, but seeking the truth is a moral obligation.
- Self interest should not take precedence over truth.

If everyone made decisions according to the converse of Pascal's Wager, not only would it mean and end to spam, but possibly an end to free enterprise and consumerism as well. But of course, it is one thing to talk about denying self interest, and quite something else to do it.

Picture: That's a modern roulette wheel. Mathematically, you would do better at a roulette wheel than with a lottery ticket. (although in both the odds are that you lose)

Two More Pet Peeves with the Media

Some of my most frequent pet peeves are people in the media "explaining" an issue in a completely ass-backwards way. So part of the fun of writing a blog is to put out my own take on an issue that has been poorly explained to the public by the TV and newspaper media. Two such stories come to mind today.

First is Canada's new rules for mortgages, tightening up the requirements for obtaining and keeping a mortgage. I didn't keep track of which news person said this, but I'll bet she was not alone. She was talking to an expert, and asked "This probably means that the average home buyer will have to be paying more for their house. How much more will we have to pay?". If you spotted the error already, good for you! The error is this: By tightening up the credit rules, home buyers will pay LESS for their homes, not more. You heard that right. Most people buy homes on credit, that's what a mortgage is all about. They usually buy the most expensive house that they can afford. The person who tells them what they can afford is the banker who approves the mortgage, and the bankers do the calculation according to set rules, based on the buyer's financial position. When you tighten up the rules, you are effectively saying "You cannot afford this $500,000 house, therefore we reject your mortgage request. However, we would be able to approve of a mortgage for $350,000". The numbers here are just an example, but it gives you the idea that people will be spending less. Even for people who buy a smaller house than their limit, they will pay less because they will not be extended as much credit, therefore less interest to pay.

My second complaint was stirred up by a comment by one or more meteorologists, that they are better able to predict global warming than climatologists. (March 29, 2010 New York Times). I know this story is almost a month old, but I'm actually focusing on a problem with the entire meteorological business, that has been going on for a while. The weathermen and women on TV keep pounding us with the message that "warm is good" and "sunshine is good". It sounds something like this "We have some good news for the weekend, sunny and warm with no chance of rain." Listen to the weather forecasts yourself, and in about 99% of them, the meteorologist attaches the words "good news" to any report of sunny and warm, and some variation of "bad news" to any rain, snow or cold.

The one exception is when a forest fire is destroying million dollar homes in California. Then they switch around the good to bad.

This attitude is not scientific, which confirms my opinion that most of these weather girls and men are more announcers than scientists. But for heaven's sake, do not make your pretty faces even redder by claiming to have greater scientific knowledge of climate change than climatologists. Meteorologists have a hard time predicting 5 days ahead, and have been totally brainwashed into thinking warmer is better. These are not the people to be deciding if it is good or bad that the climate gets 5 degrees warmer in the next hundred years.

Picture: It looks like a Spanish language station, so just to be clear, I didn't choose the picture because their forecasts are worse, but because their forecasters are better looking.

Why Does Toyota Make Big Honkin SUV's and Pickup Trucks?

For a company that claims to be green, Toyota makes a lot of large SUV's and pickup trucks. What could be more natural than making these honking big luxury all wheel drive vehicles if it makes money? Well, it's not that simple.

The only place in the world where these large gas-wasting vehicles sell well is the USA, and that is because of low gasoline prices, which are kept low by the political danger of imposing taxes on fuel in America. And even in America, as we have seen, the price of gas sometimes rises to the point that vehicle sales decline. (especially the gas-hogs)

Toyota started off in the sixties sending fuel efficient cars to the USA because that's what they made for their home customers, and that's what they understood. Not only that, but since 1963 there has been an import duty on light trucks coming to the USA of 25%. It is called the "Chicken tax" as this import tax is applied to potato starch, dextrin, brandy, and light trucks in retaliation for a European import tax on American chickens. OK, sorry that this is getting complicated but really so many things we consider natural came about through unnatural and complicated legislation.

Anyway, Toyota continued to make cars for the US, content to ignore the truck market. Then the US congress began to pass laws requiring increasingly strict standards for fuel economy, crash safety, and clean burning engines. Toyota complied, and set their engineers to work conforming to these regulations. Meanwhile, Detroit began to exploit a loophole they had at their disposal, by getting light trucks exempted from all these laws. Once again, Toyota more or less ignored the unfairness of this, and continued to build fuel efficient cars. The American car makers, on the other hand started pushing the definitions of what exactly was a light truck. Eventually, Detroit managed to include all minivans as light trucks and even started making pickup trucks with no bed at the back, calling them SUV's. Toyota still had no response, but things were getting worse. When gasoline prices declined in the nineties, sales of SUV's, pickup trucks and minivans increased to the point that cars became an endangered species in the USA (literally!). And finally, I guess the thing that pushed Toyota over the edge was the proposed CAFE standards.

Although CAFE (Corporate Average Fuel Economy) did not pass, it threatened Toyota's existence in the US market. The law proposed a percentage improvement in fuel economy on each corporation, over time, starting with their existing fuel economy average. The problem was that if Toyota was starting with mostly fuel efficient cars, it would have to compete against American makers who were starting with wasteful vehicles. It is hard to increase the fuel economy of a Corolla, but easy to do if you are starting with fuel wasting American style vehicles.

As a result of (or sometimes anticipating) all these pressures, Toyota decided to enter the truck market in the USA, so that they would be on an equal footing with the Detroit companies in case CAFE ever became law. To do so, they set up truck factories in the USA, because the chicken tax of 25% would have made them uncompetitive to import from Japan. And now we have the Toyota Tundra and the Toyota Sequoia, and several other big honking things you would not expect to find many years ago in a Toyota showroom.

Last year, both GM and Chrysler declared bankruptcy. They were relying too heavily on their big truck sales for profits, and when fuel prices went up along with job losses, many people stopped buying the trucks and SUV's. Toyota fared better and became the world's biggest automaker because of their superior line of cars.

But now Toyota is facing billions of dollars in lawsuits in the USA because of the not yet proven "runaway acceleration" syndrome.

So it's not always as simple as you might think.

Picture: Photoshop was not used in this picture. I did not reduce the size of the person in the drivers seat. The Sequoia is just a very big vehicle, at least for a Toyota.