Shopping at No-Frills

I went shopping at our local No-Frills grocery store. It used to be an Extra-Foods before we left 2 1/2 months ago. Both stores have the same parent company – Loblaws. The difference being No-Frills concentrates on food, while Extra Foods had extra merchandise. I was surprised at what a depressing experience it was.

The entire store is yellow. It is an bright yellow and white with pretension of happiness, but it is ugly. The food rises on taller shelves and is more tightly packed together. I feel like I am in an institution that just wants to service me but not serve me.

The bakery and deli section have disappeared. So has the bread. There is a label for it. Apparently it now comes from Superstore and the shipment is not all that regular. True the French crusty bread was cheaper – 97 cents rather than 1.49. But, it is irrelevant if the bread is not in the store at 10 AM.

The tellers are fewer and older. They seemed a little sad, being quieter than before No Frills. There was one teller who was from the Extra Food days. She always used to smile and joke. It was her day off and she was just talking to her co-workers. Maybe there was simply a problem with her schedule. She never smiled.

The food prices are a bit cheaper. I’ll probably go again looking for some bread. In the long run it will save me more time . I would just want to buy what I need and fast – then get out because there really is no shopping experience, I only there to get stuff.

Disconnect

We were watching “India Remade”, last night. There were two scenes that really made a connection. The first was the corpulent but incredibly wealthy owner of Kingfisher beer sitting in luxurious office sweet on his private jet. Dr.Vijay Mallyais also a member of Parliament. He was explaining how Indian farmers will eat a meal of ground peanut with some water, onions and a chilli for their meal. “They love it. But not one person in India starves to death.”

The next scene was of a thin, Indian farmer. He had had a surgery for a tumor and was now $700 in debt. He, his wife and mother were trying their best to raise enough crops on 3 acres of land to pay off the money. He felt ashamed that he had this debt over him. Farmers in India were committing suicide because they could not meet their financial commitments. So I suppose technically they did not starve to death, but they were dead none the less.

Dr.Vijay Mallya and the farmer lived in two different “realities”. The farmer lived in the real world of sun, crops and life and death by the arrival of rains. Vijay Mallya lived in a bubble of prosperity, shielded by money and power from the real harshness of the world. I think we in the west are stuck in the bubble of unreality, never really connecting with what it means to stay alive. That is why talk of global warming affecting rain fall patterns makes no dent on the public. Food is grown in magical places where the weather makes no difference; food just appears on the supermarket shelves.

The executives receiving bonuses at AIG are living in a further world of disconnect. They are receiving “bonuses” from the public purse for destroying their company. What a different attitude from the India farmer who was trying to do his best to recover from debt. It reminds me of a scene in “Animal Farm” where the pigs are in the house, living like the farmer and lives for the rest of the animals had not changed.

“Some animals are more equal than others”

Latex Bibliographies

I’ve been working on a paper and needed references. My tool of choice for writing is LaTex; there is a steep learning curve but once the text markup is working, it stays working. Unlike the precarious state of WYSIWYG wordprocessors (MS word in particular). But, finding out how bibliographies worked seem like an excursion through byzantine instructions.

My eventual solution was:

1. Write references in BibTex using BibDesk or JabRef
2. Save the BibTex file in the same directory as the source LaTex file

3. Include in the Latex file:

   \bibliographystyle{plain}

   \bibliography{name of bibtex file without extension}

   \end{document}

4. Using TeXShop:
   1) compile the Latex file using the Latex option
   2) compile the Latex file using BibTex(option in TexShop)
   3) compile the Latex file again using Latex option

That’s it.

Investments and the Mysterious 8 %

I was watching CBC news yesterday and saws a clip about investing in RRSPs. Apparently 40 % of Canadians will not be investing in RRSPs because of the economic climate.

The bank spokeswoman went on to say that this would be a good time to buy because the cost per unit is down. Then the reported talked about how not investing $2500 at 20, 30 and 40 years old could result in thousands of lost dollars at the time of retirement **assuming an 8 % rate of return**.

That was the kicker **”assuming an 8% rate of return”. Where am I going to get an 8 % rate of return ? Currently my RRSPs have had a negative rate of return, but I have gained slightly (not at 8 %) since starting. I don’t really understand this as I actually have less money in the account than I originally put in.

But, this is the funny math of the financial sector. This is the sector filled with Enrons and World Banks. A system rife with accounting fraud and collapsing in on itself because of outright greed. Yet, their best advice is to invest more.

I feel as if I have been sold an illusion of modernity. The numbers of finance and trade all seem to be smoke and mirrors, cooked up in many board rooms and designed to disguise and steal. It is a system built on greed and services only that end – the making of money. Respecting the social good, and the environment do not seem to be of concern.

Now as the cancer economy slows down, the immediate response is to keep the fires burning. Very little thought has been given as to why we have gotten here in the first place. I do not just mean the financial sector, but the whole of it. We are awash in pollution(chemical, plastic, and advertising), straining the earth’s ability to produce food, drinking up the last of cheap oil, sitting in cities that make us unhappy, and destroying the very foundations that feed, clothe and shelter us.

I wonder if we can actually make an 8% return of investments when the true costs of the modern system are paid. Of course the news story did not cover the wider concerns -they never do.

Celebrity Culture and Flight Crash on the Hudson

Last Thursday I was flicking channels and caught a segment on Entertainment Tonight about Flight US Air 1549 crash into the Hudson River. ET had its own take on the event by interviewing some celebrities who had been in air crashes, and apparently interviewing others just because they were celebrities.

It seemed inane to have all this celebrity talk on the news – most of it amounted to “The people must have been scared. I was really scared when…”. The program went to speculate which leading man would then play pilot Chesley B. Sullenberger.

In this instance I was not sure why the opinions of “celebrity” were of any value. They were the opinions of people who could sing, dance or memorize some lines in front of the camera.

Why not solicit some more valuable commentary – from pilots, or from the actual people involved in the crash, or perhaps even from witnesses. I suppose this is not the job of an entertainment show, but it typifies our culture’s fixation on “celebrity” for its own sake. I wonder how much closer we would be to zero carbon emissions, or eliminating world hunger, exploitation, or polution if the same amount of coverage would be given to real news.

Winter Tires

Last year I tried to find information on Winter Tires. Were they any good for Winter driving ? Would they actually perform any better than all season radials. In years past all season radials were just as good as winter tires. But, for all the looking I did, I could not find any information.

This year, my parents came up to help look after the new baby. Dad mentioned he always put on winter tires. This was news to me – I never recalled this sage advice before. But, after grumbling and complaining I decided to try them. In my role as a new dad, thoughts of and keeping the family safe was the driving motive.

I contemplated Michelin X-ice and $173/tire. But, as they were not in stock went with General Altimax Winter Tires at $130/tire. So seven hundred dollars later, I am glad I did. The car handle much better on the snow. I wish I had done it years ago.

Back in Canada

My wife and I returned back to Canada from India – two weeks ago. I can’t believe that much time has passed. Finally the snow is melting – plus 7 Celsius. Well melting until tomorrow. If I can get organized, hopefully I can blog about our trip.

Anti Cancer Drug that is too Cheap

DCA (dichloroacetate) is capable of of suppressing the growth of of cancer cells without affecting normal cells.

Investigators at the University of Alberta have recently reported that a drug previously used in humans for the treatment of rare disorders of metabolism is also able to cause tumor regression in a number of human cancers growing in animals. This drug, dichloroacetate (DCA), appears to suppress the growth of cancer cells without affecting normal cells, suggesting that it might not have the dramatic side effects of standard chemotherapies.

Cancer cells, unlike normal cells produce their energy through glycoloysis – the anaerobic breakdown of sugars. This is because most cancer cells function in an oxygen deprived (anaerobic) environment. The DCA activates the mitochodria in the cancer cells. The mitochondria in cells are responsible for producing energy in oxygen rich environments, but they also activate apoptosis (cell death). Cancer cells with reawakened mitochondria wither and die.

The next step is to run clinical trials of DCA in people with cancer. These may have to be funded by charities, universities and governments: pharmaceutical companies are unlikely to pay because they can’t make money on unpatented medicines. The pay-off is that if DCA does work, it will be easy to manufacture and dirt cheap.

Loneliness and Society

Adbusters had an interesting article on Loneliness and Technology. The focus of the article was despite how many people were connected through technology, we are still cutting ourselves from the full human interaction. I admit that I have this sickness as well — far better to email than actually converse with a person and have to deal with the minutiae of conversation. But, in that isolation we lose what makes us human; that fleeting contact where you have the opportunity to SEE that person you are dealing with – not some number, or job, or role (wife, mother,husband, etc…). To actually see that person, acknowledge their feelings, and empathize;in short be mindful of their presence. But, technology traps us in our own minds.

Edit in Textmate

I’ve been playing with a Textmate, a text editor form Macromates. In fact that is what I am using to blog this post. I like the simple interface but there is a great deal hidden under the surface. There is a new series at Circle Six design that I hope will explain the intricacies of Textmate for the rest of us(non-coders).

But, one feature which I really like is “Edit in Textmate”. All the articles I found told me how great the feature was but not how to install it and how to use it. In the Textmate bundle, there is an `Install “edit in Textmate”’ function. Click it to install – how simple is that. Then for any Cocoa textbox, you can call up Textmate – either frorm the edit menu or type control-command E. Textmate is summoned to edit the text. To paste it back into the textbox, just save the file. The text is magically transported returned to the originating textbox. A fancy cut and paste, but I like it.