"I live in a van down by the river"

The new mayor of Toronto, Rob Ford, was officially installed today. Is it just me, or does this man have more than slight resemblance to Chris Farley?

Yeah, I think it is pretty close. I think Rob Ford would be a perfect Chris Farley persona too. Too bad this is the real world and not some movie.

Perhaps more amusing is Don Cherry's rambling rant made at the inauguration. Some great person uploaded it to Youtube:



The Globe and Mail predicted something like this would happen. As one of the "pinkos" that rides a bicycle, I have to wonder what has caused Cherry to become so bitter, because he used to just keep the subject on hockey.

Certainly, Rob Ford don't realize the realities of commuting in Toronto. I have never driven to the heart of Toronto, but even in the suburban areas and the 401 are a nightmare with traffic stoppages, even on Sundays. Transit and bicycle lanes are ways to encourage people to not drive, and thus make driving in Toronto less of a nightmare. Toronto is a city that is getting larger every year, and something needs to be done to ease gridlock. Having no real knowledge of prior attempts to revitalize the transit system in Toronto, I can't say how well their plans were going. Having been on the light rail systems in San Francisco and Calgary, it is an effective way to bridge sprawled cities. Ford's plan to cancel light rail in favour of subways (and incurring millions in cancellation fees that the city will have to pay itself) doesn't really make sense, as I cannot see how digging tunnels is supposed to cost less than creating an above ground rail system.

At any rate, Toronto reaps what it has sown. They wanted a man with "clever" sound bytes rather than someone who actually knows something about city planning. However, some blame also has to go to those who supported David Miller, who caved into the garbage collectors union when most people were insupportable of their cause.

Chain Letters and The Baby Boomers

Over the past few days, the following post was made by many people on my Facebook account:

Change your FB profile picture to a cartoon
from your childhood. The goal? To not see a human face on FB till
Monday, December 6th. Join the fight against child abuse, copy &
paste to your status and invite your friends todo the same.

Over the past few days, I would estimate about 70% of people who regularly make posts and are on my friends list have done this. I sort of mocked this by putting up a picture of the stoner aliens from Heavy Metal, shortly after they snorted up some "plutonium nyborg".

Today, people started taking their cartoon avatars down, with another post of the vein:

ATTENTION: the group asking everyone to change their profile picture to a cartoon character is actually a group of pedophiles. There doing it because kids will accept their friend request faster if they see a cartoon picture. It has nothing to do with any Child charities. IT'S ON TONIGHTS NEWS. ...Copy & Paste this on to your status - Let everyone know

It is amazing that in this day an age, with people being more net savvy, that chain letters still get passed along so easily. It is no wonder malware is common on Facebook. People seem all to willing to spread these chain letters and "funny and shocking videos" around, not realizing that there are consequences to this. There are people out there trying to take advantage of the naivety of the common Facebook user. If only people realized. You have to wonder how people can logically come to the conclusion that changing their profile picture will raise awareness for child abuse. You also have to wonder how these same people will come to the conclusion that a bunch of pedophiles are behind getting adults changing their profile pictures.

Onto other things.

Relevant Link

Every few months, I read articles about how the impending retirement of baby boomers en mass is going to invoke some sort of economic catastrophe. Can't say I completely disagree with this. I think we are headed for a major generational shift, probably unlike anything seen since World War II ended. We may indeed see the standard of living in first world nations drop for the first time since the Great Depression as massive budgets hang around our necks like a lead weight.

Is this really something that my generation should worry too much about? I'm not entirely convinced. I think that people will continue to live their lives comfortably, though they may not be able to afford the luxuries of the past. Home ownership is not going to be in everyone's future, or if it is, it won't be until later in life. People in their 20s and 30s have a lot of debt due to things like student loans, but by the same token those same people delay having families until their 30s. I think that the looming health care crunch will force young people to take care of their parents, like they did two generations ago, and by that same token those parents will have to look after their grandchildren as their children work. Taxes will rise out of necessity, and the retirement age will rise to reflect the fact that life expectancy is far higher than when the retirement age was set at 65.

Personally, I probably reflect the typical "post-boomer". I am nearing 30, and have never held any type of long lasting job, and I have spent most of my adult life in university. I have never stayed in any one location for very long time, never had any long term commitments or relationships. I have few assets, though I don't have any major debts (which might put me ahead of the game compared to many of my peers).

I have no illusions about the future. I know that there aren't going to be any free rides, and in all likelihood the costs of my health and living are going to be completely up to my own ingenuity. I have picked a career path that I believe will be able to sustain me until I reach retirement age, which I expect will be in my 80s. I think a large problem will happen once those who are forced into low paying jobs that are hard on the body reach their 60s. Without adequate health care or pensions, I would not be surprised if old aged homelessness becomes a significant issue in the future.

I read through all of the comments in the MacLean's Magazine article. Though many people share concern about the inevitable rise in costs in the social safety net, there were a bunch of idiots comment along the lines that "the young feel entitled and are lazy" and how they "worked hard for their pensions, health care and jobs that they are entitled to". I wonder if they will say the same things when the gap in skill level in professional jobs increases to the point that the knowledge economy suffers. For instance, in exploration geophysics, the SEG publishes demographics in the profession every year, and there a huge gap in experience in the fields, with the average age of geophysicists pushing into the baby boomer age group. I imagine such statistics would follow in other professional fields. Without having an even distribution in experience level of employees in professional employment, the economy will eventually suffer. And having been through this before, it is the people on the low end of the experience ladder that get laid off first. A sustainable economy depends on balancing the workforce to include people of varying experience levels.

C'est tout pour cette nuit.

Restart

It has been a long time since I made a post in my blog. I guess the whole "Wikileaks dump" has led me to want to restart it. The reaction to the current leak of US diplomatic cables has been more telling than the actual contents of the documents, most of which are mundane opinions that most people assumed anyways. Where was this level of outrage earlier this year when the Iraq War documents showed damning evidence of civilian death and indiscriminate slaughter? Now, we see Wikileaks figurehead, Julian Assange being dragged into a well orchestrated smear campaign, most notably the supposed "rape" charge. I'm thinking there must be some really juicy leaks coming in the future that is causing governments to react so loudly this time, because the diplomatic cables releases are no Watergate.

Here in Australia, Assange has pretty much been left out to dry by the government. I was watching the news the other day, and the "news" commentators on the station I was watching were basically falling in line with the government line, and basically spewing off about the rape charges. I will probably post more about the sensationalism in the news media here in Australia (keep in mind that Rupert Murdock still owns a lot of the newspapers here).

As for the leaks themselves, the sheer volume of documents kind of overstates the significance of the release. While I don't really agree that these should have got out into the public, the blame for this leak falls squarely on the bureaucratic structure that allowed a lowly private in the US Army to gain access and download all the documents. With the ease of access, imagine the likelihood that these documents have already been leaked to spy services of competing nations. If there are two million people with access to the cables, the chances of some covert operative gaining access is incredibly high. The only difference with Wikileaks getting it is that the documents are out there for everyone to see. Though with the things that have come out so far, I doubt there is much intelligence to be had from diplomatic cables.

I am interested in hearing about this "near environmental disaster regarding a rogue shipment of enriched uranium", though.