Dem evil card companies

Pretty good story on the perils of credit cards. Of course I find this out about $5,000 later... lol. (Hear that? That's the sound of pattering feet as potential suitors run away... far away...)

Haha.

Anyways, on a kind of related note I was surprised to find out last month that while I can find the worst garbage from web sites last updated in 1997, I cannot view my bank statement from six months ago. My online RBC account only goes back half a year, and while I can order it takes 3 to 5 business days and yup, costs $5.

I thought this was ludicrous, that while people who are dead broke or given up on hopeless web sites can leave the pages online well into the future that a $47.1 billion company cannot leave something up more than half a year.

Then again, it wouldn't be a $47.1 billion company if it was to let me see that statement, would it now?

Free Mojtaba and Arash Day

So there is a a worldwide call to free Mojtaba and Arash, two Iranian bloggers imprisoned for publishing their views in this wonderful world of blogs.

Funny enough, last night I listened to Grigory Pasko speak about his imprisonment in Russia in the 1990s after he reported public information on the nuclear dumping habits of the navy.

Clearly not everyone has a say, which is horrible with today's technology no?

So I spent my Valentine's Day listening to the New Yorker's Malcolm Gladwell speak at the University at Toronto.

He was talking about his new book Blink, about snap judgements and how by reducing information intake "experts" can make better decisions made in the blink of an eye. (As an aside he distanced this book from his previous one, The Tipping Point. He said he didn't want to be known as the "Tipping Point" guy.)

In any case he talked about how maestros had forever argued that men were superior musicians, until a woman was picked to play in a symphony after an audition where the judges were separated from the musician by a screen. And while maestros still argued that men were superior, he said that women now make up almost 50% of symphonists hired due to the anonymous auditions.

He then segued into the Amadou Diallo killing by New York City police in 1999. You have to change the context, Malcolm argued, and not the hearts and minds of the people making the decision, in order for them to make better judgements. To apply it to the Diallo case, Malcolm said that four rookie cops cannot be paired together because the mob mentality fueled by "physiological arousal" can only lead to one thing: an innocent 22-year-old black man shot 41 times in under seven seconds. Pretty powerful stuff.

Definitely worth a read, though I did pass on the 20% off sale. I'm hoping to get a promotional copy from work... heh.

I am very very upset right now. I got a great interview with a source that is vital for my story only to have the old "unnamed source" thing sprung upon me.

Rule number 1: clarify the name and title of your source at the beginning of the interview so you do not spend a half hour of your phone card minutes for quotes you cannot use.

GRRRRRRRRRRRRR.

The death of environmentalism

While I haven't actually read the 13,000 word report by Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus I did read the NYT account (password protected, so no link) and I am inclined to agree that environmentalism is, in fact dead, even moreso than Kyoto. I think it is representative of a great huge shrug of indifference that swept in a wave across North America sometime early this decade, blowing away any last resistance to anything, replaced by everything that we have before us today. Perhaps once reality t.v. hit the airwaves people cared too much about other people's problems than those plaguing our way of life, leading to the world which we find ourselves in now.

Pretty depressing, but again I think it's true, ESPECIALLY coming from the U.S.

Just came back from a guest lecture by Judy Rebick. Pretty cool woman... she's got a very commanding voice.

I learned there's a lot more to the rabble site than what I'd seen. The context of the lecture was online journalism so hopefully in a couple of months you will come back and see just how much I learned.

Wow. I can totally relate to Anne Shirley. As per required reading I read Lucy Maud Montgomery's classic of the precocious orphan girl who was terrified of geometry.

Now, a not-so precocious 25-year-old Yee-Guan is terrified of macroeconomics. The fact I didn't take any economics has weighed heavily on my mind. The practice test I scored 9/10, but tonight I got only 68% on the first assignment, graded out of 25.

It's almost irrational, my fear for numbers... I dread it sooo much that while I can stay up until 3 a.m. working on a crappy biosolids story I have pulled my economics notes out but once this entire term.

It's really bumming me out. I wish I had the guts of miss Anne-with-an-e to tackle it head on and turn the blah into something good.

Blech.