EclectEcon

Yea, Duty Free!

One of my favourite scotch whiskies is Caol Ila. I can get it in Alberta, where retail liquor sales have been privatized and there is competition among retailers in the provision of brands and varieties.

But I can't get Caol Ila in Ontario. The gubmnt monopoly stores do not carry it. Maybe they will at some point, but I haven't seen it in the LCBO [gubmnt monopoly stores] for a long time.

Fortunately it is available at most duty-free shops.

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More Socks

I gave some of my other colourful socks to one of my granddaughters. But then while she and I were shopping at Value Village, we saw these for $2/pr, and I couldn't resist them.

 

I Would Like to Thank....

I will never again groan so loudly or so much when I hear the words, "I would like to thank...." during a major award ceremony or telecast of election results.

I don't know that I have ever won any award or election after which I was expected to make a speech, and so I didn't understand how heartfelt the thanks really are for most people who thank everyone. .... until recently.

Two weeks ago, I was named the "Best Actor" in the London One-Act Festival for 2014 for the role, Ivan, in Unforgiven. I had another commitment and wasn't present at the ceremony. If I had been there, here is what I would have wanted to say. I wouldn't have said all this; doing so would have taken far too long. But this is what I'd have wanted to say:

Thank you very much.

I would like to thank Rhonda Allen, who performed opposite me in the play. She was a joy to work with and a joy to rehearse with. She brought important insights to her role, my role, and to the play. She had and showed a depth of understanding that went far beyond mere acting; she convincingly played the person and moved everyone in the audiences.

I would also like to thank our director Diane Haggerty. She took a risk on a very difficult play, turning it into a show that clearly affected everyone involved with it, both on and off stage. She experimented along with us, trying various interpretations, and she convinced me to play the role the way I did. Without her input, my performance and the show as a whole would not have been the success it was.

I also owe a deep debt of gratitude to my wife, Ms Eclectic, for working with me and with us. Ivan was a very hard role for me, and (as with other shows) she put in many long hours helping me in so many ways.

Also I want to thank Kathleen Sykora for her patience and dedication. She was in the play, but she also served as assistant director and general support person.  And Aiden Lee, who joined us at the last minute but who added insight and crispness to her role as well as levity backstage.

In addition, some of the people who have directed and worked with me recently deserve mention.  Through their feedback they helped me become a better actor: Steve Stockwell (Out of Sight Productions), Jason Rip (Nemesis Theatre), and Paige Miller (Fusion Productions), along with all the actors I have worked with in those and other productions, including so many mystery dinner theatre shows.

Finally, I would like to thank Maridon Duncanson and all the organizers and volunteers for the London One-Act Festival for their time and effort in bringing about this event.

Thanks again to everyone for everything.

Let me emphasize that the role of Ivan was really hard for me; it was likely the most difficult role I have ever played (including Dysart in Equus two years ago). The word usage was just slightly different for me; and the ideas overlapped within each set of sentences, interrupting the flow of thoughts constantly. Also there was a lot of drama, requiring me to scale back the emotions at times so as not to overdo them.

Apparently, the adjudicator who made the awards said that she had read all the plays and knew from the script how challenging the role of Ivan would be. Also apparently, she talked about how I met the challenge. I couldn't have done that without the help from everyone else. Believe me, I now understand how sincere most of those long, thanking speeches are.

Here I am, holding the "Loafie" [cf LOAF: London One-Act Festival]:

As I said, thanks again to everyone for everything.

When Did US Thanksgiving Become a Week-Long Holiday?

Last week I read a discussion on Facebook in which professors speculated about how many students would attend class on the Friday before Thanksgiving.

Huh?

I thought Thanksgiving was on Thursday and then many/most people not in the retail business also got the next day, Friday, off. Schools closed for both Thursday and Friday, and people traveled for the four-day holiday.

But, nope, these folks were talking about the Friday before Thanksgiving. They were discussing schools and work environments in which people get an entire week off for a Thanksgiving holiday. A week to give thanks? A week to shop? A week to catch up on schoolwork and write overdue term papers? I was puzzled.

Then over this past weekend, we were visiting our son (Adam Smith Palmer) and his family in Houston. Well, son-of-a-gun. The entire public school system there is shut down for all of Thanksgiving week. Why? What is the explanation?

Sure, it is nice to have more time off work (I'm mostly retired; believe me, I know!). At the same time, parents who do not get the entire week off must scramble to find daycare and other activities for their children for the first three days of the week.

And, of course, if students at university are given a three-day weekend or a week off (we had something called "reading week" or, euphemistically, "slack week" in February at UWO when I taught there) inevitably many students leave on the Friday or even Thursday preceding the week off from classes. I have even had parents call me to beg for mercy for their students when I scheduled an exam the last day before a holiday because the parents had booked tickets to some resort, leaving a few days before classes ended.

And people wonder why US productivity hasn't grown.... Sheesh, I feel like a curmudgeonly old codger.

Are Socks the New Neckties?

When we moved from our house in Clinton to our 2br condo unit in London a little over 3 years ago, I got rid of probably 20 neckties. I still have maybe 40, but I rarely wear any of them anymore.

However, I recently acquired some interesting socks [thanks to Ms Eclectic]:

Socks! The new neckties!

53 Years Later?

My classmates from Carleton College, Northfield MN, are planning a 50th reunion for this coming June. In preparation, they have put together a page of bios and photos.

I don't remember this photo, but apparently it was taken during our first week on campus in the fall of 1961.

Graphene, a miracle substance?

Back in May, 2013, I wrote about the potential for using graphene to desalinate water. If graphene has all these miracle properties, watch for more economic growth and more change as entrepreneurs find less expensive ways to produce and use high-quality graphene . Wow!

Update: Jack recommends the Wikipaedia link to many of the potential uses being touted for graphene. Also, see this for the possibility that even more materials with even more desireable properties might be in the pipeline.

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Unforgiven

Unforgiven

Tomorrow evening is our final performance of "Unforgiven", an entry in this year's London One-Act Festival at the McManus Theatre in London, Ontario. Tickets for this (and three other shows altogether) are only $15.

To be honest, I was less-than-enthusiastic about the script when I first read it. But with creative insight from Diane Haggerty (director) and Rhonda Allen (co-star), it has turned into a very moving piece. I will be quite surprised if they don't win awards for their work on this play.

The Truth about China, Pollution, and CO2

Tyler Cowen says it here:

First, China is notorious for making announcements about air pollution and then not implementing them.  This is only partially a matter of lying, in part the government literally does not have the ability to keep its word.  They have a great deal of coal capacity coming on-line and they can’t just turn that switch off.  They’re also driving more cars, too.

Second, China falsifies estimates of the current level of air pollution, so as to make it look like the problem is improving when it is not.  Worse yet, during the APEC summit the Chinese government blocked the more or less correct estimates coming from U.S. Embassy data, which are usually transmitted through an app.  ...

Third, a lot of the relevant Chinese regulatory apparatus is at the local not federal level (in fact it should be more centrally done, even if not fully federalized in every case).  There are plenty of current local laws against air pollution which are simply not enforced, often because of corruption, and often that pollution is emanating from locally well-connected, job-creating state-owned enterprises.  Often the pollution comes from one locality and victimizes another, especially in the north of the country. ....  The Chinese also do not have anything close to a consistently well-staffed environmental bureaucracy.

Fourth, if you look at the history of air pollution, countries clean up the most visible and also the most domestically dangerous problems first, and often decades before solving the tougher issues.  For China that highly visible, deadly pollutant would be Total Particulate Matter, which kills people in a rather direct way, and in large numbers, and is also relatively easy to take care of. ... The Chinese people (and government) are much more worried about TPM than about carbon emissions, which is seen as something foreigners complain about.  Yet TPM is still getting worse in China, and if it is (possibly) flat-lining this year that is only because of the economic slowdown, not because of better policy.

When will China cap carbon emissions?  “Fix TPM and get back to me in twenty years” is still probably an underestimate.  Don’t forget that by best estimates CO2 emissions were up last year in China by more than four percent.  How many wealthier countries have made real progress on carbon emissions?  Even Denmark has simply flattened them out, not pulled them back.

On Aging

The money quote from this amusing YouTube video:

With viagra and a hip replacement, I could be a porn star.

Yeah, sure.

Though I did play one once:

Regina SK is like Lincoln NB

When I lived in Regina, Saskatchewan, one of the things that struck me was how much it was like Lincoln, Nebraska, in one important aspect: fan and city-wide enthusiam for the local football team. Both cities are quite far from any other city that offers one of the four major-league professional sports (MLB, NFL, NBA, and NHL) and football in both cities attracts fans from the entire state/province.

My first few game days in Regina, over four years ago, reminded me very much of what it was like driving through Lincoln, NB, on game day: People were dressed in team colours, and it wasn't just some of the fans going to the game. It was ALL of the fans going to the game and many who weren't. In Lincoln, there is a sea of red and white on game day; in Regina, it is a sea a green.

And this map from the NYTimes confirms my impression about Lincoln. The people in Nebraska (and Alabama as well, it turns out) reallylike NCAA football [the map is fascinating. It's worth a look]. That same devotion/fanaticism/support is what I see on game days in Regina, too.

Why is Obama's Approval Rating So High?

Conor Friedersdorf, writing in the Atlantic, marvels not that Obama's approval rating is "only" 42%; he says it should not be even that high [via Ralph]:

[H]ere's what I find alarming: Confronted with a president who 1) spied on every American; 2) covered up torture; 3) continued a War on Drugs ruinous to minorities and whole foreign nations; 4) killed hundreds of innocents in drone strikes; 5) waged war illegally and killed an American citizen without due process (while suppressing the legal reasoning used to do so); 6) let high-ranking national-security officials break the law with impunity; and 7) persecuted whistleblowers—confronted with all of those transgressions, more than four in 10 Americans still approve of the job Obama is doing. And most of them are loyal Democrats. Partisanship and tribalism are overriding the moral compass of too many liberals, who ought to be furious with Obama. National-security policies he unilaterally pursued will be harming the U.S., its moral standing, and its most vulnerable citizens for years if not decades to come, especially since Democrats are poised to make civil illibertarian Hillary Clinton their party's next leader.

And these points do not include his cozying up with Muslim fanatics, Benghazi, the devastation of health care for so many people now reduced to part-time jobs, and the cronyism with Goldman Sachs and others on Wall Street.

Does James Murray Like Peated Whiskies?

Jim Murray writes a whisky bible in which he rates and ranks whiskies from around the world. The big "scandal" (of sorts) this year is that a Japanese scotch-type whisky was ranked number one; furthermore, no whisky from Scotland made the top five of his ranking.*

Clearly Mr. Murray and I have different tastes (and different budgets). Perusing his rankings from the past on this site, I see very few peated whiskies other than just about anything from Ardbeg, which I like but which is not my favourite. Furthermore the Lagavulins and Laphroaigs on the list were not my favourites from those distilleries. I likely have quite plebian tastes, but my two favourite peated whiskies in past taste tests have been Lagavulin 16 and Caol Ila (see this), neither of which makes his top lists or ratings.

I have an Amrut, which is allegedly lightly-peated. It's too sweet and inadequately peated for my taste.

 

I also have a Connemara from Ireland, which is decent and decently peated.

 

And the el cheapo Islay Mist blend is still very good value for the money.

One big shock: the Liquor Control Board of Ontario had quarter-cask LaPhroaig on sale for $10 off yesterday. Wow! I think I prefer the 10-year-old LaPhroaig to their quarter-cask, but I still bought some.

*note: Christine Logan, who was my guide when I toured the Island of Islay, at one time worked for Bowmore Distillery and then later did some work for a Japanese distillery. She had very nice things to say about their whiskies 4 years ago when I traveled with her.

Addendum: after seeing this, a friend who knows something about the industry wrote me:

Jim Murray was a great Ardbeg fan in the early days when he went over to Islay gleaning all information for his writings. I do not rate him highly.

 

Well, It Lasted Nearly a Year...

In November 2013, one of the urinals near the economics department at The University of Regina was dedicated to my memory. I was honoured:

I really expected someone there in the admin to be upset (or at least not amused) and was surprised that the plaque was still in place when I visited the university last month to give a seminar.

Yesterday a former colleague from the University of Regina wrote me that the plaque has disappeared. I'm disappointed but not surprised.

I Love My iPhone 6+

Two years ago, frustrated because Apple wouldn't bring out a larger iPhone and because their mini-iPad was too big to carry in my cargo pants pockets, I bought a Samsung Note2.  I know many people love their Samsung phones and Android, but it was a big mistake for me (see this and this).

Despite using the Note2 for two years, I never adjusted to Android, and I never figured out some of the features on the Note2. I found myself using my iPad2 more often, and I can't count the number of times I said, "I hate this phone."

Finally, when the iPhone6+ was announced, I ordered one immediately. And I love it.

Everything was much easier for me to do on the iPhone 6+, most likely because my first smartphone was an iPhone, and I continued my familiarity with iOS using my iPad (see below).

• I can adjust the notifications easily.

• I can turn the ringer on or off with the flick of a switch.YEA!

• I synched the iPhone6+ with my computer and downloaded updates of all the apps I had purchased over the years for my previous iPhones and iPad, no problem.

I'm no tech guru (despite having been familiar with WatFor (Fortran II), DOS, and even some Windows programming for Windows 1.x). Digging around in Android to try to figure out how to do things was frustrating and certainly not fun. I don't have to do that in iOS.

Size: The screen of the 6+ is about the same size as the screen of the Note2, measured diagonally. But the 6+ is about a half inch longer and a quarter inch narrower. This difference means the 6+ (in a silicone case, see below) sticks out of my shirt pocket a bit more, but it also means that I can still easily fit a pen in my shirt pocket alongside the 6+, something that wasn't always easy with the Note2.

Battery Life: I had a backup battery for my Note2, and it seemed I was always having to charge up the phone and/or swap batteries. The iPhone6+ has an amazingly long battery life. Lots of my friends have complained about the short battery lives of their Samsung phones as well, so I'm not alone with this point.

Battery Life, continued: I used to plug my Note2 in overnight and then hope it could last through the day. Often it didn't; I was always checking the battery levels and recharging the phone. Because I had to keep the phone plugged in at night, when I woke up during the night, I would use my iPad to check my email, browse Facebook, and read novels. Now that I have my iPhone 6+, I have not touched my iPad. I plug the phone into my computer to charge it up now and then (with the side benefit of synching the apps and backing up the phone, all automatically), but I do everything on my 6+ and have never even come close to running out of battery power.

WiFi Connections: The wifi connections were never consistently automatic on my Note2. I have had ZERO problems with making and renewing wifi connections automatically on my iPhone6+.

Speed: the 6+ seems faster to me. I have run no tests and have no benchmarks, but it just seems faster. Many of the reviews agree that it is.

Screen resolution: The resolution on the 6+ seems better than anything I have seen anywhere else. I'm sure other smartphones do well in this regard, too, but this is pretty frickn amazing.

Things from Android/Note2 I thought I would miss:

• The back button,
• the menu button,
• the three-words atop the keyboard for speedier typing,
• the number keys atop the keyboard.

Back button: I admit that I do sometimes hit the lower right-hand corner of the 6+, trying to go back to a previous screen. But most of the apps I use have a back button in the upper left-hand corner. I just need to learn where it is.

Menu button: Android beats iOS on this. Most iOS apps have a setting button that lets me do what I want to do, and some have a menu button near the upper left-hand corner. But having a specific menu button in the lower left-hand corner would be a nice addition to iOS.

Three-word smart-word completion possibilities: I was pleasantly surprised to see this on my 6+! Yea!

Number keys atop the QWERTY row of keys: I want this. Anyone who lives in Canada (or elsewhere) that uses a mix of letters and numbers for postal codes gets frustrated typing those on an iPhone or iPad. The same goes for most passwords. I've looked a bit for an app that will give it to me, and I would be grateful for pointers if you know of one.

Other considerations:

Gmail: the Gmail app on both phones is frustrating. I detest the "conversation" view in gmail, preferring the chronological view of my messages; I still haven't figured out how to get rid of the conversation view on a smartphone, even though I have turned it off on my laptop. Also I haven't found a gmail calendar look that I like on my 6+ as much as I liked the one I used on my Note2. [Addendum: it would also be nice if there were an easy way to move messages out of the inbox into various folders. The autocompletion for doing this in Gmail on a laptop is wonderful, but I have not seen any easy way to do it with a smartphone]

Books: I am disappointed that the Stanza reading app is no longer available for iOS (and was never available for Android). I loved being able to swipe up and down to alter the brightness of the screen [Update: see below]

Books, continued: It is frustrating that Apple makes it more difficult to order ebooks from Kindle and Kobo on their iPhones. I don't always want to order iBooks.

Micro SD card: I loved being able to store things on a 64GB micro SD card for my Note2. Sometimes getting the Note2 to communicate with my MacBook was such a hassle, it was easier to take the phone apart, remove the SD card, and plug it into my laptop. Communication between my 6+ and my MacBook is smooth, though, and I bought a 64 GB iPhone 6+, and so this isn't a problem for me, at least not yet. 

Case: I bought the silicone case from Apple, in part to protect the phone, but in part to keep the phone from slipping out of my shirt pocket too easily (e.g. when I lean over). It works perfectly.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Update: After reading this, my younger son, Adam Smith Palmer, wrote that with iOS 7 and iOS 8, it is possible to swipe up from the bottom of a screen to open the control centre and change screen brightness there. Okay, I see that it works, but so far I am struggling with the swipes, trying to get them to do what I want, when I'm using Bluefire (mostly to read scripts) or even Kindle (where I read novels). Much of the time, swiping up reveals a "control centre icon" or whatever it is called, but then I can't get it to open the control centre; eventually I'll probably master the touch. It seems to require a double swipe to make this work [duh!]. This feature looks much like the swipe-down feature on my Note2, from which I could check things and open control features.

Also, though, when I adjust the brightness that way, the iPhone doesn't show me what the screen will look like, and I'm left guessing about what level of brightness I might end up with [Ah, I see now that it does really show the brightness while I'm messing with the brightness slider].

This method of controlling brightness seems to affect all the apps on the phone, not just the brightness of whatever app I am using to read ebooks. For now, I think it is easier just to use the settings buttons to adjust brightness. Stanza was much better with this feature (plus, it allowed me to choose from myriad options for colours, line spacing, etc.).

 

 

 

Switch to Daylight-Wasting Time

Well, we have been on Daylight Savings Time (except in Saskatchewan) for about 7 months. It is now time for us to change our clocks (in Saskatchewan, change our television viewing patterns) for the next five months or so. Set 'em back tonight before you go to bed or tomorrow morning after you get up.

If that has been "daylight savings" I guess we now move on to daylight wasting time.