Victoria Market Watch

Black Hole

Black has its place.  Traditional photographic development labs, bat caves, and rooms suited to a sound sleep with melatonin abundant are examples that come to mind.  As far back as my memory is retrievable and personal ownership of electronic gadgets was part of my life, black has been problematic.  Recently, preparing for a trip to Arizona, I extricated the rechargeable batteries from my trusty Sony camera and placed them without issue into the charger.  A couple of days later I go to replace said batteries and the question is which one goes positive up and which one down.  Apparently Sony has marked this for me but guess what?  They have chosen to mark the battery compartments, already black as anthracite coal, with black markings.  If I could take a picture of this unique feature I would but my camera is not that flexible.  It looks much like this:

 

 Sony is not alone.  I have owned innumerable devices that pose exactly the same problem, as I am sure you have.  Is it not time for a smidgen of creativity on the part of electronic manufactures?  The infrequent appearance of the rainbow should offer some inspiration.  Have any of them seen snow?

Socially Responsible Environmental New Years Solution

The following suggestion will reduce recycling by 25 to 40 percent.  It involves a process during manufacturing that would be simple to implement.  It wouldn’t require companies to alter their mode of packaging and distribution, only a slight adjustment to the process would be needed.

So, what is this undemanding, effortless solution to reduce waste?  Fill everything up!

Ever bought a box of soap to find it is filled not only with the soap crystals you aimed to purchase, but a handy cup and two to three inches of air?  How about a package of potato chips, a third of which offers the aromatic essence of the product you hope to consume?  Or a bottle of pain killers or vitamins two thirds full but equipped with a healthy dose of cotton batten?  The above are rhetorical questions.

It’s time for the consumer to be fed up with packaging that is not filled up.  The environmental impact, if implemented for many of the products we buy, would be enormous around the world.   Fill existing containers up or reduce their size and fill them up. The time for responsible packaging is here.

Hawaii At Christmas Time

This year my wife Susan and I spent Christmas in Hawaii.  There is nothing quite like the dichotomy of driving around sun-seeking in 85 degree weather with beaches and shoppers and surf, listening to the radio play “It’s Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas” followed by an ad suggesting Wikele Storage is the best place to store one’s goods because it is now 20% off and your possessions will be kept in bunkers left over from the Second World War, all the while keeping in mind that we should wait two more days before swimming because the box jellyfish are here on schedule, ten days after a full moon, then finding out that your instincts were correct, the local golf course will not be busy on Christmas Day and in fact it is closed, macadamia nuts in the front seat and sunglasses somewhere and I’d better find them fast.

The picture below was taken at the War Memorial of the Pacific.  Our Christmas was great and we hope yours was too.  Aloha.

Time To Think Outside Your Carport

As a kid I can remember a plethora of comic books about flying machines.  Machines that gave individuals the opportunity to just take flight like a bird and zip across town.  There have been Utopian flying contraptions conceived regularly since the 19th century.  Always highly theoretical but enticing nonetheless. 

For years scientists have conjured up prototypes that would fit the bill.  Some fit better than others.  Now a group out of MIT has put their mind to making a car you can park in your garage and drive to the local airport before taking to the air.  While it is easy to remain skeptical (we have been promised such vehicles for decades) this prototype has 100 on reserve from customers and believe it will be available a year from now. 

Imagine flying to Vernon for the weekend, landing at the local airport, folding up your wings and driving to your motel.  Check this out.  It might be coming to a carport near you.

http://www.ted.com/talks/anna_mracek_dietrich_a_plane_you_can_drive.html

Watch For The Warning Signs

Occasionally dramatic events change our lives, but most changes happen almost imperceptibly.  Examples are everywhere we look and they never cease to amaze me. 

Couch potatoes.  We all know some.  They spend as much of their free time lying down watching TV as they can arrange.  Some I know fall asleep watching the boob tube.    Many of these were once extremely active and played every sport they were introduced to, willingly.  How did this transformation happen?  Was it an edict from a celestial source?  I doubt it.  Their behaviour changed  s l o w l y  over time and what once would have been perceived as a despicable approach to life becomes routine.

No more classic an example is when you meet someone, often but not exclusively male, who has an almost normal figure for their age but has built up over the years one huge belly.  Not just a pot belly, a hardware store full.  This person, you are almost certain, was once 17 or 23 and out there raking leaves and likely looking as trim and fit as the rake in their hands.  Cases of glandular malfunction or severe physical trauma do exist, but do not cover most we see.  Was there a point, one wonders, when this person examined themselves in the mirror and noticed an inch of waist that wasn’t there a month earlier?  Has this person developed the knack of ignoring mirrors altogether?  It appears people find mechanisms that allow various aspects of personal depreciation and forget to watch for the warning signs that, compiled over the years, result in a non-requested state of being.

If you drive your car until the oil warning light comes on it has likely already resulted in some damage, but at least with a car there is non-negotiable evidence that change is occurring.  Barring a similar universally adopted medical implant for humans, and with the likely event that evolution in this regard will maintain its dogged pace, I suppose that leaves us all in the awkward position of being responsible for observing our own individual warning signs.  A sign, perhaps, of the times.

Are We Coddled Or Confident?

If there’s one thing that clearly demarcates the generations, it is standards.  More specifically, what  people often bemoan as the lack of them.

One of my sons is currently a bank manager with TD.  He says there is a line up for a good part of every Sunday, indicating there is a public desire for such service, and yet this corporate decision is not popular with everyone.  For some, Sunday is sacrosanct and is meant to be a day of rest.  When I opened my first bank account years ago, one had to figure out how to pay a visit Monday through Friday from 9:00 until 3:00.  It wasn’t easy.  Maybe there was a tendency to spend less.

I remember when stores started opening on Sundays.  What seemed sad to me at the time was Sunday was the one time when you could count on getting together with 90% of your friends or family.  Now everyone works at the strangest of times.  Now we have a Thriftys opened 24 hours a day, something that occurred in California thirty years ago. 

Now we find that Generation Y is stirring up trouble on Canadian university campuses.  A Times Colonist article suggests they’re not demonstrating against war, fighting for equal rights or trying to reform university administration. Rather, they’re demanding better marks than they deserve, slighting professors and reading junk.

That’s the view of two professors who have written a book called Campus Confidential: 100 startling things you don’t know about Canadian universities. (James Lorimer & Co., 245 pages).

 “Every generation claims that the next one has been coddled and spoiled, but it really may be true this time,” writes Ken S. Coates, arts dean at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, and Bill Morrison, history professor emeritus at the University of Northern B.C. in Prince George. “Something new and nasty is going on with university students these days, and there’s more trouble in store.”

The authors blame societal permissiveness, child-centred educational and parenting styles, overwhelming materialism, video games, sexualized media and the guilt of two-income families. It’s not all bad, the authors write, because these new students are also more assertive and more confident than previous generations and not intimidated by professors or any adults.

Society has changed a lot in recent years and the pace does not appear to be slowing down.  What is interesting is that when change occurs there is always a backlash, and yet five or ten years down the road many of the changes that take place seem commonsense.  Seatbelts, drunk driving, organic foods,  automobile fuel efficiency and non-smoking zones come to mind. 

Not all change is good but change will change.  Striking a balance between “coddled and spoiled” and “assertive and confident” is always fascinating to watch.