Nothing in Particular

Not sure what I'm going to write about this time....

I'm attending a class at BCIT at the moment on Effective Public Speaking. People at work were surprised that I thought it necessary but I guess I was comparing myself, unfairly, to the best of the best at Honeywell and coming off a poor second best. Compared to the general public who are not used to presenting in a public forum and the kids on the course, I'm not doing to badly at all and enjoying it.

We have to give a number of presentations throughout the 12 week process and one of the group has spoken about her diagnosis of bone cancer that eventually lead to the amputation of one of her legs. This happened to her at the age of 18 but she seems to be coping really well with it, both physically (you'd never know that one of her legs was a prosthetic) and emotionally.

Anyway, it inspired me to talk about my epilepsy last week which necessitated me to do a little research on the world wide interweb. It would appear that of the 40 million suffers in the world, 32 million have no access to treatment either due to poverty and geography or the fact that they live in a country that still believes that epileptics are possessed by demons. actually, due to the side effects of these meds, I tend to agree with them, but that's another story. I read that the first evidence of seizures can be found in Babylonian tablet in the British Museum. These will be around 4000 years old and they apparently talk about demonic possession. It took another nearly 2000 years before a Greek physician, Hippocrates, figured out that there was a neurological connection to the seizures rather than a spiritual issue but it took the medical profession until the 19th century to formally recognize this and start treating patients with the care and respect that they needed. This, and the fact that witnessing someone having a seizure is a pretty freaky thing to go through, meant that the condition had a huge stigma attached to it and still does in the developing world, hence the lack of treatment in those parts of the world.

However, as I've said before, if not being able to drink beer and feeling a bit shitty is the worst I have to cope with, I'm not doing too badly.

I downloaded a Pixies concert this week. They are touring in celebration of the 20th anniversary of their 3rd album, Doolittle and some of their European concerts have been released for download at 10 pounds. I also bought the remaining Beatles albums on CD so now have the complete set although not all in the new format. I still don't like the new format...it's cheap and nasty looking.

We're off to see U2 with the kids this week. Should be fun. It will be Evie's first concert so it will be interesting to see what she thinks of it.

Green Ideas

I attended BC Hydro's Power Smart Forum this week to network with customers and learn a bit about environmental initiatives. For the uninitiated, BC Hydro is British Columbia's power generator and they have a department called Power Smart who provide funding and general advice for customers to help them complete energy retrofit projects to their buildings so that they become more efficient consumers of electricity. The over-riding reason BC Hydro want to do this is so that the use of their electrical output is minimized and they have sufficient surplus to sell to California, where electricity is consumed with a voracious appetite for lighting and air conditioning. They also want to control their output to prevent having to build new dams and destroying more ecosystems in the northern part of BC.

The vast majority of the electricity in BC is generated via hydro dams and are therefore very low carbon emitters, although not carbon neutral, but we do import electricity from places like Alberta where they generate electricity by burning coal so we are not entirely environmentally friendly here on the Pacific west coast.

The conference, though, included some key-note speakers, workshops and discussion sessions that covered all sorts of environmental issues in support of the Power Smart drive.

The best speaker was Andrew Winston who is a "globally recognized expert and speaker on green business" and had a very engaging presentation offering corporations some advice on how to reduce energy consumption. He introduced the fact that China is busy constructing the equivalent of 30 Manhattans in China every year and to support this, half the world's cranes are in China right now. China's recession was 7% growth and I attended a talk on the North American economy on the final day and 7% growth is not a recession to anyone, but in these recent economic times, if 7% growth represents a recession in China then you can imagine what their growth figures were prior to the global financial meltdown.

He also spoke of what Wal-Mart are doing with their suppliers. They asked the top 100 suppliers to an event in Brasil last year and 3 days prior, sent them all an agreement that they were being asked to sign live at the event, but sent it in Portuguese. The agreement forced the suppliers to agree to provide their goods in an environmental and sustainable way. This included an agreement not to purchase beef from any land reclaimed from the Amazon (the rain forest area in South American as opposed to the web-based book store), so Andrew's argument was that countries around the world had been trying to stop the rapid decimation of the rain forests in the Amazon for 30 years and Wal Mart have managed it...Wal Mart, that evil corporation that apparently treats their employees badly, pays them very little and their rapid expansion round the world has meant the end of small local retail outlets everywhere.

He also suggested that a recent poll of MBA graduates would be willing to accept a lower salary if the company offering it can demonstrate their green credentials over other corporations. This mirrors what we have been hearing from the States where under-graduates are increasingly choosing universities for their green credentials. Frankly I don't believe a word of that. Whilst it may help them make the decision if they are stuck between two institutions, the main reasons they base their choice on, I suspect, are the course they want to study, the success and quality of the university and how much they can afford.

He gave a couple of examples of initiatives that large companies have tried in an attempt to reduce energy consumption.

Conway made their truck drivers to reduce their speed from 65 mph to 62 mph and they saved $10M, but the best story he told was the distribution company UPS who stopped their vehicles turn left. Turning left in countries where we drive n the right hand side of the road means lots of idling while they wait for the on-coming traffic to pass and increases the chance of accidents. So through this initiative that they drove with the use of GPS they saved 28,500,00 miles of travel and 3,000,000 gallons of fuel.

His strongest message, however, was his recommendation that we greatly reduce our consumption of beef. This industry is responsible for the decimation of the Amazon forests and other agricultural areas around the world, the processing of the meat is energy intensive and then you have to distribute the products all over the world.

Food for thought....

I'm a 606 Commenter

I've just left my first comment on the BBC's 606 website. If this thing works the way I think it will, here's the link...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/606/F14978413?thread=6985364&skip=50&show=50

I'm NorthVancouverJambo. I feel so empowered.

The comments were in relation to an interview that the Celtic bigwig made to the BBC in which he...yawn...talked about his wish for the Old Firm to move to England. I'm so bored.

To iPod or not iPod

I've been listening to music on Josh's iPod a lot recently. Ordinarily I would get my melodic fix while driving to and from work (and anywhere else for that matter) in the car but due to the fact that I can't drive until December, at the very least, I can't really listen to it there so I've had to rely on the iPod. Josh's is the Classic that has an 80GB memory and despite having 309 albums on it and a collection of digital photographs, still has over 56GB of capacity left. When we eventually get our stuff, even if I add all our other CDs on (over 400 more), it still won't be full and I'd be concerned that the iMac will start to run slower, but I'm not sure. Any ideas?

Evie and Tracey have a Nano each but rarely use them.

Anyway, my question is, do I need an iPod and if so, what type do I get? A Shuffle is way too small and the Classic is way too big from my recent experience. The new Nano has a camera and a decent capacity but the one that is grabbing my attention is the iTouch, but only because it has the ability to play games on it. Other than that I don't see the benefit. I already have a Blackberry for work so don't need another box that does stuff on the internet or store personal records.

This is, of course, all academic because I won't be allowed one anyway.