Canada – Page 89 – a sibilant intake of breath

Something that caught my interest

I learned something new about my student loans today: while I knew there was a ‘grace period’ of six months between finishing school and starting repayment, I did not realize that you got charged interest over the course of it. On the first day of the seventh month, you need to either pay the interest for both your federal and provincial loans (about $500 on every $10,000 of loans) or have that interest added to the principal, increasing each of your subsequent monthly payments.

In any particular month between then and when your loans are fully paid, you cannot pay less than 1/120th of the total amount you owe. This is to ensure that full repayment takes place within ten years of the first payment. Both the federal government and the government of B.C. offer you the choice between a fixed interest rate (prime plus 5%, based on the rates at the time of your first payment) or a floating rate of prime plus 2.5%.

I guess I know what I will be doing with that ‘extra’ paycheque.

Refraction and arctic solar canines

Both for work and my own interest, I am reading Richard Alley’s The Two Mile Time Machine, as recommended back in Oxford by Henry Shue. A relatively informal history of ice core science, it also includes some interesting facts and observations about the polar regions. For instance, I learned about the phenomenon of sun dogs or parhelions.

In the Arctic, ice crystals in cirrus and cirrostratus clouds sometimes produce a refractive effect, framing the sun with a pair of luminous partners. It gladdens me somewhat to know that the Arctic summer has at least one visual effect to compensate for the drowning out of the Northern Lights by constant sunlight. I once had the good fortune Aurora Borealis myself – from Neal’s balcony in the Gage Towers during a period of exceptional ionic activity in the upper atmosphere. Perhaps I will be lucky enough to see a sun dog before the Arctic changes beyond all recognition.

Consequentialism and ‘public service’ ethics

I spent the last two days at a mandatory orientation to the public service. The bits about the structure of government (role of the PCO and Treasury Board, for instance) were quite useful. The bits of values and ethics much less so, largely because of how artificially precise they try to make it. For instance, they define four ‘families’ of personal values. These map one-to-one to four ‘public service’ values. It is not clear that the four sets are well defined, nor that the mapping is as clear or automatic as is posited.

The fourth ‘family’ is especially odd. It basically centres around the rejection of the phrase ‘the end justifies the means.’ What they mean by this, essentially, is not to circumvent procedures that exist for good reasons to achieve some narrow objective. What seems foolish about it is the fact that the ethical yardstick remains the ends. It is inappropriate to fast-track an excellent seeming job candidate past normal checks because of the risk that your intuition is wrong, and the possibility doing so will undermine the system. Both objections are ultimately based on a comparison between two sets of means (sloppy and rigorous) and two sets of outcomes. It is also quite plausible that situations exist where rejecting the normal procedure is the best ethical option: if you have a frigate with broken engines being fired upon, it makes sense to be more slipshod than usual in the quality of your repairs.Of course, there are also lots of situations where following protocol rigidly even when under fire (literally or metaphorically) produces your best chances of success.

As such, it as fairer to say that ‘the set of all ends justifies the means.’ There are lots of good arguments for rules (they are efficient, clear, and transparent) but the reason these properties are desirable is because of the ends they eventually produce.

The monthly and the bi-weekly

Every second Wednesday, I expect Ottawa experiences a marked uptick in consumer spending as all the civil servants get paid simultaneously. This may prove especially true next month, due to a quirk in financial timetables. Since paycheques are issued every two weeks, there are always at least two in a month. Twice a year, however, there will be a month where people get three paycheques. Most people, I expect, deal primarily with expenses that run month to month: rent, credit card bills, and the like. As such, that third paycheque seems like a kind of windfall.

Thought of in this way, the question that comes to mind is how to deal with the ‘surplus.’ The most conservative option would be to put it toward my student loan payments. An alternative is to put it into general savings, as a hedge against future financial needs. A final and more appealing option would be to spend it on a big purchase. My iBook is suffering more and more acutely with the pasage of time. Despite the upgrade to 1.25 GB of RAM, it now takes more than 20 minutes to boot up (I never shut it down, if I can avoid it). It also has trouble accessing the web, playing music, and keeping track of email at the same time. A new MacBook might be an excellent way to help ease myself into Ottawa’s winter chill…

Dr. Strangelove in a nuclear bunker

After today’s orientation, I went with some friends to see Dr. Strangelove in the Diefenbunker – the infamous Canadian nuclear shelter, built to protect top Canadian military and civilian leadership in the event of nuclear war. Diefenbunker is actually a general term for shelters of the type: the one near Ottawa is called CFS Carp. Apparently, there is also one in Nanaimo, B.C. One odd thing is that the shelter has a multi-room suite for the Governor General. Presumably, Canada would not have much need for a local representative of the Queen, after the actual Queen’s entire realm is reduced to a burnt, radioactive plain.

Tonight’s film was followed up by Pho with three fellow employees of the federal government. It was all a distinct social step forward, and Ashley Thorvaldson deserves credit for organizing the expedition.

You can read about the Cold War movies events on the website of the Diefenbunker Museum.

Candidate bicycle located

I found a possible bike this evening: a Trek 7.3 FX hybrid. Originally $619.99, it is on sale for $439.99. I would probably have bought it tonight if there had been time to test it out before the shop closed. As it is, I will have some time to research it before I go give it a test ride on Thursday (mandatory orientations are happening for me tomorrow and Wednesday, on the opposite side of town).

The bike has Shimano Deore components, which the salesman tells me are the 6th of eight levels of quality sold on hybrids. It is quite light and seems well constructed. The place promises free repairs and tune-ups for a year, as well as an unspecified discount on a helmet, lock, and pump.

This is the last one available with a 20″ frame, which I am told would suit me better than the 22″. Hopefully, nobody will snap it up before me.

Oryx and Crake

Margaret Atwood‘s novel, which was short-listed for the Booker Prize, portrays a future characterized by the massive expansion of human capabilities in genetic engineering and biotechnology. As such, it bears some resemblance to Neal Stephenson‘s The Diamond Age, which ponders what massive advances in material science could do, and posits similar stratification by class. Of course, biotechnology is an area more likely to raise ethical hackles and engage with the intuitions people have about what constitutes the ethical use of science.

Atwood does her best to provoke many such thoughts: bringing up food ethics, that of corporations, reproductive ethics, and survivor ethics (the last time period depicted is essentially post-apocalyptic). The degree to which this is brought about by a combination of simple greed, logic limited by one’s own circumstances, and unintended consequences certainly has a plausible feel to it.

The book is well constructed and compelling, obviously the work of someone who is an experienced storyteller. From a technical angle, it is also more plausible than most science fiction. It is difficult to identify any element that is highly likely to be impossible for humanity to ever do, if desired. That, of course, contributes to the chilling effect, as the consequences for some such actions unfold.

All in all, I don’t think the book has a straightforwardly anti-technological bent. It is more a cautionary tale about what can occur in the absence of moral consideration and concomitant regulation. Given how the regulation of biotechnology is such a contemporary issue (stem cells, hybrid embryos, genetic discrimination, etc), Atwood has written something that speaks to some of the more important ethical discussions occurring today.

I recommend the book without reservation, with the warning that readers may find themselves disturbed by how possible it all seems.

Two months in Ottawa

Today, it seems like a good idea to provide a brief personal update, rather than a few hundred substantive words on a random topic. Life at the moment is quite heavily dominated by work – which is proving to be interesting, as well as important. I have finished one big project already, and have moved on to a collection of smaller things. At the moment, I am digging out my hazy recollections of parabolic functions and calculus. My co-workers are engaging and helpful and, while I remain largely ignorant about the mechanisms by which this organization functions, much of what I studied as an undergrad and master’s student is directly applicable to the work we do. There seems to be a reasonable chance of converting my one year contract into an indefinite position, on the basis of a competition taking place during the next few months.

My level of integration into Ottawa life is roughly where it was a month ago, though I will hopefully be getting a bike on Saturday and I have joined the Ottawa Hostel Outdoor Club. Once my membership materials arrive, I am hoping to start doing some weekend hikes with them, with the possibility of cross country skiing later in the year. Having met so few friends here thusfar is frustrating, though it has been as much a product of my time usage as anything else. Until I have a reasonable circle of Ottawa friends who I didn’t know before coming here, I don’t think I will really feel like I live in this city.

In mid-October, it seems as though Tristan and Meaghan will be coming to visit me, which should be excellent. Having Emily here back in August was amazing. At the end of the October, I am going to a conference in Montreal, then staying for the weekend. For Christmas, I hope I will get the chance to spend a reasonable amount of time in Vancouver. It seems unlikely that any substantial quantity of work is going to be ongoing at that time, anyhow.

Sexual politics and the HPV vaccine

It says a lot about our society that the development of a vaccine for Human Papillomavirus has been greeted with controversy rather than appreciation. It is absurd that a treatment that has been shown to be effective in the prevention of cervical cancer is being interfered with out of misguided concerns that it will increase the incidence of teenage sex. It seems unlikely that many young woman make their decision about whether or not to engage in sexual activity with the possibility of HPV-induced cervical cancer as a major consideration. (If they do, there are plenty of other STIs to give them pause.) Even if it could be documented that a vaccination program would increase teenage sexual activity to some appreciable degree, a very strong argument can be made that preventing the pain and death associated with cervical cancer is an outcome of sufficient importance to justify the choice to vaccinate. Furthermore, the overall response smacks of sexual double standards. If this were a vaccine that had a strong preventative capacity for both men and women, it seems unlikely that there would be so much furore about its administration.

The tactic of trying to alter the decision-making of teenagers through the reduced availability of life-saving medicines is hardly a behaviour that should be promoted or tolerated. The Globe and Mail gets it essentially right in a recent article, arguing that the purpose of a public health system is: “seizing opportunities to avoid needless death, to improve quality of life when we can and to extend it wherever and whenever we can.” Hopefully, the political opposition surrounding HPV vaccination will be overcome, and the procedure will become as routine as vaccination against Measles or Hepatitis B (itself largely transmitted through unprotected sex).

Immersed in a foreign election

Today, mixed in among the advertisements and angry letters to people who used to live in my flat, I got a bunch of documentation about the upcoming election. I think that I am technically permitted to vote in Ottawa, both in the provincial election and on the related referendum. I think I live in the Ottawa Centre provincial riding, where the incumbent is not running for re-election. That said, I know virtually nothing about Ontario provincial politics and it is a toss-up whether I will be here for the bulk of the time for which the next government will be in office.

For reasons of semi-transience and ignorance, it seems best to abstain.