The Power of Incentives

Did I mention that 4 out of 6 of my professors this semester are economists? Well if you've ever been in an econ class for more than 20 minutes, you've probably heard an economist talking about the power of incentives. And he/she has probably used the example of seat belts in cars. Since the government mandated the installation and use of seat belts, the rates of accidents has gone up (though the number of fatalities from automobile accidents has gone down). The idea is that because drivers know they are less likely to die in an accident, they drive more recklessly. (Unfortunately this has consequences for the pedestrian who is not made safer by the seat belts, but is made less safe by the reckless driving). In any case, I was doing some readings for class last night and came across this. Enjoy.

"If you find it hard to believe that people drive less carefully when their cars are safer, consider the proposition that people drive more carefully when their cars are more dangerous ... If the seat belts were removed from your car, wouldn't you be more cautious in driving? Carrying this observation to the extreme, Armen Alchian of the University of California at Los Angeles has suggested a way to bring about a major reduction in the accident rate: Require every car to have a spear mounted on the steering wheel, pointing directly at the driver's heart."

Foreign Aid Rant

Hmm I'm starting to see a trend with the rants. I'm really not an angry person...generally.

Last week I took a Social Work class, Social Policy. It was class 9-4 for 5 days. It was pretty intense and I'm glad it's over now (well the class hours anyway). It covered a VERY broad range of social policy topics - both international and domestic. Anyway, let's skip to the exciting part. The last day of class (which was Saturday-yech) we had group presentations about a topic of choice. The first group presented on foreign aid, and used the example of Haiti. Blah blah blah skip to the end of their presentation. A girl in the class raises her hand and asks, after the group's research, what, in their opinion is the best thing to do when you want to help. A group member jumps in and says (almost word for word) "The best thing you can do is get on a plane and go there and help." At this point my head almost burst. I was so outraged by this idiotic belief that it still makes my blood boil to think about it. Thus the rant. Unless you have a very specific skill which is in high demand, STAY PUT and DONATE. Even if you are a physician, an engineer, or another highly-trained skilled worker, you should probably only go in an acute crisis type of situation. Unless you have (or plan to build) a relationship with a specific place, stay of of what the aid-community appropriately calls aid-tourism. They have doctors and engineers and translators in these poor countries. Going in for a few weeks and then leaving won't help much. The money you spent on your plane ticket could be much better utilized by groups/people that are already on the ground.

The worst part of what she said was in response to my "I completely disagree 100%" was "I had a friend who went down to Haiti after the earthquake and she brushed people's teeth. They just needed hands to help out." Say whaaaaaat? Do people not have hands there? When I went to Haiti (for pure tourism, which they frankly need more of to pump money into their economy) everyone I saw had hands. I mean, there were definitely some new amputees post-earthquake, but really? She brushed people's teeth? That is just insulting. Do you really think people there are so stupid and incapable that they need you to go and brush their teeth?

We read Poor Economics for our class. It was a really interesting book (it was published earlier this year) and I really enjoyed it. My one complaint about it was that it tried the whole book to describe and define poor people. As if they are a different species. This student's view of emergency aid was right up the same alley.

I could go on, but my anger management coach is telling me to cool it.

Pyramid Scheme Rant

Alright, let's just put it out there. I HATE pyramid schemes! Here are my reasons why:

1. Often the products involved are not the best - otherwise why wouldn't they just follow the normal route of being sold in major stores? Hmmm??

2. I HATE these pyramid scheme parties. It's not a party. Let's just call it what it is. You're trying to get me to buy something so you can make a buck. Under the guise of being my friend. What a load. If I want to buy something, I will hop in my car, drive to the store (yes this is life in Calgary) and BUY it. Without the jacked up price of paying a toll to all the people that came before you in the scheme.

3. The focus of any pyramid scheme, and the thing that draws suckers in is money. Like that is the only benefit you gain from joining up. In my opinion, if all your 'job' (if you can even call it that with these things) can give you is money, you're missing the point of life.

4. They are all 'get rich quick' schemes where hard work is not only not valued, it is actually laughed at and looked down upon.

This leads me to say, what is WRONG with the world?!

And that's my rant for the day. I may have to continue it tomorrow...

Back in Black

..or should I say Calgary. I just thought the 'back in black' line was catchy. We arrived back in Calgary 1 week ago. Or I should say, we should have arrived a week ago. Instead we arrived about 7 hours shy of a week ago. After a VERY long day in transit which involved dropping off a playpen during an expensive cab ride (one of Dave's pet peeves), delayed flights, missed connections [Craigslist anyone?], meeting up with friends in the T. (read T-dot) and getting home too late to get any food at the grocery store, we finally arrived HOME! Which inspired me to write a '101 reasons I'm glad we're home'. I'm not sure if I'll actually make it to 101, but I'll see how far I get. However, I was VERY sad to leave the east coast where I have lots of friends and family and so much to see and do.

In other news, our neighbors across the street, who were either running a brothel or a drug ring, have been evicted. It's much quieter around here these days. And lastly, for those who are interested to know, our Christmas tree is no longer in our neighbors' front yard. I have no idea how they got rid of it.

More to come on our recipe book and 101 list.

Recipe Book

T-4 weeks and I'll be in school. The week of August 15, I'll be in school from 8:30-4:30 the whole week. Same for the week of September 5. Did I mention Dave is starting clerkship in earnest August 1? It's hard for me to imagine how busy we are going to be this year. In an attempt to simplify one area of our lives (and to avoid either starvation or eating out all the time), we are making a 2-3 week dinner rotation. This way, there will be no 'what's for dinner?' dilemma. We've come up with a list of about 10 meals that will be in our rotation, and I'm in the process of compiling recipes and corresponding grocery lists. Stay tuned for those.

No More Dance Aerobics

So Thomas seems to be getting worse and worse when it comes to bedtime and sleeping. I'm sure we've probably done this to ourselves, but it has gotten to the point where you have to bounce him while walking around and patting his back, with his soother, sleep sheep, swaddled for like 45 mins before he will go to sleep. And that's after feeding him and bedtime stories. And I'm not doing it anymore. It's ridiculous. Does anyone have any wonderful suggestions of how to get him to go to sleep easier? He's 4 months old now and he still eats every 3 hours all night long - any suggestions on lengthening the time between feeds? Some people purport to have babies younger than him that sleep for upwards of 9 hours at a time. Are they lying? If they are actually being truthful, what is their secret? Is it too young for sleep training? We will be leaving in about a month and he's bound to be thrown off by all the travel and sleeping in new places, etc. Should I not even bother doing this right now?

How lucky am I?

Yesterday was our anniversary. Seems crazy that it's already been 3 years...until I was looking at our wedding photos and we look a lot younger! Anyway, Dave took me out for a delicious Indian feast. (Kim watched Thomas) Great food with terrible service...which is a lot better than great service with terrible food, which is more of the norm here in Calgary. We then watched 'The Social Network' - which we actually watched at Dave's parents' house since they have a big screen tv, the movie was free, and we got free snacks and babysitting service too. Oh and every movie in this city either starts in the hour of 7 or the hour of 10 - so not very convenient times.

Anyhow, Mark Zuckerberg is the same age as us and was a classmate of all the people from my class at Stuy who went to Harvard. And now he's a billionaire. The youngest person to become a billionaire. It's easy to think for a second, wait - what did I do wrong? But then I looked around me and thought, he doesn't have anything. And I wouldn't trade my boys for anything in the world. How lucky am I?

We're not in Kansas (or NY) anymore

Recent fb status update of a friend here in Calgary:

in great falls mt! shop til we drop time!

How sad is that? We live in a place that has worse shopping than Montana. Montana!

Living room update

I realized I haven't posted photos of our living room since it was far from done. So here's the update!

A close-up of the bench that Stew constructed. I did the seats. Lots and lots of storage for junk underneath. The only problem is that the window is really drafty, so it's quite cold on the bench.

Here you can see our refinished buffet. It was in its 'before' state in my last post about our house. Big transformation. And don't you like our floating shelf? You can see the doorway on the left leads to the kitchen and the one on the right leads to the rest of the house.


By the time I took these 5 photos, Thomas was screaming...

Best. Commercial. Ever.

For your enjoyment.

O Tannenbaum, O tannenbaum

We finally got our Christmas tree out of the house on Wednesday night. Thank goodness because it was really starting to feel cramped in our little living room....and because I think the thing was a fire hazard. When Dave took it out front, he said it weighed about 4lbs...and it was a 6' tree. Real dry. Anyway, I had heard on the news that in the month of January, you could put your tree out with your regular garbage and the city would pick it up. So we put it out Wednesday night so it would disappear with our garbage on Thursday morning.

Well lo and behold, we walk our of our house on Thursday morning to find an empty garbage can and our dried out Christmas tree, looking as trashy as ever in front of our house. I don't know why they didn't pick it up. Very annoying. So we figured we would have to harass Dave's dad to come by and pick it up in his pick-up (appropriately named) and take it to whereever you take dead Christmas trees (the dump?). BUT lo and behold, we walked out of our house today and the tree was gone! Yay! But where did it go, you ask? Well as I mentioned in the post below it is super windy today and was all night. But up and down the street I looked and no Christmas tree was to be seen. Oh well.

As we were driving out of our neighborhood, we spotted it, in the front yard our our neighbors about 6 houses down. Is it terrible that I laughed and left it there?

July

Well since I can't seem to find the video that I was trying to post with the last post (the upload didn't work for some reason..grr) and I was looking through memory cards from my camera, I figured I'd post about July, which I never did. Hey, I'm only 6 months late. Plus, on this cold dark wintry day with blowing snow and a expected windchill tonight of -29C, I can dream of warmer days...not that it was all too warm for most of the month.

So this was while Dave was in Haiti and I was 5 months pregnant. Jon, Meghan, and I went for a 'hike' in Nosehill park one Saturday when it was nice out. This park is right in the 'city' but you'd never know it from the photo above. Here's another one with me in my most athletic maternity gear...jeans and a tshirt! Can you tell I wasn't one for working out while pregnant...
Also notable in July was the Stampede - 'the greatest rodeo show on earth' or something like that. Too bad I didn't go to the rodeo or the show (it was 12C and blowing rain, so they cancelled the show we had tickets for - which I was very happy about actually because the thought of sitting outside in the cold rain for 3 hours in a coat that wouldn't do up over my belly was enough to make me cry.

However, Jon and Meghan and I went to the Stampede on another day (that day was about 14C and raining...). I had my first (and last) corn dog.
It was disgusting. We both threw them out shortly after this photo was taken. Why do people like those things?
Jon played a shooting game, but didn't win - though he got close. Meghan said he looked like a serial killer.
And I got my picture taken with a real RCMP - with my citizenship card! I'm a real Canadian now!
What a month!