Think Rich

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About two weeks ago, Bill Gates announced a long-term gift for funding childhood vaccines. Some people make headlines giving a hundred thousand dollars– a considerable sum– or on rare occasions by presenting a full million dollars. Far more impressive, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation gave what might be the largest philanthropic donation in history: ten billion.

That’s hard for us to comprehend. Even in digits, it staggers the mind: $10,000,000,000.00 (I added the cents, though somewhat meaningless at those rarified levels of finance). This will be over the next decade, and follows on the $4.5 billion they have already given over past years.

How much money do the Gates have? No one really knows, probably not even Bill. Probably enough to get a better haircut than he usually sports, but that’s not our focus. You and I might quickly calculate our “net worth” (or net debt) by adding what we currently have in the bank (including overdraft), adding on the value of a house, a car or two, subtracting off what we owe and hoping for a plus at the end of it. It gets a bit more complex at the Gates level. It would take a team of accountants a month to add and subtract what they are invested in, and the best they could do would be arrive at a moving figure that would be changing by the market minute. Someone once said Bill earned $800 a minute– I don’t know. I’ll call and ask.
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Crisis Response

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The earthquake crisis in Haiti shocks us with every news report. Tens of thousands are dead at this point, and even more tragic is that thousands more may be living, buried under fallen buildings, not to be rescued in time.

The attempts at rescue and relief are impressive, though hampered still by trying to get operational in an area in full devastation from the quake.

Indications from Canadian relief agencies show Canadian giving for Haiti is breaking all records, though this will all be needed and more before the situation is stable. Haiti is on everyone’s mind—at the Golden Globes awards last night most participants were wearing ribbons as symbols of concern for the crisis, and a telethon hosted by George Clooney was announced for Friday evening. Earlier that day, four of the best tennis players in the world hosted a charity match with proceeds for Haiti. Fund-raising ideas like this are being implemented by people as diverse as media superstars and neighbourhood priests.

Something struck me as the first news of the quake and the tragic loss of life was announced. Early reports listed immediate action by some nations: United States, Canada, Britain, the European nations.

“That list sounds familiar”, I thought. There is a common thread there. Continue reading →

Charlie’s Line

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Many years ago, I had a senior high math teacher named Charlie Read: a very capable teacher, highly respected. He made math interesting enough that I made an 85 in Geometry, with very little effort. That was convenient, since very little effort was what I gave studies at that time, and most of my other subjects showed it.

Charlie started some geometry courses with flair: he would stand at the back of the classroom and without warning fire a piece of chalk at the blackboard, hitting it with a snap that made students jump, leaving a single yellow mark on the board.

Striding up the aisle to the board, he would bellow, “Take a point!” He would go from there with the basics of geometry: you have a point in space. String points together, an infinite amount of them, and you have a line. With lines, you form shapes: triangles, squares, and more.
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Policing the Police

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The findings of a report released last week into the tragic Taser-related death of Robert Dziekanski in the Vancouver Airport didn’t surprise me. Most of us had seen the video taken by a bystander, and could appreciate that the response of the RCMP Officers on the scene was inappropriate. Perhaps more significantly, we were aware that their inquiry testimony about the event differed strongly from the facts in the video.

One news commentator indicated that as far as public support, the RCMP has been “bleeding” badly over the last few years. It’s unfortunate that the force, long an iconic symbol of Canada, peaks in its support by Canadians only when some of the members are killed. “Inappropriate response” was a common phrase in the report on the Dziekanski incident, and that labels most difficulties the RCMP has gotten into over the last decade.
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Waiting for the Big One

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We seem to be a flawed people. Call it Original Sin, genetic disposition, poor herd instincts—whatever—but we have a darker side that from time to time just flashes at us, from time to time explodes. We see the worst of it in examples like Nazi Germany, in Rwanda, in Kosovo. We see the little flashes in our herd reaction to things like the current H1N1 “crisis”, when thousands of people seem on the verge of losing their grip. You start to see that, while many people do behave rationally, as a herd there seems to be a fine line separating us from lynch mobs and swarmings.

Part of the trouble is that we like it. No doubt, our great successes are too few; the causes for celebrations are too few. We get a glimpse of what we could be with the pleasure and excitement of the Torch Relay crowds, but even that we smear with allegations (or probabilities?) of political interference and manipulation. The dark side seems always there.

If our loves go well, we seem content to keep it to ourselves. If things go wrong, we want to sing it, wail it, publish it. It’s not just confined to country music that most songs are of love lost, though that field does go to excess (“What do you get when you play a country record backwards? You get your woman back, your dog back, and your truck back!).
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Hysteria?

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The hysteria is even getting to me. I came at this article with half a notion of revising my position on the H1N1 Swine flu, and probably urging all of you to stampede your way to the nearest vaccination center, shove a few hundred people aside, and demand to be immediately jabbed.

So… I did a little research. While it doesn’t seem to be human nature to let facts get in the way of “feelings”, I like to back up my all too ready opinions with at least some foundation.

We’re going nuts. The last couple of days saw hundreds of clinics open across the country to provide vaccinations. A couple of months ago, surveys indicated that a great many Canadians were less than excited about getting vaccinated for H1N1, in fact it was of great concern to health officials that interest in the shots by the general public didn’t mirror their hopes for coverage. That seems to have changed– no doubt due to the media attention, and the accidental or intended messages that health officials have been sending.
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