TORONTO, ONTARIO - I am old enough to remember when ground beef was usually $0.99 a pound (and, growing up in the United States, it was per pound, not per kilogram). Even when I was in college, I would be upset if a pound of hamburger was more than about $1.29. In that world, less expensive fishes were still pretty expensive (at least five times the price of beef), and pork, turkey and chicken were somewhere in between, though usually closer to beef.
From that world, what I saw in the grocery store this week was utterly unrecognizable. I rarely purchase beef of any kind anymore, but had I wanted to, ground beef was going for $2.99 a pound. Sometimes low grades might be on sale for $2.49--but there's no way even that's consistent with inflation. Figuring 3% inflation for 20 years (which it hasn't been since the last time I paid a dollar a pound), ground beef should be more like $1.89.
Yet, steak, which I once considered to be extravagant at around five dollars a pound, hasn't gone up by a similar amount. This week, Loblaw's has AAA strip loin steak on sale for $5.99 a pound. That's still much more expensive than ground beef, but not so expensive when looks around the rest of the meat section.
For many years, I had substituted ground turkey for ground beef. These days, I practically might as well substitute steak. I could not find ground turkey of any grade for less than $4.99 a pound, and extra lean was $6.99 a pound. That's typical around here, and one of the reasons I now usually go with ground pork. Pork is the cheapest white meat. Ground pork often goes for $3.99 a pound, and pork chops usually sell for about the same price or a bit more.
Contrast that with chicken breasts. It is not uncommon for chicken and turkey breasts to go for as much as $9.99 a pound. This week, several stores have turkey breasts for $7.99 a pound and seem to think they are providing a real deal. Sometimes previously-frozen chicken breasts will go for $5.99 a pound, and when that rare event occurs, I stock up. Whole chicken or drumsticks will sometimes dip as low as $3.49 a pound but are usually $5.99 or more. As if those numbers aren't enough to make one's head spin, meats in my local store are usually marked only in kilograms, and the price per kilogram is approximately double the price per pound. One has to really pay attention to figure out what is actually a good deal.
Which brings things back to fish, which I prefer to eat once a week and was something I thought I might have to give up while unemployed. Well, apparently not in favor of chicken. For the past three weeks, either Atlantic salmon, trout, or catfish has been cheaper in price than chicken breasts at my favorite store. Last week, trout was going for $5.49 a pound. The clerk at the counter commented, "I don't think it's been that cheap, ever." My response was, "Not this decade, anyway" before I realized that she was younger than me, and quite possibly had never seen it this cheap. It proved to be quite tasty and have excellent texture, so I was an extremely happy camper.
Just about every week, there's some kind of fresh seafood that I like for under $9.99 a pound, often significantly less. As long as that continues to hold true, I'm not likely to increase the amount of chicken or turkey in my diet--and as long as it stays the cheapest white meat, pork will be the staple meat in my freezer and refrigerator on the five days a week that I'm not eating seafood.
The whole thing definitely makes me understand the economic appeal of vegetarianism, to say nothing of the health and environment appeals.
Friday, March 6, 2009
Thursday, March 5, 2009
Media: The First Crack in the PPM
TORONTO, ONTARIO - In an earlier post, a promise was made to monitor the performance of Arbitron's new Portable People Meter (PPM) in rating radio stations across the continent. The PPM, a device to be worn by the people in the listener sample that "hears" what radio station is playing in their environment, is replacing the old practice of having people fill out diaries of what they have listened to over the course of a day.
The first really interesting quirk appears to have been identified by attentive broadcast professionals. As reported on a variety of USENET newsgroups (yes, those pre-World Wide Web things still exist, and not just on Google groups!), an interesting set of data has been published with overnight results from the San Francisco market, which has been converted from diaries to the PPM.
The data shows that, in January 2009, KUIC 95.3 FM has the largest average number of listeners in the Bay Area from midnight to 5 AM at 4,000 people, 11.4% of the total audience (which says something about the estimated number of people listening to the radio overnight around San Francisco). According to Arbitron, KUIC attracts a higher average audience with its adult contemporary format (which we used to call "light rock") than the traditional market leader, KGO Newstalk 810 AM, which provides a local talk show throughout this time period, and KCBS All-News 740 AM and 106.9 FM, which provides live, local news throughout the night.
What's wrong with this picture? I lived within 35 miles of San Francisco for four years and I never listened to 95.3 FM. It wasn't because I disliked the station--it was because I couldn't receive KUIC in Palo Alto. KUIC is licensed to Vacaville, California, has a transmitter located to the northwest of that city, and puts a better signal into Sacramento than San Francisco, where it has only fringe coverage. The station web site makes it clear that it is focused on serving Solano County, something it likely does very well. However, Solano County has just under 400,000 residents--about half that of the city of San Francisco alone.
In the overall ratings for the San Francisco market in February 2009, KUIC placed 26th, with about one-quarter the audience of market-leading KCBS (which, by the way, is pretty impressive for a station aimed at Solano County). While ratings can vary by time slot, there is no way that more people are actually listening to KUIC overnight than KOIT-FM, a San Francisco station with a similar format that puts a signal over many more people, which shows as having about one-third of KUIC's audience. This is clearly a sampling error.
Furthermore, the cumulative statistics in the very same survey seem to show more normal results. KCBS leads the way with nearly 83,000 different people tuning in overnight at some point, followed by Spanish-language KRZZ at about 55,000, KGO at about 43,000, public radio KQED at about 41,000, and KOIT at over 37,000. KUIC is well down the list at 11,700. How can that be? It implies that a good portion of people are spending a much longer time listening to KUIC than any other radio station. Statistically, there's no other way to explain this than the sample size in the overnight period is way too small, and one or two security guards that happen to be tuned in to KUIC all night (or have their dogs wear the PPM and leave their radio on KUIC while they're asleep, or some such anomaly) are skewing the results.
Some would find this quirk to be absolutely unremarkable. The overnight figures are not terribly important to any radio station, and they would say that critics of the PPM must be digging pretty deeply to come up with this example. It may indeed be a very unimportant quirk. However, it may demonstrate that the small sample sizes that come with the PPM will prove a problem in developing meaningful results in other time slots, even when a few more PPM's are hearing radio stations--especially in markets much smaller than San Francisco.
I would say the jury is still out on the PPM, but there is reason to be a bit cautious in evaluating its data.
The first really interesting quirk appears to have been identified by attentive broadcast professionals. As reported on a variety of USENET newsgroups (yes, those pre-World Wide Web things still exist, and not just on Google groups!), an interesting set of data has been published with overnight results from the San Francisco market, which has been converted from diaries to the PPM.
The data shows that, in January 2009, KUIC 95.3 FM has the largest average number of listeners in the Bay Area from midnight to 5 AM at 4,000 people, 11.4% of the total audience (which says something about the estimated number of people listening to the radio overnight around San Francisco). According to Arbitron, KUIC attracts a higher average audience with its adult contemporary format (which we used to call "light rock") than the traditional market leader, KGO Newstalk 810 AM, which provides a local talk show throughout this time period, and KCBS All-News 740 AM and 106.9 FM, which provides live, local news throughout the night.
What's wrong with this picture? I lived within 35 miles of San Francisco for four years and I never listened to 95.3 FM. It wasn't because I disliked the station--it was because I couldn't receive KUIC in Palo Alto. KUIC is licensed to Vacaville, California, has a transmitter located to the northwest of that city, and puts a better signal into Sacramento than San Francisco, where it has only fringe coverage. The station web site makes it clear that it is focused on serving Solano County, something it likely does very well. However, Solano County has just under 400,000 residents--about half that of the city of San Francisco alone.
In the overall ratings for the San Francisco market in February 2009, KUIC placed 26th, with about one-quarter the audience of market-leading KCBS (which, by the way, is pretty impressive for a station aimed at Solano County). While ratings can vary by time slot, there is no way that more people are actually listening to KUIC overnight than KOIT-FM, a San Francisco station with a similar format that puts a signal over many more people, which shows as having about one-third of KUIC's audience. This is clearly a sampling error.
Furthermore, the cumulative statistics in the very same survey seem to show more normal results. KCBS leads the way with nearly 83,000 different people tuning in overnight at some point, followed by Spanish-language KRZZ at about 55,000, KGO at about 43,000, public radio KQED at about 41,000, and KOIT at over 37,000. KUIC is well down the list at 11,700. How can that be? It implies that a good portion of people are spending a much longer time listening to KUIC than any other radio station. Statistically, there's no other way to explain this than the sample size in the overnight period is way too small, and one or two security guards that happen to be tuned in to KUIC all night (or have their dogs wear the PPM and leave their radio on KUIC while they're asleep, or some such anomaly) are skewing the results.
Some would find this quirk to be absolutely unremarkable. The overnight figures are not terribly important to any radio station, and they would say that critics of the PPM must be digging pretty deeply to come up with this example. It may indeed be a very unimportant quirk. However, it may demonstrate that the small sample sizes that come with the PPM will prove a problem in developing meaningful results in other time slots, even when a few more PPM's are hearing radio stations--especially in markets much smaller than San Francisco.
I would say the jury is still out on the PPM, but there is reason to be a bit cautious in evaluating its data.
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
Environment: CFL's Not Panacea
TORONTO, ONTARIO - An interesting report aired tonight on CBC Television's "The National" from correspondent Reg Sherren. Sherren cited research at the University of Manitoba that indicates that the purported energy savings from compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFL's) are not actually 75% in northern climates. Instead, they may be as little as 17%.
How can that be? Regular incandescent light bulbs are less efficient in large part because much of the energy that they consume does not turn into light. Instead, much of it is converted into heat. In the winter when the heat is on, this is actually a good thing--adding heat to the room, if not terribly efficiently, and thus decreasing the load on the furnace, space heater, or other heating mechanism. In the summer, it's a terrible thing, as the additional heat adds to the load placed on air conditioning units. Sherren even noted a BC Hydro study that showed that CFL's may actually add to greenhouse gas emissions in British Columbia, since while electrical use will decrease, the resulting increase in the use of fossil fuels for heating would actually cause more greenhouse gases to be emitted.
While I will give the CBC and Sherren some credit for trying to be balanced in this report (they didn't say NOT to buy CFL's, for example), this kind of reporting seems to miss the big picture it claims to pursue on several points.
First of all, CFL's last longer than incandescent bulbs, so there is a net positive to the environment right there from decreased waste and resource consumption. Second of all, even if there is only a 17% reduction in overall energy consumption instead of the 75% advertised in Winnipeg, that's still a 17% reduction. How can a 17% reduction not be a net positive? If the BC Hydro study is accurate, that's a call for retrofitting houses with better insulation and more efficient furnaces that operate on cleaner fuels, not an argument to stick with inefficient light bulbs.
Of course, if one lives in Phoenix, Arizona then all of this discussion is academic--there's no question that compact fluorescent light bulbs will offer something close to their advertised advantages. It's only in northern climates where the contribution of incandescent bulbs to heating is significant that the effects the CBC has reported on matter at all.
There's nothing wrong with revealing that the marketing on a product, including CFL's, is misleading. However, reporters have a responsibility not to similarly over-sensationalize the reality. This report probably didn't quite cross the line, but if anyone walked away from it wondering if they should be installing CFL's in Toronto, where air conditioners run in the summer, let me make it clear: Of course you should buy CFL's.
How can that be? Regular incandescent light bulbs are less efficient in large part because much of the energy that they consume does not turn into light. Instead, much of it is converted into heat. In the winter when the heat is on, this is actually a good thing--adding heat to the room, if not terribly efficiently, and thus decreasing the load on the furnace, space heater, or other heating mechanism. In the summer, it's a terrible thing, as the additional heat adds to the load placed on air conditioning units. Sherren even noted a BC Hydro study that showed that CFL's may actually add to greenhouse gas emissions in British Columbia, since while electrical use will decrease, the resulting increase in the use of fossil fuels for heating would actually cause more greenhouse gases to be emitted.
While I will give the CBC and Sherren some credit for trying to be balanced in this report (they didn't say NOT to buy CFL's, for example), this kind of reporting seems to miss the big picture it claims to pursue on several points.
First of all, CFL's last longer than incandescent bulbs, so there is a net positive to the environment right there from decreased waste and resource consumption. Second of all, even if there is only a 17% reduction in overall energy consumption instead of the 75% advertised in Winnipeg, that's still a 17% reduction. How can a 17% reduction not be a net positive? If the BC Hydro study is accurate, that's a call for retrofitting houses with better insulation and more efficient furnaces that operate on cleaner fuels, not an argument to stick with inefficient light bulbs.
Of course, if one lives in Phoenix, Arizona then all of this discussion is academic--there's no question that compact fluorescent light bulbs will offer something close to their advertised advantages. It's only in northern climates where the contribution of incandescent bulbs to heating is significant that the effects the CBC has reported on matter at all.
There's nothing wrong with revealing that the marketing on a product, including CFL's, is misleading. However, reporters have a responsibility not to similarly over-sensationalize the reality. This report probably didn't quite cross the line, but if anyone walked away from it wondering if they should be installing CFL's in Toronto, where air conditioners run in the summer, let me make it clear: Of course you should buy CFL's.
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Economics: Generalists in Gladwell's World
TORONTO, ONTARIO - I happened to catch a repeat of an interview with the author Malcolm Gladwell recently, talking about his book "Outliers". Amongst a variety of interesting theses in this book is the idea that about 10,000 hours of work is required for greatness in essentially any topic. Bill Gates may be an exceptional human being, but he spent 10,000 hours programming before Microsoft became a success. Michael Jordan may have been an extraordinary athlete, but he didn't win a NBA title until he had played basketball for 10,000 hours. As Gladwell has it, even Paul Harvey probably wasn't a great broadcaster until he had been on the air for 10,000 hours.
The 10,000 hours figure seems to ring true in academic circles. It amounts to something less than five years of full-time work, which is just about the time that is generally required to earn a PhD, the standard marker for becoming an expert in a field. Yet, not everyone with a PhD would claim greatness--the 10,000 hours seems to be a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for greatness.
At some level, that's comforting for those of us that really don't want to spend 10,000 hours on anything. Some of us know it would be downright unhealthy for us--focusing on the details of something for 10,000 hours could lead to serious mental issues that would at best be difficult to get beyond. If there's no guarantee of such a commitment leading to greatness anyway, then we have our excuse for not devoting such an extended effort on any one thing. The "generalist" might be the exact person who can't achieve greatness anyway.
So that leads to the age-old question--if only a small number have both the talent and the 10,000 hours to devote to becoming great, what becomes of the rest of us? That seems to be a function of the overall society. In a country with relatively even income distribution, then one might be within in a middle class and living an acceptable life. In a country with larger income inequality, then the non-great are more likely to end up poor no matter what they do, and might not have such a great existence.
Such a conclusion seems to mesh with Gladwell's perspective. In part of the rest of "Outliers," he points out ways in which chance and opportunity have more to do with creating the great amongst us than raw talent--things like sports players statistically being more likely to be born in certain times of the year, and people being the right age during transformations in the economy. This kind of argument tends to lend more sympathy to those of us that do not achieve greatness for whatever reason. Maybe we could have been contenders if we had just been born at a different time--and maybe those that do become great have a certain responsibility to the society that gave them the opportunities that they seized. What starts as a conservative argument about hard work morphs into a pretty liberal perspective.
In this era of pragmatic figures like Barack Obama, such perspectives with elements of conservatism and liberalism like Gladwell's may gain more traction. The truth often lies at the intersection of competing beliefs.
As for blogging, I guess I still have about 9,800 hours to go to achieve greatness, and I might get there in a quarter-century. Somehow I'm not expecting that to happen.
The 10,000 hours figure seems to ring true in academic circles. It amounts to something less than five years of full-time work, which is just about the time that is generally required to earn a PhD, the standard marker for becoming an expert in a field. Yet, not everyone with a PhD would claim greatness--the 10,000 hours seems to be a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for greatness.
At some level, that's comforting for those of us that really don't want to spend 10,000 hours on anything. Some of us know it would be downright unhealthy for us--focusing on the details of something for 10,000 hours could lead to serious mental issues that would at best be difficult to get beyond. If there's no guarantee of such a commitment leading to greatness anyway, then we have our excuse for not devoting such an extended effort on any one thing. The "generalist" might be the exact person who can't achieve greatness anyway.
So that leads to the age-old question--if only a small number have both the talent and the 10,000 hours to devote to becoming great, what becomes of the rest of us? That seems to be a function of the overall society. In a country with relatively even income distribution, then one might be within in a middle class and living an acceptable life. In a country with larger income inequality, then the non-great are more likely to end up poor no matter what they do, and might not have such a great existence.
Such a conclusion seems to mesh with Gladwell's perspective. In part of the rest of "Outliers," he points out ways in which chance and opportunity have more to do with creating the great amongst us than raw talent--things like sports players statistically being more likely to be born in certain times of the year, and people being the right age during transformations in the economy. This kind of argument tends to lend more sympathy to those of us that do not achieve greatness for whatever reason. Maybe we could have been contenders if we had just been born at a different time--and maybe those that do become great have a certain responsibility to the society that gave them the opportunities that they seized. What starts as a conservative argument about hard work morphs into a pretty liberal perspective.
In this era of pragmatic figures like Barack Obama, such perspectives with elements of conservatism and liberalism like Gladwell's may gain more traction. The truth often lies at the intersection of competing beliefs.
As for blogging, I guess I still have about 9,800 hours to go to achieve greatness, and I might get there in a quarter-century. Somehow I'm not expecting that to happen.
Monday, March 2, 2009
Transport: So That's a SBU
Don't call it a FRED! A SBU sat on the coupler of the last car of Canadian Pacific train #240 as it crossed the Humber River in Toronto, Ontario on 25-February-2009
TORONTO, ONTARIO - Every child knows what should be at the end of a train--a caboose. Unfortunately, since the crew size on most mainline trains was reduced to two people in the 1980's, that hasn't been the case. With the engineer and the conductor in the locomotive, there was no need for the caboose, and it was replaced by a device to monitor the air brake pressure at the end of the train.
For most of my life, I've thought this device was properly called a FRED, or Flashing Rear End Device. (Some railroaders claimed the "F" stood for something else easily guessed with a colorful imagination but not printable here.) It served a number of purposes, a marker at the end of the train so that it would be visible to following trains, a monitor of air brake pressure at the end of the train transmitted by radio to the locomotive so the crew knew whether their train was intact, and in some cases it was capable of setting the brakes from the end of the train when requested by the crew in an emergency.
Up in the locomotive, there had to be a device to receive the signal from the FRED, and these receivers came to be called "Mary"s. Mary didn't seem to stand for anything; someone just thought it would be amusing and the name seemed to stick. When trains departed major terminals, the crew would often be asked for their "FRED and Mary numbers" to keep track of the devices. Apparently in some regions, Wilma was used instead of Mary in a nod to the Flintstones, but I have personally never heard that term used.
FRED and Mary were rarely used as official names. The FRED was sometimes called a EOTD, or End Of Train Device, with the "D" later dropped. On Burlington Northern "wheel" reports for trains in the early 1990's, the FRED came to be labeled as the REEOT (Rear End End of Train device) and the Mary came to labeled as the HEEOT (Head End End of Train device). Having an "End of Train" device at "Head End" of the train apparently didn't strike the railroad as being the least bit ironic, but the terminology had clearly become messy. In time, the HEEOT became a HOT, or "Head Of Train" device, which is perhaps a bit better.
Since moving to Canda, I have heard Canadian Pacific crews and Rail Traffic Controllers refer to a "SBU". It seemed like they were talking about a FRED, and this prompted a bit of research. It turns out that the Association of American Railroads, of which virtually every railroad in the United States and Canada is a member, adopted in 1999 a new terminology for these devices based on the terminology that originated here in Canada. The device on the rear of the train is now called a SBU, or Sense and Brake Unit (though there are two different device codes based on whether it can apply the brakes). The name at the head of the train varies based on function. If it just displays information, then it is a Receiver Display Unit (RDU). If it can control the brakes at the rear as well, then it is a Communications Display Unit (CDU). Sometimes the are two devices, the Communications and Logic Unit (CLU) to receive the information, and the Information and Display Unit (IDU) to display it. The whole thing seemed very Canadian to me, quite accurately describing the equipment, but with names that are almost completely non-memorable.
Thus, it's not surprising that in most places in the US, one still hears about "FRED and Mary numbers," not SBU and RDU numbers. But, the next time you see a train, if you want to follow AAR practice, remember that not only is there not a caboose on the end of a train, there isn't really a FRED either. It's a SBU.
Sunday, March 1, 2009
Photos: Model Railroad Club of Toronto
A pair of RS-1 diesels headed for the roundhouse in East Davidson, Ontario past a typical industry on the O-Scale layout of the Model Railroad Club of Ontario on 22-February-2009
TORONTO, ONTARIO - This week, the update to my photo site returns to contemporary material with a visit to the Model Railroad Club of Toronto.
The club was founded in 1938 and has been in the same building in the Liberty Village neighbourhood since 1946. Their 7000-square foot O-scale layout of the fictional Ontario Central opens only one month a year for public shows, so it was a treat to tour the railroad on 22-February-2009.
Margin Notes: Soot, Messing with Joe, Digital TV
Canadian Pacific trains #240 and #159 met above the Humber River in Toronto, Ontario on 25-February-2009
TORONTO, ONTARIO - Most weeks, it seems I complain about the weather each Sunday, but the above picture shows why the winter is so enjoyable in Canada--the white covering adds quite a bit to a picture of a meet between two Canadian Pacific trains at the Humber River in this neighborhood. It won't look nearly as attractive once the snow disappears until the spring growth starts to occur.
* * * * * *
Spring may start sooner according to some researchers. Recent research by NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies appears to be backing up claims first publicized in 2003 that soot accelerates global warming. By making the snow less white, the soot causes the ground to reflect less energy and absorb more, thus accelerating global warming by what the journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics recently reported may amount to snow packs in the mountains of the western United States melting a full month earlier than it would otherwise!
* * * * * *
While a spring melt one month earlier than usual might sound like a good idea right now, many of us are far more interested in the economy improving one month earlier than it otherwise would. In a major speech last week, US President Barack Obama announced that Vice President Joe Biden will be placed in charge of making certain that stimulus spending would occur as intended, "because nobody messes with Joe." I thought Joe Croce sang to us in 1972 that You Don't Mess Around With Jim, not Joe.
* * * * * *
I had occasion to listen to news about Obama and the rest of the world on the analog television channel signal of CBC Television (VHF channel #5 in the Toronto area) this week, and the thought occurred to me that there are already places in the US where listening to analog television is no longer possible. Analog television will disappear everywhere in the United States on 12-June-2009. Our time will come in Canada, though. The CRTC has currently scheduled the end of analog television to be 31-August-2011 here. Maybe by then I'll have a smart phone that will be able to pick up the live Internet feed of CBC Newsworld.
* * * * * *
This blog made available new material on the Internet every day during the month of February (radio picks on Saturday and photos on Sunday don't count toward that feat, so the post total is padded to 36 instead of 28). Now that I've proven I can do that, expect a few random days to be missed in the coming weeks as I worry more about quality than quantity.
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