Ideeahs

This entry is about what our society considers an upgrade - something of greater value received for the price of something of lower value. While value is a subjective notion we generally equate it to some type of monetary measure. Money after all was invented to create an easy way to not only purchase items but to allow us to draw comparisons between the worth of different good or services. While money does serve a purpose in assigning a value there may also be other measures that one could use to determine whether one has been upgraded. So this ideeah occurred to me recently when I was renting a car. As I have started travelling regularly for work I have become a "frequent traveller" - not a frequent flyer. In my case this means car rentals - the town I need to travel to weekly is not served by airlines or trains. As a result I have become a Hertz Gold member and, likely very soon, will move up to the next level. Tangent --> By the way, if you need to travel for w...

More on the value of money. I spent the evening with some colleagues from India. Our conversation meandered between the various differences between our two countries (Canada and India). It reminded me of what I thought I wanted to do with this blog (read my first entry here ). So more on numbers: $2.00 = price of a can of Pepsi in a small town restaurant in the province of Quebec $20.00 = price of a pizza and beer in a small town restaurant in the province of Quebec $200.00 = monthly rent for an 800 square foot, 2 bedroom apartment in middle class neighbourhood of Bangalore, India Let me know what you think about what you have just read. Please and thanks!

For various reasons I have been thinking about how man exploits the earth and how our body of knowledge (our book of knowledge) is becoming every more complete and, consequently, we are becoming more and more confused and living in a more and more complicated world. Two simple reasons for the thought. Vermiculite and oil. We are in the process of purchasing a house. It turns out that the house may contain asbestos. This came about because one of the previous owners used a naturally occurring substance called vermiculite as an insulator. That in itself is not a problem as vermiculite - as far as our current book of knowledge tells us - is safe. The issue is that the mine that 80% of the vermiculite in North America came from was contaminated with asbestos veins. So....a known carcinogenic may be present. When I was a child we used to drive up to my aunt's place in the Laurentians, north of Montreal. One of my childhood memories is of the smell and look of the dirt roads that...