RBC Economics' Provincial Forecast Versus Real Life Barometers

This morning, 680 News alerted me through Twitter, that RBC Economics have put out another forecast that everything is still improving.  I had a few things to say about this banking spin in December of 2012.

So, lets just take a quick look at some everyday economic barometers, to see what those point to.

TTC Subway Advertising

When times are good, the overhead advertising in the train cars is full of big brands.  When times are bad, it's half-full (exposing a lot of white, blank space) and what advertising it does have is full of government programs to get the economy out of a rut and further education adverts or credit counselling adverts for you to get yourself out of your own ruts.

Verdict:  

Given it's about 70% sold and full of government and college adverts, it doesn't indicate things are good.

Bank of Canada Behaviour

When times are good, interest rates are up and borrowing is encouraged.  When times are bad, interest rates are low, and the message is to deleverage and pay off debts.

Verdict:  Interest rates are still at 1%, and the resounding message right now is to reduce household debts.

Mens Casual Clothing Colours

When times are good, everything is bright, brash and confident. Think of 1950s attire, or 1980s outfits.  When times are not as good, we turn to bland colours that don't stick out as very confident.  Look around you and everyone's about as colourful as they were in the late 1970s.

Verdict:

We are back to a lot of the browns and greys again.  Even in the office, the bright red and yellow ties are out and more subdued blues and maroons are in.

Product Advertising

During good times, advertising is all about how wonderful the product is.  During the bad times it's all about how crappy the competition is.  For men, it's how bad another truck is against yours if you purchase this product.  For women, it's how the competition's skin cream leaves your skin feeling sticky, but if you purchase this brand, you'll not have the issues the competition will give you.

Verdict:

Adverts are scrappy right now.  The other banks don't stay open long enough.  Other beers are too fizzy or tasteless.  

Conclusion

Looking around me, I'd say things are not indicative of a recovery any time soon.

The case for better public weather data

This morning, I was pointed by Chris St. Clair (@cstclair1) to an article on the BBC News site.

The article pointed out (paraphrasing) that "the Jet Stream is one thing they will consider, though the Jet Stream's position is a symptom and not a cause".  This caught my attention because the Jet Stream is of the metrics that I've been looking for in historical data, but it's never recorded anywhere that I can find it at least.  The second thing is it's not just the Jet Stream that is missing from our weather data…

As they correctly pointed out in the article, it's a symptom and not a cause… and so are many other things.  Anyone following my escapade into the Canadian weather knows that the day of the week is a factor, and that is also a symptom (likely pollution) and not a cause, yet they don't record the day of the week either (in my case, that's a pain as I have to recalculate 27 million reading dates to work out the day of the week and put that next to each record).

Other things that are not recorded:

• What is our distance from the sun?
• What is our angle of tilt to the sun?
• Is El Nino or La Nina in effect?
• What phase of the sun cycle are we in?
• Are we being hit by a CME during that hour?
• What is the local tidal phase?
• What is the local atmospheric tidal phase?
• What are the AQI readings at that time?

All these are just as important as the time, the date, the temperature or the atmospheric pressure at that moment, mainly because they add to the bigger picture of what's going on.  

When I look at the weather data that the public can generally obtain for free from places like Environment Canada, it feels like I'm only looking at one piece of the puzzle at any one time.  What we really need is to build a bigger picture so we can see what lines up…  Correlation doesn't necessary imply causality, but it helps us to determine where the links are.

In short, we need better data to be made available to the public.

Society, Products and Safety

This past weekend, I was talking to someone who says they don't let their kids walk the 300m to school on their own. When I was a kid at 7yrs old, I would walk to school on my own, and my school was a mile or so away.   This got me thinking; Is it really that unsafe in this day and age, or were we more naive in the old days?  

Most people will agree now that "things are not like they used to be".  But what does that really mean?

Somehow, we are in general agreement in acknowledging that its less safe these days.  Does this mean that if the current trend continues, the future will continue to get very unsafe?

People appear to be resigned to the fact that if we continue this trend they will be more prepared for it, so they purchase bigger fences, bigger cars, more burglar and panic alarms for their cars, houses, and kids, and at the same time start tracking anything is not bolted down and moves, so they microchip the cat, track their phone and GPS track anything else including the elderly.

This would indicate that people have little faith in things getting better and becoming safer, and despite the rhetoric you hear, nobody has any intention of fixing it either.  The usual citation is "We live in modern times, so we need to take a fresh approach", then the police, politicians and everyone else just goes back to doing what they did before.

Some people would argue that the media has pumped society's head with irrational fears so we will buy their new products.  Just take the average car advert for example - is it saying the car is really safe, or is it saying society is bad, and if you don't buy this car to protect you and your loved ones, then you'll be blamed for anything that happens to anyone?

There's some blame to be put here in advertising, but there's equal blame on society for not identifying this and actually stating that maybe we should look at fixing things instead.

Metadata, dragnet approaches and the law.

Traditionally, Metadata is descriptive data that is added to data, in order to categorise and identify it. So a database of crime records might be tagged as "shooting" to start with, then extra descriptive data is added to indicate the type of firearms being used.  Twitter uses metadata where you have the original data (the tweet) and embedded in it are hashtags to help you categorize that tweet so others can find it.  In Facebook, you have status updates and photos that are data in themselves, but you can add in the names of people to both of these.

It also applies to objects.  For instance, your first name is data that was added after your birth to identify you within a family - and your surname is metadata to identify your family unit in society, but the government doesn't see this as enough, so they add new attributes about you - such as seen on your passport hair/eye colour, or tax brackets and social insurance numbers.

It is this metadata that is at the heart of the NSA program that has now blown into a multinational farce of trust.

As always the media largely is missing a few things in what it tells people - take the Verizon phone data as an example:  You have the phone records which tell the government who has been phoning people that are suspected terrorist, but these records also hold routing information for the call, which in turn gives away your location.  Now, in the "US vs Jones" case, last year, we saw that installing a GPS tracking device on a suspects car did constitute a search.  If that's the case, then so does this.

And this is where the lines get really blurry.  On the one hand, I'm all for helping to stop terrorism but on the other hand, I'm not for it at the expense of flouting the laws.  

You can argue that dragnet approaches nearly always end up like this scandal has, where the people it's supposed to protect are actually the ones that feel the most hurt by it.

You can equally argue that this is where too much metadata leads us every time, too.  You only have to look at the privacy issues and concerns that we regularly see around Google and Facebook to understand that at the root of both is the amount of metadata they have on you.  They have so much, that both Google and Facebook know about people not in their systems.

That is ultimately what these government programs are trying to achieve as well. 

The Upside-down Nature Of The News Media

The news these days is back to front... or upside-down... depending on how you want to look at it.  Either way, it's priorities are all wrong.

Someone does something really bad to other people, there's a hero or two in the story, and the media spends 5 minutes on the heroes whilst banging on for weeks about the perpetrator(s).

What does this accomplish?

It gives too much publicity and airtime to those who were seeking it in the first place.  Thus, bombers get their splinter group in the news, gang shooters get the infamy they wanted, and the attention and validation for the reason of the tragedy goes to the person behind it.  

What we should be doing is the opposite; Putting the media attention and validation on the heroes that the tragedies create for the majority of the time and less attention on those that caused the trouble in the first place.

It doesn't matter if you look at the air time given to the Boston Marathon Bombers compared to the heroes of that day, or Al Qaida compared to the heroes of 9/11 - every time, it's the perpetrators that get the bulk of the attention.

We need to turn the news upside down.  For everyone's benefit.

Toronto Garbage Collection Issues

Not a season goes by without me having reason to complain about Toronto Waste and their garbage collection practices.  If they're not skipping houses, they are only doing one side of the street.  If they're not missing bags and bins, they're leaving them strewn all over the sidewalk.

It's the leaving things across the sidewalk that bothers me most.  Given the guy in the truck is doing everything using a remote control joystick, he should be able to put the bins back where he found them - and as a bonus, upright would be nice, too.

Since the old lady across the street died recently, I've one less reason to campaign for improved workmanship.  However, my significant other still has to push the twins up this street and it's a pain in the backside to have to do the city's job of moving the bins back, in order to get through.

Credit where credit is due, the directors and managers at City Hall do a good job of responding to this idiocy, but the guys on the street have no pride in their job, so any solution is temporary.  

In weeks, it's back to this:

We're long due the time to privatise this, so that there's a sense of accountability at street level and we don't have to put up with this, and get these guys off the job if they can't do it properly.

Apple and Media Bias

Few things annoy me more than one-sided reporting...  One thing I'm particularly getting sensitive about is the reporting on Apple.  

It's getting out of control.

Take this article from the Ottawa Citizen, that I'm going to disassemble for you, and point out the flaws in the article:

It starts with this tagline:
"Company offers nothing new regarding iPhone, iPad or any 'game changers'"

But to contradict that tagline, it contains these sentences:

• "iOS 7 - unveiled Monday at the company's annual developer conference"
• "A new version of the company's desktop operating system, OS X Mavericks, alongside refreshed laptop and desktop computers, was also revealed."
• "It was enough for Apple's senior vice-president of worldwide marketing Phil Schiller to exclaim "Lack of innovation my ass" on stage, as he unveiled an update to the Mac Pro - redesigned and much smaller version of its desktop workstation aimed at high-end audio, video and creative professionals, and the company's first update in nearly two years."
• "Also unveiled were next-generation MacBook Airs - Apple's thinnest laptop - with next-generation Intel chips meant to improve performance while extending battery life by hours."
• "But the biggest applause came for Apple's newest version of iOS, which boasts a completely redesigned user interface spearheaded by the company's vice president of industrial design, Jonathan Ive."
• "Some of the operating system's new features include updates to Siri, Apple's voice-activated personal assistant; improvements to core Messaging, Calendar and Mail apps; and a new quick-access settings menu called Control Centre that is invoked with an upward swipe from the bottom of the screen."
• "The company also detailed its long-rumoured streaming music product, iTunes Radio."

So a radically designed new OS for the mobile platform, a new OS for the desktop, a new radio service, a new desktop computer that's radically designed, a new generation of laptops and a suite of new iWorks (not mentioned in the article) is enough to justify the tagline "Company offers nothing new regarding iPhone, iPad or any 'game changers'"
 
Time to start getting news from a better source by the looks of it.