Why we should consider Universal Basic Income

I'll admit, the first time I heard about UBI I was skeptical. Pay everyone for doing nothing. However, as I read into it, the concept makes a lot of sense and if there is anything that this pandemic should have taught us, having a UBI in place would have made things a whole lot simpler to manage.

How a UBI Works

A universal basic income is a simple concept. Every citizen gets paid a base salary from the government. In Australia this would be somewhere around $1500 a month. This would be deposited to your nominated bank account in installments every week, fortnight or month. No strings attached.  If you work, you keep receiving this UBI and pay income tax on your salary. You do not pay tax on the UBI, even if you earn $1m a year. (Though people could opt to waive or suspend their UBI entitlement.)

The UBI replaces all forms of social assistance including Newstart/Welfare, pensions, disability pensions, etc.  The UBI also replaces the tax free threshold, the $18,200 or so from your income that isn't taxed while you are working.

Replacing Newstart / Welfare

A big problem with welfare systems is trying to ween people off social assistance. Welfare payments are often means tested so that once you are earning income, your payments are reduced, and eventually suspended all together. The issue with these models is that they provide a disincentive to finding work. Many entry level jobs offer only meager pay, and people on welfare will weight the inconvenience and cost of working against losing their payments. Why bother working 8+ hours a day plus travel time to earn maybe a few dollars more than you'd make sitting at home? It's a selfish question, but a fair one. The work is often not guaranteed, being casual or part-time, and getting back onto welfare payments is an extra hassle with possible wait times before payments resume.

With a UBI, this disincentive is removed. Every after-tax dollar you earn from work, whatever work, is yours. You don't lose your UBI, so there is no disincentive to go out and find extra work. People can decide to sit at home on a free $1500/mo. for whatever lifestyle that affords them, but going out and working a few extra hours or building up a career to improve that lifestyle does not cost them anything, or risk losing anything by doing it.

Taxation Changes

A UBI replaces the tax-free threshold that people claim when doing their taxes. This means that you will be paying tax on every dollar you earn. The net result for tax payers is nil because the UBI serves as their tax free threshold paid forward by the government through the year.  Bracketed tax systems remain largely unaffected, just the tax free threshold is reduced to $0.

Tiered UBI

To handle special cases such as pensions, and disability payments, the UBI can be tiered to accommodate different levels of payments to handle different scenarios. Short term emergency situations can also be managed this way such as assisting people with pandemics or localized disasters.  Rather than having to set up entirely new systems to help compensate people affected by disasters or loss of work, the UBI is a network that can already facilitate this immediately.

Funding a UBI

One question about adopting a UBI is how will it be funded? Well, the lion's share of the UBI for most people will be covered by the removal of the tax free threshold. For the normal working population the UBI effectively costs nothing because it's merely paying forward their tax free threshold.  For the social benefit and pension cases, the government reallocates these tax funds into the UBI program. A significant boost can be gained by streamlining the administration of these services as for instance all of the various categories of social assistance, the administration and enforcement of their means tests, everything, simply goes away.

In 2019 we spent nearly $200 billion on social welfare. Of the 25 million population, approximately 5 million are under the age of 18. A UBI of $1,500 a month would cost $360 billion across the adult population.  If we assume that only 1/2 of the 20 million adults in Australia are earning at least $18,200, that is ~$38.6 billion in tax free thresholds. By those very basic numbers there is a shortfall, but that is a really rough look at the population to see how many Australian residents would qualify and the tax revenue from the tax free threshold.

If anything, it's worth a closer look.

Beating the Cold, the Flu, and the Coronavirus

Disclaimer: This is not medical advice. This is my personal approach to handling illnesses that we commonly face as someone that does not have any serious health complications. A novel virus like SARS can infect anyone, and it can be potentially life threatening to anyone. If you have conditions like hypertension, high blood pressure, asthma, and other risk factors that the medical community have identified and are concerned that you may have been exposed to SARS/COVID-19/Coronavirus then seek medical advice and follow their directions.

Proper hygiene and protective measures will only go so far. Many people get exposed to and infected by Cold and Flu viruses many times in their lives, and many will be exposed to this new SARS strain. This virus will potentially harm you unless you're prepared to unlearn some of the assumptions we've developed over the years with Colds in particular.

The first important thing is that while this is a virus from the common Cold strains, it is *not* a common Cold. It will start out feeling like a Cold, but it can easily develop into something more closely resembling a severe Flu. Many people do not really know the difference between a Cold and a Flu. Often you hear people claim they "came down the with flu over the weekend". They didn't have a Flu, they most likely had a Cold, or at worst, a mild Flu. The Flu will most certainly keep you in bed. You will ache. You will have chills. You will have a significant fever. You will have a headache. You will have a cough that makes your chest hurt and have you checking your hand/tissue expecting to find blood.

The second important thing is that you will need to learn to listen to your body again. We have evolved into a society where illness is an inconvenience. Catch a cold? Take some decongestants for the stuffed up feeling, a painkiller for the headache, and some lozenges / syrup for the cough and "Soldier On".  When it comes to viral infections, TIME is critical.  A virus infects and reproduces through your body at a given speed. Your immune system can respond and fight it at a given speed. When a virus is relatively mild, it doesn't matter as much if you let it get a foothold if you can treat your symptoms and carry on with your day. You'll feel relatively miserable for a few days, but eventually your immune system will get the upper hand.  However, when you are dealing with a virus that can pack a significantly harder punch, treating it like a mild cold can be fatal. Staying up and about, suppressing your immune response (which is what makes these diseases uncomfortable) is giving the virus a head start and crippling your immune response.  Yes, getting a viral infection is uncomfortable, but that is your immune system going to war. To stand the best chance of surviving the battle, Stay out of the way!

Dealing with viral infections is about learning to give your body the best fighting chance. This means listening closely to what your body wants, and letting it fight without you getting in the way.

#1. Act as soon as you feel ill. If you wake up one morning and feel "off". Call in sick and stay home. If you're at work and feel chills after lunch, go home immediately. TIME is critical to get on top of bugs, whether a common Cold, Flu, or one of these new Coronavirus strains. "Healthy" people that are suffering due to this new strain are likely confusing it for a Cold, carrying on about their day coping with the symptoms. All the while this virus is getting a head start in the battle, and once entrenched, the immune system will be on the back foot trying to regain control. The war moves into areas of your body that would best do without the chemical warfare. Stop the virus at the beaches, not the central business district.

#2. Bed rest.  Don't try and get things done. Don't go into work or even try working from home or doing housework. Get into something comfortable, grab a big pitcher of water and a glass to keep near the bed, and stay in bed! Sleep as much as you can. Take short breaks to read or watch a bit of a movie, but stay as comfortable as you can and movement to a minimum.

#3. Stay hydrated.  Water, and only water. NO sugar. If you feel thirsty, drink. Keep water handy so you don't have to get up and move around.  The only time I get up is when I have to pee. Your immune system will be working hard to isolate, kill, and dispose of the virus and the byproducts of the infection and chemical warfare. Much of that

#4. Cope with the symptoms. Don't medicate to make yourself comfortable. Your body is using histamines and fever for a purpose. Keep tabs on your fever level to ensure it doesn't get too high too long, but minimize the use of "relief" medication. These are a setback for your immune system. Use only enough to allow you to sleep.

#5. Do what your body tells you. If it says "I'm cold", bundle up, maybe add a hot water bottle. If it says "I'm hot", throw the covers off. If 30 minutes later it says "I'm cold again", bundle up. If you feel hungry, eat, if not, don't force yourself. Think about what you want to eat if you're hungry, your stomach will hint you at a comfort food. (For me, it's typically apples) If your body thinks lying out in the warm sun would feel good... do it. 

#6. If your alone, call someone to help. If you're coping with a bug and you're hungry but don't have something "comforting" in the house to eat, call someone and ask them to bring it. Whether it's warm soup, bread, or apples. Don't try and head to the shops yourself as it will be a setback in your fight. (And a risk to other people) If you HAVE to go out for yourself, dress warm, wear a face mask to protect others, and only stay out as long as absolutely necessary, then get home and back to bed.

#7. Keep tabs on your condition. Especially fever and whether you can eat if it drags on for several days. Let people know you are at home sick if you are alone, and be ready to make the call for help if the fever is staying high and does not respond to paracetamol, or you cannot keep small amounts of food down after 2-3 days. The danger zone with fevers is where the fever is already high and your body is still feeling cold even when bundled up.

These are the rules I follow religiously when it comes to getting sick. The moment I feel like I am coming down with something, I head directly to bed with a big jug of water. I get up only to pee. If I'm feeling ok, I might sit up to read or watch something, but no more than half an hour at a time, I focus most of my time on sleeping, letting my immune system do it's thing, and listening to what my body needs.

Stay safe, stay healthy, and stay home.

Coronavirus, lessons that should hopefully be learned.

In 2003 we got a taste of what a new, deadly strain of Coronavirus could do to us. Humans have battled with Coronavirus strains and Rhinovirus strains for as long as we've been a species on Earth. Here was essentially a common Cold virus that carried the punch of a Flu. People feared it greatly. Some people worked towards a cure while others resorted to isolation. Ultimately it was called out early enough to essentially starve out after only a relatively small percentage of the population being exposed to it. Victory was declared and we got on with our lives.

But what did we actually win? Did we find the cure or vaccine for it and protect the bulk of the herd? No. The virus petered out, and so too did the funding and drive towards developing a vaccine. The monster went back into the closet after we turned on the light, and there was no sign of it around.

Since that time we've battled two new Flu strains, another age-old enemy that pops up every year. We study and vaccinate against this beast regularly and it still manages to kill tens to hundreds of thousands of people each and every year. The H5N1 "Bird Flu" happened two years after SARS. We were still on fairly high alert, but this strain largely fizzled out. The H1N1 "Swine Flu" in 2009 was a much bigger deal, but it came while we were still reeling from the GFC. CDC estimates for the 2009 outbreak put the # of deaths at anywhere from 150,000 to 450,000 people.

When it comes to viruses and our ability to fight them, we rely on only one thing, our immune system, and the immune systems of the people around us. (The "Herd Immunity") With the common varieties of Coronavirus, we get sick, but they are largely non-threatening. These viruses have gone through countless mutations over the years and we don't even bother trying to develop vaccines or cures for the common cold. There is simply no justified need for it. A lot of this will have to do with how our bodies produce, maintain, and "record" antibodies for later use.Studies in flu vaccines have shown that in some cases, when we get a vaccine for a particular strain of virus, our bodies can start producing antibodies for other flu strains that weren't part of the vaccination. Vaccines targeting one strain can also have an impact on the immune response to exposure to a different strain. It won't be 100% effective, but it can still help shorten the response and recovery time. This is one reason doctors encourage the use of flu shots even though the few strains chosen out of the possible hundreds out in the wild are little more that a wet finger in the air guess.

Which brings us to COVID-19 / SARS-2.  What's changed all that much? Well, like SARS (2003) this virus is a Coronavirus which is highly contagious and knows a few back doors to make itself an unwelcome guest in human hosts. It spreads like a Cold and punches like a Flu. This time around the ground zero was one of the largest cities in China during the middle of the Northern Flu season in the lead up to Chinese New Years where much of the population travels across the country and overseas family members fly home. SARS began in a more rural setting at the start of the Northern winter.

The biggest mistake I believe we made with SARS was abandoning the vaccine. I would love to see a study done on COVID-19's effect on past SARS survivors, those people that contracted SARS and developed antibodies. I would not be at all surprised if it found that SARS survivors, even though antibodies would likely be dormant by now, had a much improved response to the SARS-2 virus infection. Had we followed through and developed a SARS vaccine, or better controlled the spread of the disease to allow a larger segment of our population to safely develop antibodies, would this new variant have torn through the population with such devastating effect?

The lessons I believe we need to learn from this, and past virus outbreaks would be:

- The only thing that protects us is our immune system. Starving a virus out back into the closet is a false victory. Either we need to follow through with a vaccine or ensure that a good percentage of the world population has a chance to develop antibodies. China may serve as an example that a virus can be successfully starved, but it will have to be forever vigilant for new outbreaks. When visitors start returning and risk bringing the virus back into the country, aftershocks of lock-downs will undoubtedly occur to contain it especially if the general population cannot be vaccinated.

- Worldwide we have become complacent with health care. Beds per 1000 people have been steadily dropping, and while on average they may seem not that alarming, the figures for some of our more populous cities are extremely inadequate. Viral outbreaks in city centres will burn like wildfires, overwhelming local hospitals. You cannot blame medical advisors talking up the risks and worst case scenarios to try and direct the fear into support to claw back spending cuts they have faced through the "good years".

- Spare a thought for your local businesses that, for no fault of their own, are being starved of business from being abandoned by customers that have absolutely nothing to fear from them. When the panic passes and life returns back to a relative normal, it would be a shame to see some of your past favorite eateries and such boarded up.

and finally...

- We need to resist the urge to try and track the spread of a virus through mediums like social media. The fear and panic caused by unverified sources leads people to act irrationally and not trust the people that have been entrusted to protect them. Many people who should not have need to fear this virus end up acting in a manner that increases the risks not only to themselves, but others around them. The premature findings, the inaccurate conclusions & opinions derived from them, and the downright dangerous "fake news" can be as convincing and prominently placed on the Internet as the advice from official voices. People, even official sources of information draw up all kinds of stupid conclusions, such as comparing estimated projections for flu cases against case figures for this new virus, citing anywhere from 3% to 5%+ mortality rate and then projecting that across entire populations. It is complete fear-mongering hogs-wallow. To project across a population you need to take an unaffected sample and put them in an environment presenting a typical exposure to the virus. From that there will be people that get sick, and some that don't. Some of the sick will need medical attention, others won't. Some that need medical attention may even die. From those figures you can extrapolate out to a population for a given age group. Figures for SARS-2 exposure are biased heavily due to a lack of reliable testing. The majority of initial cases were only confirmed once they were essentially at a stage that was requiring hospitalization. The number of cases out there that are walking around with what will pass with little more than an itchy throat is a complete unknown. If you were to project the estimated hospitalizations for H1N1-2009 against deaths to be more in-line with the case counts of COVID-19, the mortality rate for H1N1 would have been ~15%.

Getting information out to people is a good thing, but like medicine, too much is usually a very effective poison. Elements of the public have gone "12 Monkeys" over the spread of this Coronavirus. Many have watched convincing movies like "Outbreak" or "Contagion". Others have played games like "Plague Inc." and know releasing a benign, but contagious virus out of China then waiting to ramp up the lethal mutations is a grimly satisfying way to "win" the game by eradicating the Human population. They form parallels with what they see on "news" sites which are little more these days than accumulators of Tweets. People will scream at the idea of comparing COVID-19 with a flu, it's so much worse, cities don't get shut down for the flu. Take the last H1N1 outbreak in 2009. The difference between 2009 and today (2020) is that we weren't watching the spread anywhere nearly as closely, nor what countries were specifically trying to do to contain it. H1N1-2009 killed anywhere from 150,000 to 450,000 people. COVID-2019 has killed 7000 in 3 months. Some might highlight the extensive efforts countries like China have undertaken to contain the virus, and how much higher the death toll might have been if left to run it's course. H1N1 killed so many more people even *with* a vaccine eventually available. Hindsight will judge how effective measures like those used in China were in minimizing, or maximizing the damage of this virus. On the one hand they shone a light on the virus early and looked to restrict travel. On the other hand they locked down cities with inadequate local medical care and prevented patients, affected by the virus or otherwise, to be transferred to other cities that had capacity to care for them. The overloaded hospitals meant many people were left with no option other than to queue up at hospitals each day, cross-exposing each other, then bringing the virus home to their extended families. Patients with unrelated medical issues needing attention get caught in the queues, and without treatment they die. Pictures of those deaths in the hallways of hospitals then are automatically counted against the virus by popular opinion, fueling the panic.

Maybe we scare this virus back into the closet, maybe we develop a vaccine. At some point life will start returning to a relative normal, but I can guarantee we will face another threat from a virus down the road. Hopefully we can learn something from this incident to not allow ourselves to get complacent with how we face a threat, and take the opportunity to be better prepared to face it without resorting to such drastic and questionable actions due to panic.

Vending Machine Ponzi Schemes

Recently I'd come across a discussion about a certain brand using vending machines. I'd seen a few of these machines around Brisbane and the Gold Coast, along with other novelty machines, but I've never seen anyone actually use any of them. The discussion was around a scheme offered to "investors" for a 100% passive income stream. The scheme was simple: Front up $25,000 for the machine, and they provide a guaranteed flat 12% per annum return. The company takes care of maintenance, stocking, etc. 12% p.a. from a machine that I have never seen anyone actually use after expenses?  How?

Schemes like this amount to a fairly simple variant of a Ponzi. By definition a Ponzi scheme takes your investment funds and guarantees a return. It pays that return regularly using the money you initially invested, and money invested by the people that follow. Many Ponzi schemes start off as a legitimate investment scheme that want to attract enough capital to achieve an optimistic scenario that will actually have the potential to earn more than the incentive. They implode when that scenario does not materialize and the scheme starves itself of capital. The people that got in early essentially got most of their money back, or possibly a profit from the scheme, provided they didn't reinvest those earnings back in the scheme. The people that got in late will get virtually nothing.

So, how does a scheme like this potentially work?  First we look at the investment amount: $25,000 per machine. Now, there is absolutely no way these machines cost $25,000. The real figure for the machine is probably South of $2,500, but we'll use $2,500 as an example. The company gets investors to invest $25,000 for each machine, guaranteeing a 12% p.a. return, or $250/mo. Their cost for the machine is $2,500, so they now have $22,500 per machine in the bank. Now, starting off there will be people interested, but skeptical. They might only get 10 initial investors. They need to combat the skepticism so they pay their investors back their $250/mo. like clockwork. Investors can sign up for a 2 year or 5 year investment agreement. After 2 years they will have been paid back $6,000, after 5 years, $15,000. What most don't realize is that this money is just coming back from the $25,000 that they originally invested. Still, on paper it looks like the scheme is delivering exactly what the investors signed up for. Positive reviews and testimonials start flowing in and skepticism in the scheme is dispelled.

At the end of their investment term, the scheme is quite careful to indicate that they will have that $6/15k plus their initial investment available to "reinvest". They want to keep the initial $25,000 in the scheme towards new, additional machines. Some of the early investors may request a buy-out to get back all or most of their initial $25,000 and provided the scheme hasn't gotten sloppy yet, it will reluctantly oblige to pay these people out. At least some of these people are testing the waters and when they get their payout, they will reinvest, satisfied the scheme is sound. At minimum it provides absolute confidence that the 12% guaranteed return is potentially real. However, their real goal is to keep what remains of the initial investment in the scheme, and draw back in that payout, plus more capital from the original investors.

The purpose of the scheme is to build up market share, to saturate the new market with their brand before competitors. The machines are essentially billboards that are capable of displaying advertisements. Once their machines are everywhere their objective is to be able to negotiate advertising agreements for an additional revenue stream to their product sales. The first question any skeptic has when presented with a scheme that looks too good to be true is: "If the return is so great, why aren't they using their own money?" The answer is pretty simple, they are, but to grow fast they need more capital and why go through the effort to convince a bank (and pay interest/provide collateral) when you can convince the public?

How the scheme implodes: This depends a lot on a number of factors, largely what happens to the net difference between the initial investment and the operating costs. The above example is extremely simple. These machines do require maintenance due to whatever use they actually manage to attract, plus dealing with vandalism and the like. The operators of the scheme will undoubtedly be drawing down a salary, plus there are advertising costs to promote the scheme. Provided investors keep their money invested in the illusion of a 12% return the scheme can be sustained for quite some time while new machines are rolled out. For every $25k, the scheme operators could potentially choose to roll out 2, or maybe even 5 new locations, but they have to watch the cash flow carefully. Their goal is to get to a critical mass to get that new revenue stream, but there is no guarantee that the revenue will materialize. Ultimately they are working against the clock because while investors will be satisfied initially that they are getting their $15000 return after 5 years, they are going to be expecting their $25,000 capital outlay back, and the simple fact is that the scheme does *not* have enough cash to pay very many of these investors out.

Anyone considering a scheme like this should hopefully be quite wary of the possibility of getting their initial investment back at the end of the agreement and not blindsided by the fact that people currently in the scheme are getting their promised 12% payments each month without fail. If there is one thing to think about, it is depreciation. If a machine really cost $25,000, how much would it be worth after 5 years of use? The schemes will claim that the machines are effectively owned by you, where they take care of the maintenance etc. to re-assure you in case anything were to go wrong. When the scheme collapses you may very well find yourself the owner of one or more of these machines, with retail space rent owed, and a machine worth a few hundred dollars in used parts that you need to remove and find storage for. You invested $25,000, got back maybe $15,000 and a proprietary vending machine for a brand that no longer exists.

Is it illegal? The thing about Ponzi's is that they are like a market bubble. They're easy to spot after the fact, and while "Bears" might point fingers at them, authorities typically only act on them once something does go wrong. The perpetrators of these schemes are generally people with very eager ambitions that believe it's better to attempt something and ask forgiveness than forever seek permission. The 12% guarantee is an incentive to attempt to attract enough interest to hit critical mass. The questions you need to ask are:

- Is this criminally motivated or is it merely eager ambition?
- How realistic are their goals and possible revenue? is > 12% really achievable?
- Can I afford to lose some/most of this money to find out for sure?

Defogging windows, for Australians

Growing up in Canada you deal with freaking cold days and frosted windows.

Your car boot invariably holds a snow brush & scraper like this:


You don't want to get caught out without one because clearing snow and especially ice off windows without one involves a lot of pain. Ice on glass will chew down any library or credit cards that you  might try to chip away enough space to see.

Even if your windows aren't covered in ice, and you can brush back the snow and use the wipers to keep the screen clear of snow, you have to deal with the considerably fogging that a warm, breathing body makes in a cold car with a windscreen that is being chilled considerably below the ambient (usually negative) temperatures outside.

Why do windows fog?

Fogging is simple condensation. Warm, humid air inside with a cold surface you want to look through. Water vapour condenses on cold surfaces, like when you take a cold drink in a glass and watch the water accumulate on the outside of the glass.  In places like Canada, fogging is inevitable and easy to understand with temperatures involved. In Australia it doesn't get nearly as cold, but given the much higher humidity, when wind and rain strike the windscreen/windows this can cool the glass enough to cause water vapour in the car to condense on the glass. To prevent fogging you can do one of 3 things:  Dry out the air, warm up the surface, or wipe the condensation.

A/C and defogging

Most people here know that A/C can defog windows, and it does a pretty good job at it. However, A/C is a short-term fix for fogging and can make fogging considerably worse if used incorrectly, and can make your trip considerably less comfortable on longer trips in cooler, wet weather. A/C is a good method to initially de-fog windows in a car, however it is important to use the right vent settings to avoid making the problem a lot worse.

Most cars will have controls to change the vent options, fan speed, temperature, plust a toggle for A/C, an option for "fresh" vs recycled air, and the infamously confusing upside down hotplate.

Looking at the left dial there are 5 settings, from left to right these are: Top Vents, Top + Bottom Vents, Bottom Vents, Bottom + Windscreen Vents, and Windscreen Vents.

When using A/C to defog windows, *DO NOT* use the Windscreen Vent options.  Yes, initially this will clear your windscreen quickly, but especially in a moving car this will chill your windscreen, causing condensation to form up even faster if the A/C is turned off, and can eventually start to fog up even with the A/C on. Instead, you should use a top and/or bottom vent option with the Recycle Air setting turned on. 

The Upside Down Hotplate Button

This button is for the rear window defogger. If you look at most cars rear window you will see a series of horizontal lines in the glass. These are heating element wires that turn on with this button. These warm up the glass and defog the glass or melt exterior ice formed on the glass in the winter.

Proper Defogging Settings

A/C defogs windows because one of the key features of A/C is that it dries out the air. This lowers the humidity considerably inside the car, especially when on Recycle. However, A/C also cools the interior of the car, which can become rather uncomfortable, and if directed at the windows, cooling the windows can compound the fogging problem.  The best way to defog windows is instead to warm the windows.

Keeping a car comfortable and defogged when driving in raining can take a bit of adjusting the climate control settings, but isn't that difficult.  If the windows are initially fogged up, a quick burst from the A/C on recycle can dry out the interior of the car to clear most of the windows. While the A/C is running you can turn up the heat. Car A/C are not reverse-cycle so you don't need to adjust the temperature down to turn on the A/C. The temp settings only control the separate heating elements, not the A/C so the A/C can be drying the air while the heaters are on. As the heat starts to warm up the car, turn off the A/C and switch the vent settings to blow it at the windscreen and turn up the fan speed, switching back to Fresh air rather than recycled. If the rear window is fogged you can switch on the rear defogger button. It's best to do this when the car is stationary as the windows may initially start to fog, especially if the A/C had been chilling the window surface. Once the windscreen is clear you can turn down the heat/fan speed to a more comfortable setting, keeping it on the windscreen vent.   If the side windows are fogged and you want to reduce the overall fogging you can repeat a short A/C pulse but be sure to switch the vent away from the windscreen to avoid chilling the windscreen.

Hopefully this helps anyone annoyed by fogging windows in the rain and feeling like they have to freeze themselves to keep the windows clear, or worried about using heat at the same time as the A/C. :)

Let your children forge their own path through the snow.

Life is a field full of snow. When we are young and new to the world, the snow fascinates us. We tromp wildly through it up to our knees, even our waists, cutting new paths through it, digging tunnels, and building things out of it. The deeper it gets, the happier we are.

As we grow older, we accept that there are places in life we need to travel between, and moving through the snow is tiring, and hides things that might cause us to fall or experience pain. So we walk down the same path each day, packing down the snow to make our journey less of a chore and less of an unknown. While we often need to, or want to reach new destinations, we habitually look for paths that other people have already packed down to ease our journey.  Before long we have lost sight of the joy that can come from cutting a path into fresh snow, we see only a lot of work and buried hazards. It's safer to stick to the paths.

The trouble is when we start teaching our children to stick to the same paths we forged, or have chosen for them when they just want to set out on their own through the snow. We feel like we're just helping them avoid our mistakes, our regrets, but we are denying them the experience of discovering something we didn't even know was out there, because we simply stopped looking. Go to this school, get good grades, become a professional in this field, because I didn't do it, but it is what I believe you need to be happier and more successful that I was.

I've always doubted Faith growing up, feeling that an afterlife wasn't a reward, how could it be? Our lives here are but a brief moment, and we truly don't comprehend what eternity means. Exploring and experiencing something new is the whole point of being anything, and I believe this is why we are born with absolutely no memory of what came before, and a instilled sense of curiosity about our surroundings. I'm sure most of us have dreamed of being able to go back in time and re-live their lives with knowledge of what was to come, to correct past mistakes. But this dream is futile. Nothing will change because we've already forged our network of paths we are comfortable following. We have 1000 reasons and excuses for why we can't do something or be something other than what and where we are right now. What would we accomplish starting over again with that burden, and the burdens of 100 previous lifetimes? It wouldn't change if you cannot justify a reason to shed that burden today.

Childhood is life's way of giving each of us a fresh blanket of snow. Look out away from the well worn, safe path you've been walking along because it's still out there all around you. Let your children explore it for themselves, and if you're still not able to tromp off beside them through that untouched snow, then follow in their footsteps, resisting the urge to give them directions, but ready to help them back up if they slip. Marvel in the new places they might lead you.

I will never own a self-driving car.

This isn't to say I will never ride in a self-driving car, but rather that I will never own one. Some might argue that self-driving cars won't be viable in my lifetime, or that I'm just past the point of no return to becoming a grumpy, old fart; However, there is a very large elephant in the room when it comes to autonomous vehicles that I'll choose to avoid at all costs: Liability.

My poor old Honda Jazz is coming up due for an upgrade. Today I can head down to a Volkswagon dealership an buy a new Jetta or Golf... but I won't.  These vehicles, and several others are now being fit with "active" systems to override steering and braking. Now they downplay the negative perception by calling it a "steering recommendation" and assure us that it can be overridden. Now to put it in context, how well do you think the reaction to these active, but override-able assist systems are going for Boeing right now?

I own a BMW, and the car is packed with sensors, cameras, and passive systems. If it senses I'm leaving my lane without indicating, it rumbles the steering wheel. If it thinks I'm approaching something too fast, it brings up a red car indicator in the head's up overlay. These are all passive indicators to me, the responsible, liable, control system for the vehicle. For as long as I am responsible for the control of the vehicle, or pilots are responsible for the control of an aircraft, systems like this should simply alert us to suspected problems. I can choose to act on the alert, or verify it against other inputs and ignore it. Pilots should not have to frantically flip through manuals to figure out how to turn off a system intent on planting them into the ground because it mistakenly thinks they're going to stall, and they should not be blamed for not "Reading the Fucking Manual". They shouldn't have had to. The malfunctioning sensors should have been doing nothing but warning the crew, and readily ignored and disabled when they determined it was in error. They could then figure out or remember how to disable the sensor, which is a lot simpler to do when you're not frantically fighting the system for your life.

The elephant roaming around the room with autonomous vehicles lies around liability. Who is liable when a self driving car, or even a car fitted with "recommendations" causes an accident? If I am approaching a cyclist and leave my lane to safely pass him, but my car detects I'm leaving a lane and "recommends" me back, clipping the cyclist, how do I explain that to a court? Do I even want to risk ending up in that situation? Several owners of Toyota vehicles got dragged through courts and public opinions over cases where their vehicles went through incidents of "uncontrolled acceleration". It was blamed on the drivers, and then blamed on the floor mats.  I owned a Toyota many, many years ago as they continued to press for more "drive by wire" technology, and that car suffered from a persistent problem in the winter with a single chip called the MAP sensor. This faulty chip was apparently accumulating moisture in the winter while the car was warm, but then that moisture would freeze around the chip while parked, and then melt and short it out. The car would start, but then as soon as you hit the accelerator, it would stall. (Thank goodness it didn't fault the other way and go into an uncontrollable burn-out!!) I could start it easily again, and as soon as I touched the pedal, *stall*.  In one case it played up while stopped at a red light. To get home I literally had to hammer the gas pedal. I had that damned chip replaced 3 times, and towards the end of my warranty I asked if the chip failed again next winter, would I be expected to be out of pocket? The response was less than encouraging so I sold the car that spring. (I did run into the new owner a few years later, and thanks to the warmer winters, or possibly that they did finally manage to fix that stupid sensor, he didn't have any issues with it.)

Now when it comes to the idea of a self driving car, I will not ride in a vehicle that has the ability to make its own determinations of its surrounding while offering me the ability, or responsibility to override those determinations. If a car and it's autonomous system is going to be trusted to drive the streets, then it will have to do so entirely without me. A "Johnny Cab", but without the joystick for the ridiculous car chases, and preferably without the creepy mannequin as well.

Autonomous cars should not, cannot have manual overrides. You have to be able to trust them the exact same way you trust a cab driver or a bus driver every time you step into one of these vehicles. If you have the ability to override the vehicle, then the situation becomes murky when the vehicle damages something, injures someone, or kills them. Why didn't you override, or did you override and were responsible for the crash?  If I'm in a cab, I'm not watching over the driver's shoulder, ready to overpower him and take the wheel, and I don't want that responsibility dumped on me. I don't want to pay for his speeding tickets, or any damage he causes, or have my insurance premiums/ratings affected by his mistakes. I want to trust that he is capable of getting me where I want to go reasonably safely to both me, and the people around me.

I'm not a skeptic that we cannot trust technology to be as reliable as a human being, but merely pointing out to the fact that once it can be trusted, there is no reason for me to "own" it. Companies like Uber have the right idea. Once self-driving cars are a reality, individuals don't need to own them because they will virtually be like cabs that can roam around town without needing a toilet break. You should be able to request a vehicle with criteria (such as # of seating) on demand and expect a nearby vehicle to come and pick you up. People will still have the choice to own one for themselves (like a personal chauffeur) but they will likely have to pay for extremely common, routine inspections and servicing, and have to face those nagging questions if/when their personal "Johnny" misses something or simply "flips out".  Something as simple as a splatter of bird shit could cause an autonomous controller to miss out on a critical piece of data that causes an accident, or prevent the vehicle from leaving until you get your human ass out and clean it up.

"The ideal flight crew is a computer, a pilot and a dog. The computer’s job is to fly the plane. The pilot is there to feed the dog. And the dog’s job is to bite the pilot if he tries to touch anything."

So if you're still keen to own a self driving car, be prepared to keep that sucker polished, and remember to feed the dog.