Harry Shannon
Background to my Opinion article in the Hamilton Spectator.
The City of Hamilton, Ontario, has defined boundaries. Just outside the City, there is land that is designated Greenbelt – so building on it is not allowed – or farmland. It’s possible to buy Greenbelt land which is cheap because it can’t be developed …
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Category: numbers
On the probability of a bump on the head
Harry Shannon
As I walked with my wife to our local library, we passed under a black walnut tree. Eileen said she was concerned about being hit on the head by a falling walnut. It’s that time of year. The nuts fall in their shells that are very hard and can make quite a noise depending on what they land on. (If one fell on your head, though, …
Just how much is $220 billion?
Harry Shannon
You have no doubt read about the ultra-lavish wedding of Jeff Bezos, the boss of Amazon. As one Toronto Star columnist wrote, it was "a filthy obscenity." His column was reproduced in the Hamilton Spectator.
I checked how much Bezos is worth. At least, that's how it's typically phrased, but of course it's not what people are ac…
A dangerous calculator app
Harry Shannon
I was travelling on Via Rail, Canada’s national train system. The carriage was fairly new and a small screen showed the train’s speed. The highest I saw was 161 km/h. I wanted to know whether or not this was just over 100 mph. So I used a calculator app on my iPad to check. I downloaded it a while ago and don’t remember any …
Repurposing golf courses
Harry Shannon
Hamilton, Ontario has three public golf courses owned by the city. One of the city’s councillors would like to convert at least one of the courses into more widely used green space – regular parkland, sports fields, etc.
The local paper, the Hamilton Spectator, ran a story about it last Friday (September 27). I sent them th…
A divided city?
Harry Shannon
Just over 20 years ago, the Ontario government created a new City of Hamilton by amalgamating what had previously been the city with surrounding towns. At the time it was highly controversial. One town, Dundas, held a plebiscite (an unofficial vote) on the issue. About half the electorate voted - far more than typically turn out f…
Failure to sample can be dangerous to your health
Harry Shannon
Background: Municipalities in Ontario held elections last week. A couple of days before, the Hamilton Spectator published a letter complaining that an opinion poll reporting on the race for Mayor was useless. I responded and the letter was in the print edition a few days later. Below is the letter I sent; there were some minor edi…
Should we raise the retirement age? No
Should we raise the retirement age? That’s what an opinion article in the Hamilton Spectator last week proposed.
The author argued his case using data on life expectancy (LE). He noted that back in 1965, when Canada Pension Plan began, LE for men was 66.8, for women 73. He then stated that, since the pension age was 65, men only got CPP for a…
An end to polls?
Harry Shannon
I was looking for information on electric vehicles (EVs). Through our local library, I saw the May 2022 edition of BBC Top Gear magazine. The front page promised ‘THE ELECTRIC AWARDS.’
The table of contents included ‘Reader’s Choice’ and went on: ‘Did you choose your favourite in the poll to end all polls. TG reader…
How to get rooked
Harry Shannon
If you grew up in the UK before 1971, you had to learn how to cope with your money, which was divided into pounds, shillings, and pence (pennies). The abbreviation is Lsd (or £sd), after the Latin names.
I hadn’t realised before, but according to Wikipedia this was a system once used across Western Europe. There were 12 penc…