Category: Consciousness

Milestones

Interesting fact – while importing my blog into WordPress (I’m still toying with making the move but am thinking it needs to be done properly to a wordpress.org site rather than a wordpress.com blog) I noticed that today I hit 300 posts, and 2000 comments. My comment to post ratio is still reasonably good – but most of them are from posts a while ago. That seems worthy of some sort of celebration. I think I’ll go home and play some Bomberman on the N64 which arrived in the mail today from eBay.

Milking the debate

My ongoing investigation into milk prices continues. My research reveals a shocking fact. Milk costs about the same to produce per litre as petrol – and yet we still pay significantly more at the Servo.

To begin my research on the matter I first contacted Ben, my economics consultant, who said the following:

“It probably costs more to produce/transport (I’m no milkologist, so i don’t know about this for sure), at any particular time there is only a certain supply of milk, so it is open to general market forces, you demand less milk than petrol, so the marginal utility you gain at 1 litre of milk is vastly lower than that of petrol.

Really, they are totally different items. People who think that comparing the price of milk to petrol will reveal some holy grail of pricing failure are retards.”

Not content to be left in the retard basket I pursued the issue with expanded economic factors…

If scarcity is a factor though surely the ease in which milk can be created as opposed to fuel should make the supply side of the equation the larger side and lower the price – also the fact that milk has a much shorter shelf life should keep the price low because retailers can’t afford to hang on to it? Shouldn’t it? Milk is expensive – it’s about $2 a litre if you buy it from a servo – and around $1.25 from a Supermarket – it can’t cost that much to produce – all you need is a cow and some grass – I assume too, that a cow, being an appreciating asset (as long as it’s getting fatter) has a net cost of zero to the farmer.

It can’t possibly cost more to squeeze a cow’s nipple than to extract crude oil from the ground and refine it into petrol. Isn’t part of the deal with oil pricing that there’s a central pricing body who make the call based on available supply, future supply and market conditions? Surely milk has an almost infinite future supply and ample current supply, and pretty consistent, steady demand. Unless there’s a sudden spike in demand for milk products like ice cream and milkshakes… There shouldn’t be any inefficiencies in its production created by fluctuations in the market and it shouldn’t cost more than petrol.

Its carbon footprint is an issue because Cows produce methane so I guess emissions trading will also impact on milk pricing.

Ben says I have it all wrong:

“Cows apparently cost a lot to upkeep. Cows also are relatively labour intensive per litre. Milk requires handling up to health and saftety standards, specific packaging, refrigeration. sure, pumping oil out of the ground is expensive, but they can pull out a million litres with only a few personnel and throw it in a ship and take it places. Sure it has to be refined, but i wouldn’t be surprised if fuel refinement is about on par costwise with milk refinement, if not cheaper.”

Not content to let my research die at a secondary source – I decided to pursue details from the primary producers. I found the following:

“Milk prices paid to farmers are determined on the basis of milkfat, protein and volume:

Payment = milk fat ($/kg) + protein ($/kg) – volume charge (c/L)”

According to the current figures Milk farmers receive about 44c per litre of milk – and $5.80 per kilo of Milk solids (milk fat and protein). I’m not sure why the volume charge is subtracted… but that’s a separate issue. Milk it seems costs 44c per transaction in the initial purchasing stage. It must then be processed, bottled, and distributed to the retailer.

Milk prices, assuming you haven’t visited that link above, are set to rise this year due to the following factors:

“The Australian Bureau of Agriculture and Resource Economics (ABARE) expects that milk prices will continue to rise through to 2008-09 (Outlook Conference, 2007):

  • High prices in recent years have been driven by constraints to growth in the three main exporters (EU, NZ & Aust.) at a time of rising global demand
  • The current drought in Australia will limit total production in 2006-07 and 2007-08
  • Poor seasonal conditions have also been evident in New Zealand
  • There has been heat and drought in the EU, and CAP reforms have reduced incentives to produce milk
  • On the other hand increased supplies are expected from emerging exporters such as Argentina and the Ukraine, while China’s dairy production (mainly for domestic consumption) continues to rise”

This UK site estimates average cost per litre of milk at about 13.7 pence per litre – that’s not taking into account the milk solid production.

Costs of production of milk are actually decreasing. And the average Tasmanian cow (which I assume is similar to the average Australian cow) produces 386kg of milk solids – and each cow produces about $1,488 worth of milk and milk solids while costing $1,196 to maintain (on a 250 cow farm).

So, that’s all quite long winded – but basically the farmer is selling the milk at 44c per litre – and being looked after in the process. The extra 80 cents (at least) is being added by the retailers and others. The government currently levies 11c per litre – but that’s all set to change. Good to see the Rudd Government doing something about this issue.

The whole debate (in my mind) centres on whether the production costs of milk and petrol are comparible – I am assuming that the transport/bottling/refining costs are within the ballpark of each other – refrigeration should be cancelled out by the distance fuel is transported etc…

So these guys put the average price of production of a litre of fuel at 25-50c. Another UK site suggests the cost of producing fuel accounts for about 32% of the total cost per litre. The cost of production of a litre of milk accounts for about 35% of the total price based on the regular retail price of $1.25 per litre. So it’s Servos that sell milk for $2 a litre or more that are really jacking up the price – and for this they should be held accountable. The figures don’t lie. Milk is where the Service Stations are guilty of price gouging.

Unfortunately I promised Paul I’d only make interesting posts after he added me to his RSS reader. I lied.

The End

Not in a dramatic “last post” sense – but this Flickr set contains end scenes from movies.

Useful for all your punctuating needs I guess…


EDIT: Hopefully fixed the link for Dan. And others. Enjoy.

Got milk?


Why is it that milk costs more per litre than petrol? In my understanding it’s completely renewable. It’s not like we’re approaching “peak milk”, with ever dwindling supplies to satiate our growing thirst for our rampant consumer driven lifestyles… It’s a travesty I say.
And something must be done. There’s your cause of inflation right there – especially with fuel prices back down around the $1.10 per litre mark.

Ahh… it’s a monster.

FAO Shwarz – the site behind the build your own muppet feature I posted earlier today also lets you create your own monster toy – from any drawing . Which is pretty cool. But even more expensive – at $249.

Perhaps this guy – who tried to pay a $233.95 debt with this picture of a spider – could instead get the toy made, and everyone could live happily ever after.

A Muppet Christmas, Carol?

So I don’t know a Carol – but this site will let you realise your muppet Christmas dreams. Build your own – and pay $90US for the privilege of having your very own muppet creation delivered to your door.
Two references to puppets in two posts. This one has no strings attached…  here’s my Muppet Miyagi.

Working on the branding roll o…

Working on the branding roll out and reading up on web design so I can sound educated when addressing our new digital strategy.

Does a duck’s quack echo?

It does if the press corp is busy with the duck’s successor.

While Obama and McCain’s speeches almost wrote themselves on the basis of the election outcome – lame duck President George W. Bush had to weigh in with a speech of his own. Formality dictated it. The stupid American system where Bush is President until January means America is faced with two months of essentially confused leadership. Obama’s attention turns to picking a cabinet (and other furniture for the Whitehouse – hopefully child and puppy proof). While George W Bush – America’s least popular president ever barring criminal behaviour (I think he actually beats Nixon’s disapproval rating – but I can’t be bothered checking) – has to “hold the fort” and was called on to provide his commentary on election day, the campaign and the future.

The President’s speech (and his congratulatory phone call last night) included an invitation to dinner at the presidential mansion. I can imagine that after a campaign based solely on tying his opponent’s shortcomings solely to Bush and his policies – and after Bush compared Obama to Nazi appeasers during WWII – that’s not an invitation that will be accepted any time soon.

shoe croc, don’t bother me

Ok, so these ones do. And that title is a really bad pun. But fresh from talking about a sticky situation involving the Coogee Bay Hotel, we have been confronted with our own PR crisis.

For those of you not familiar with the story here’s the précis, the tourism dependent community of Magnetic Island was recently in lock down as a rogue crocodile terrorised the bays and streets of the island. But the plot thickened – it turned out the EPA, in its infinite wisdom, had captured the crocodile in Far North Queensland and released it near Townsville. Then, as it began wreaking havoc upon the poor island, they couldn’t catch it. This of course led to calls from the ever reliable walking quote machine, Bob Katter, for a croc cull. Crocodile leather is desirable for shoes, hand bags and other accesories – they also interfere with our right to enjoyment of nature – or so the argument goes. It was eventually caught – only to die in captivity a day later – an autopsy revealed that the croc’s stomache was lined with plastic bags, and other rubbish which led to its untimely demise. Untimely, arguably because it should have died three weeks earlier.

This was a PR nightmare for all involved (except Bob Katter).

In particular:
The EPA now stand accused of killing some small businesses due to their ridiculous “crocs in space” program. They had an electronic tag on the crocodile and still couldn’t find it. They mishandled the situation allowing operator after operator to front the media lambasting them and demanding compensation – the State Government pretty much ruled it out on the spot – and now can count on no votes from Magnetic Island at the upcoming election. Even the greenies hate them because the croc died. It’s all their fault.

The Magnetic Island operators themselves have done as much as possible to tarnish the region’s image – by yelling “CROC” from the roof tops and going about dealing with the Government in an inappropriate manner. They shot themselves in the foot (they should have just shot the croc). The local tourism industry – Magnetic Island is the “jewel in our crown.” That’s the official line. I know because I wrote it. Now, in the mind of the uneducated consumer it is no longer a pristine island destination with safe beaches – it’s a garbage filled wasteland populated by deadly crocs. The tourism minister proclaimed crocs as “good for tourism.” That, according to those on the ground was untrue. That line only works when describing Australia Zoo and other crocodile farms. Crocodiles on public beaches are bad for tourism. The plastic bags, in all likelihood, came from far north Queensland, where the waters are messy. I wanted to run a media release on that basis titled “Far North Queensland full of old Cairns and plastic bags” – but I was outvoted. Common sense prevailed.

Word up

I’m seriously considering moving this blog to wordpress. So, my five loyal readers, I am humbly seeking your advice.

While I enjoy being part of the google family (ie blogger, gmail, picasa, reader etc…) WordPress just seems so much nicer, cleaner, more functional… but to get some of the real functionality I’m after I may have to pay some money.

Incidently, I have been playing with WordPress and imported this blog to a WordPress account – I average about 4 comments per post – I seem to be pretty down on comments in the last six months though, I guess that’s what a long lay off will do. Or maybe I’m now boring.

Here are my pros and cons so far:
Blogger:
Pros
1. Allows me to email posts to my blog using a special, secret email address – but from anywhere – this is handy because it means I can appear to be working but actually blogging.
2. Allows Ben to receive my posts by email – I’m not sure he’d be able to get them so passively if I made the switch.
3. It’s what I’ve always known so the status quo bias probably plays some part in making me stay here.
4. It allows me to easily edit the layout CSS – which gives me freedom to significantly change things up if I so desired.
Cons
1. (Big one) Blogger doesn’t have all the functionality that I like in WordPress (ie creating pages that aren’t posts, other nice layout things, the ability to post delicious bookmark lists as a post quickly and easily)

WordPress
Pros
1. It looks nicer
2. It has a better user interface
3. It’s a properly dedicated blogging service – not part of a huge, all powerful global conglomerate.
4. It has developed some really nice little tools – and the third party plug in developments don’t all look like stupid games created by stupid people – seriously, check out the list of add ons for Blogger some time…
5. You can have extra pages, better tag sorting (not that I use tags much, but I think I should), it is very functional while still being stylish.
6. I only have about 5 readers anyway – I reckon most of you would make the move with me (other than Ben).

Cons
1. I’m scared of/resistant to change.
2. Ben would have to use a browser or RSS reader to access my rambling posts.

So there you have it. Comments? Here’s the wordpress version with a default template that I’d play with…

chinese cowboys

The local chinese takeaway has a rather incongruous cowboys poster to match mao dynasty decor and the obese goldfish.

This is cool

Putting the fun into PDFundo

http://pdfundo.net/convert/ – this might be worth keeping in mind if you ever have to unPDF a document.

One of the girls at work just used it and it worked. 

Now to find a PDF to convert. 

IT Crowd

I’m in Sydney at the moment at a conference for users of our work’s Content Management System. It’s not what I expected it to be. I was thinking there’d be lots of young nerdy guys drooling over code and wearing pocket protectors. I was wrong. It’s actually mostly pretty old people – and a fairly even gender split. Sometime during the last two years I became our office’s official geek – I don’t know how it happened. But a lot of the stuff the people at this conference are getting excited about is beyond me. I sat at a dinner table with the guy who is pretty much everyone’s hero for some work he did with AJAX (the coding/script thing that pretty much powers Facebook) and the Content Management Platform – he presented earlier today. People kept coming up to him wanting to buy his work. He told me he’ll probably put it up for free, silly him. Dave Hughes MC’d the conference dinner. He was very funny. He apparently gets paid over $10k to do that sort of gig. Clearly I’m in the wrong career.  

One of my favourite things about this conference has been the number of terrible tech glitches in presentations. Powerpoint appears to be the bane of even the technologically elite – although most of the presenters have been using Macs – and it’s beautiful presentation software. I decided the other day that I’d like a Mac. Especially one of the new ones with the funky touchpad. If my choice of luxury materialism comes down to a toss up between a Mac, a coffee grinder, an XBox 360 or a new TV – I’ll be in a real bind. At the moment I am probably leaning towards this option . Robyn remains unconvinced. It’s still cheaper than a piano though. 
On Tuesday night I lugged Sheila (my tank of a coffee machine) to a lady’s Wine and Cheese night event that our church held. I made quite a few coffees using some El Salvadorian beans I roasted on Monday. I’ve been meaning to write a little bit about coffee on this blog – and probably will later. Right now there’s a bit of a fight going on on the street outside my hotel – I haven’t adjusted to daylight savings time very well so it still feels quite early to me but most people appear to be asleep.     
I’m staying in a hotel called “The Dive Hotel” in Coogee. It’s very nice. A fairly large room in what appears to be a converted terrace house right on the beach in what I think is Sydney’s nicest suburb. Breakfast is a communal affair – and the in room brochure/manual thing warns guests (particularly children) not to pat the hotel’s aging dog – one of those little furry balls that only just passes as a dog – because in its old age it no longer tolerates children. Pretty funny stuff which adds to the homely appeal of the place. 

 

Who would take a hurricane cal…

Who would take a hurricane called Norbert seriously?