Life

The rise and rise of risk aversion

AustralianActuary Life ,

Writing in 1896, Norwood Young opined in the Badminton Magazine that:

“A great change is gradually coming over the world. Adventure, sport, enterprise, are giving way to caution and the calculation of averages. Men do not take the risks they used to. The modern man is surrounded by police constables, sanitary inspectors, and insurance agents.”

Granted, the Badminton Magazine, with full title ‘The Badminton Library of Sports and Pastimes’ was a journal that covered in full detail the adventures of the day, with detailed articles on sports such as cricket, football and rowing, but also shooting, motor racing and cycling. It was both a manual and celebration of adventure. Norwood was clearly miffed that the sporting attitude and  let’s have a go mentality was on the wane. He may have been premature – he wrote this before Scott, Shackleton, Amundsen et al set off on foot in their various adventures to find the South Magnetic Pole.

Fast forward to 2014 and listen to the character Cooper in the film Interstellar complaining that “It’s like we’ve forgotten who we are – explorers and pioneers, not caretakers.”

More than 100 years passed between the writing of the essay in the Badminton Magazine and the writing of the Interstellar screenplay. Yet both spring from the same yearning, the same perception, the same disappointment.  It is too easy to dismiss these views as the misconceived grumblings of individuals who never grew up and never moved on from boyhood adventure games and fantasy. Great adventures are still planned and undertaken today but society makes it much harder for those individuals than ever before. It is inconceivable that anyone would set off today on the equivalent of a South Pole exploration so ill-equipped as were Scott and his team. ‘The authorities’ would not permit it. When young sailors plotted a trans-ocean adventure 50 years ago, the media didn’t know about the trip until after it was completed, as was the case for Robin Lee Graham. Today, in some cases courts of law intervene to ban the planned trip, as in the case of Laura Dekker. In others, community anger and backlash against the trips can be feral, as was the case with Jessica Watson. Continue reading →

Coded messages from across time

AustralianActuary Life

In bookcases, piano stools, boxes in the attic and at your grandmother’s place, sheets of code wait for an interpreter. When an interpreter is available, the code is transformed into an aural communication preserved immaculately from centuries ago.

When Frederic Chopin died in 1849, he had written many compositions of etudes, nocturnes, ballads and some concertos.  Chopin wrote almost exclusively for piano. While it is true that he was the equivalent of a musical superstar today, he achieved that status with very few public performances. He preferred to play alone or for small groups of friends.

Many of the musical giants of the Romantic era died young, often from bacterial infections such as tuberculosis and syphilis. Chopin died at age 39. Robert Schumann died at 49, Franz Schubert at 31. Chopin left behind some works that were yet to be published by the time of his death, at least some of which were published posthumously. That these composers were able to achieve what they did in such short life times is remarkable. Such constraint is not generally imposed on today’s musicians, even though in some cases it probbaly ought to be.

A solo piano performance of a Chopin piece is an intricate, complex and beautiful message that connects us with our past. A private studio in Paris in the 1840s in which Chopin composed his final works, refining them over and over to get the desired result, is connected to the suburban houses of the early 21st century where today’s pianists work hard to reproduce the same sound that Chopin himself created. Continue reading →

A satirical comparison of the Australian retirement income system and flying to London

AustralianActuary Life

Recently, I needed to travel to London and so I began my preparations with a phone call to an airline that I hadn’t used before but that I was keen to try, given its appealing advertising.

“Good morning, this is Margaret and how can I help?”

“Good morning, Margaret, I’d like to book a ticket for a flight from Melbourne to London at the end of next month. My name is David.”

“Well, David, I can help, but before we talk about where you want to land, can I ask how much you want to pay?”

“Well, whatever it takes, I suppose. What’s your price?”

“I’m sorry, I can’t tell you that since that would be giving you advice. No, you must tell me how much you want to pay.” Continue reading →

#Superbugs and #retirement incomes

AustralianActuary Life

In some circles, it has become fashionable to predict that science is on the cusp of discovering how humans will be able to live to 1,000 years of age. In particular, Dr Aubrey de Grey believes that the first person to live to 1,000 has already been born. If true, that would probably open up another tedious round of debate about the level of the Australian Superannuation Guarantee needing to be higher than 12%. Continue reading →

Uncommon causes of death – modern day problems

AustralianActuary Life

Reading studies into the causes of death is possibly a morbid habit but it does have a kind of fascination. If you read about causes of death today in wealthy countries, you will find that accidents and suicides take most of the under 40 year old deaths but then cancers and other neoplasms become more common the higher up the mortality table one advances.

It was not always so. In the year 1665, according to a summary of parish records in London, the most frequent cause of death was the plague. Continue reading →

Drivers not to blame?

AustralianActuary Life

In yet another example of the collectivisation of responsibility, a “pre-eminent road safety expert” (according to a report in today’s Australian newspaper) was critical that short-sighted leadership was failing our drivers and was responsible for a number of unnecessary deaths on our roads. 

Lauchlan McIntosh, Australasian College of Road Safety president, said “politicians and bureaucrats needed to stop blaming drivers and focus on practical solutions, such as improving road infrastructure and vehicle technology.”

There you have it. Right from the mouth of a supposed expert. If a driver crashes a car, that is the fault of a bad road or a bad car, according to this person. In fact, drivers should be blamed for crashing cars. If they have crashed, it is because they have not driven in accordance with the conditions.

The cancerous attitude that individuals are not responsible for their actions and someone else instead is to blame, is ever-encroaching on us all. As a consequence, individuals, quite rationally, display a decreasing responsibility for their own actions.

Daylight saving – curtains, hard-boiled eggs and erections

AustralianActuary Life

In South eastern Australia, daylight saving time (DST) has just commenced again. The clocks were advanced by one hour last Sunday, marking the symbolic beginning of summer, even if the weather is not yet anywhere near summery. I like daylight saving, but not everyone does. It is normal to have on-going discussions to its merits at this time of year and there is a perennial debate in the Australian states that do not observe DST.

Typically, the Council of Curtain Manufactures, drawing support for closure on the topic from local branches, is confident that the extra sunlight results in more rapid fabric fading hence generating an increase in demand for new supply, and so argues in favour of introduction. But dairy farmers consistently argue that the six-monthly chopping and changing of the clocks causes confusion and uncertainty among the herd, as the cows struggle to come to terms with the time that they are due in the milking yard. Those melancholic bovine eyes are often hiding the early onset of anxiety disorders, never exactly sure if they are time-adjusted correctly. The West Australian State Roosters Association mounted a strident objection to the proposal last time it was put to the WA voters, arguing that the change not only upset their crowing rhythm but also the egg-laying rhythm of their hens, forcing the hens to wait and lay eggs one hour after they were actually ready to. Apart from the uncomfortable physical sensations that this caused, the roosters also suggested that it made the egg shells harder, more calcified and made it more difficult for consumers to judge the correct length of time that an egg needed to be boiled. The clinching argument in Queensland, though, came from a group of concerned wives who argued that it was common for their husbands to wake up with a morning erection. They argued that if the hour was advanced, surely there would be severe embarrassment for all those men getting on the bus to go to work at the time they were still experiencing this early morning phenomenon instead of quietly dealing with it over breakfast and the newspaper.

And so it goes.

The asymmetry of life expectancy

AustralianActuary Life ,

According to Australian statistics, the average male aged 65 can expect to live until age 83. For females, it is age 86. (These statistics are extracted from the Australian Life Tables 2005-07). That might seem like a useful base upon which to plan for retirement. How much savings are needed before someone is able to retire depends on how much they need to meet living expenses and how long they are going to live. Predicting living expenses is a lot easier than predicting your remaining lifespan, but you have to start somewhere.

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Sleepwalking to retirement

AustralianActuary Life

Every day, Australians get up, go to work, cope with the stresses and strains, get home, deal with family affairs, pay bills, relax just a bit and then sink into bed as the winds of sleep arrive from the field of dreams. Then they repeat the cycle the next day. How many of those people have any reasonable idea of how they will fund their retirement, where the money will come from, where it will go, how much will they need and how much should they save now towards that funding? Not many.

Continue reading →