Encyclopedia Screwedica

Income Trust Teaches Us The Meaning Of Diversification

Mulder

Every investment advisor teaches new investors the meaning of having a “diversified” portfolio. This is a way we hedge against a particular sector being hit too hard and wiping out our savings. It involved looking at how risky you are willing to get and then balancing your portfolio to ensure a proper distribution between growth funds, income funds, sector funds, bond funds and any others you may want to be invested in.

I myself started my RRSP when I got my first full time job because I read a great book called The Wealthy Barber which taught me a lot about investing. It taught me the value of life insurance. It taught me the value of dollar cost averaging and it taught me the value of diversification so that when a particular sector gets hit for ANY reason, the savings don’t get completely wiped out.

If you held a big percentage of your savings in Income Trusts or if your financial advisor had you do so, then shame on you and shame on him or her. You should have been better diversified.

CTV Wrongly Goes Ambiguous In Defence Of A Canuck

Mulder

This morning on Canada AM, the crew I enjoy watching threw a curve ball out there when discussing the stem cell research position Michael J. Fox holds and the criticism Rush Limbaugh gave Mr. Fox. The conversation appeared to make Rush Limbaugh out to be a monster for criticizing Michael J. Fox’s promotion of candidates who support stem cell research.

I am one who thinks Rush may have crossed a line and I was glad to hear he apologized, but I must point out that CTV made Michael J. Fox sound like a hero without giving the story due diligence.

There are many types of stem cell research, as I have reported in the past. And for Michael J. Fox and the CTV to not differentiate which ones are being discussed is wrong. From Mr. Fox’s perspective, he has a vested interest in any research which may cure his Parkinson’s so he is biased. From the CTV’s perspective, they should report the differences.

These include the fact that Adult stem cell research has cured many things, as has umbilical cord stem cell research, whereas embryonic has not cured anything. The first two are legal in most western nations. It is the embryonic stem cell research that is in question.

I think both Mr. Fox and the CTV need to do a bit more homework.

Media Bias Blatant In Coverage Of Polls

Mulder

A few days ago, a poll came out announcing that the federal Liberals and federal Conservatives were neck and neck in the eyes of Canadian voters.  The press coverage of this poll was in every newspaper and on every news station I turned on.

Two days ago, Environics released a poll that indicates the Tories are 9 points ahead of the Liberals yet no one covered it.

This morning I heard about this poll on Lowell Green’s show and was simply shocked that no one covered this poll in the press.  Apparently this poll was over a three week period and the poll indicating a tie was over a two day period at the tail end of the Environics poll. I agree that two polls can have different results depending on the period of time and length of polling time, but for two polls so close together to have such different results is rare (albeit possible).

My main beef is that the press chose to cover the one that that puts the Liberals in a better light and ignore the one that has the Tories a full 3 percentage points better off than on election day last January!!

Environics Poll

Can't Get Sex Out Of Your Television? Stop Watching Those Cheese Commercials

Mulder

I just saw a commercial that really got my goat.

A young lady, sort of trashy looking, reorganizing a bathroom medicine chest to add her own products which then cut to that annoying old lady from the cheese commercials talking to a guy in boxers in the doorway of his bedroom and she says:

Can’t get your one night stands to STAY one night stands? Stop cooking with cheese!! Don’t put Canadian Swiss in her grilled cheese. Next she’ll have you buying a minivan!.

Call me a prude, but does this need to be in a commercial? I mean really. It’s a cheese commercial that is tying in one night stands. I can understand it if they had a couple of pieces of cheese talking about relationships going bad or getting old and moldy, but one night stands??

Come on folks. Stop using sex to sell things.

Ottawa Light Rapid Taxpit … errr … I mean Transit

Mulder

A couple of weeks ago, I was down in San Jose for a couple of days for work and I managed to snap a couple of cell phone photos of the LRT system used. This is similar to the system that is planned for the city of Ottawa. It is based on electricity with train like street cars that get their juice from the overhanging wires. Like we had last century.
Let’s take a look at the San Jose LRT and see what we can expect from our system.

San Jose LRT 1

Notice the overhead wires?? How lovely for our city to have such nice wires strung across our view of the lovely blue sky.

Can’t see them? Look at the picture below. They are much nicer. Think of how many kites our city will be able to catch and resell at a profit!!
San Jose LRT 3

See how they contrast so nicely on the blue? It will give our eyes something joyful to focus on. Who would want to stare at that lovely blue sky all by its’ lonesome anyway.

Oh, and in case you just can’t get enough, check out this lovely rat’s nest that happens where routes split. We will have lots of these as spurs as the system grows. It’s such a nice pattern. It reminds me of a spider’s web. And our green environmentalista ridership will appreciate the natural artistry of a spiders web won’t they!! And if they can’t appreciate that, they can appreciate the system not using diesel electric trains. Instead they will run on juice provided by the power grid that supplies our homes. We all know how reliable that system is. It means our city of Ottawa will not get those noxious diesel fumes. Instead. we can now slough it off on the area surrounding the coal fired power plants in some other part of the province. How nice of us to have clean air at someone elses expense. Mayor Bob was a genius with regards to this aspect of the plan.
San Jose LRT 2

Below is a picture of one of the stations for posterity. It looks pretty harmless. I also noticed that much of the LRT route in San Jose had lovely trees lining it to try to hide it from the view of the public. But lucky for us in Ottawa, those overhead wires will not have the foliage to hide them with our long winters. Oh joy, oh bliss!! We get to look at the spider’s web of wires!!

San Jose LRT 4

I hope my sarcasm came through in the above info. I am very thankful that Minister Baird is putting conditions on the federal funding for this money pit. The city has apparently overhestimated ridership.

Check this out. The route runs North South. The bulk of traffic is East West and our East West highway is packed during rush hour and the city decides to implement a “no idling” law for people who sit in cars that are not moving. The irony is astounding.

I, for one, am glad that Minister Baird is holding this LRT up for our new city council to decide on. The whole plan was shrouded in secrecy and I have a feeling that cost overruns are going to cost us all a hefty tax increase to compensate for the lack of ridership.

Is Forced Sharing Communism?

Mulder

Yesterday at the dinner table, my wife was talking to Cookie about pencils. Cookie, my 10 year old daughter, commented that they don’t have their own pencils at school.

This made me perk my ears up a bit to listen closer.

She then proceeded to explain that in her class they have a box where they all put their pencils at the beginning of the year and when you need a pencil, you can just go up and get one from the box.

I distinctly remember pencils being on the school supply list which we, as parents, were asked to supply our children with at the beginning of the year. Now I am all for the school offering up a solution which has every student put ONE pencil into a community box which they can “borrow” from for a day when they forget their own. But for the whole class to lump ALL of their pencils into one community pile which the children draw from is not sharing. It’s communism.

Am I being paranoid? A few years ago, I remember that the kids had “1 Box of Facial Tissues” on their school supply list and the teacher took them all on the first day and kept one box on her desk the whole year for kids who needed them. What happened to parents who either kept their sick kids home or sent them to school with a pocketfull of tissues when they were sick?

I distinctly remember things like pencils and tissues and art supplies being paid for by the school when I was a child. Now we are not only forced to send supplies with our kids, but the school is forcing the children to share. Cookie knows well enough to let a friend borrow a pencil if they forgot one, but this classroom communism is pushing my limits a bit.

Someone tell me I am wrong (with a valid argument please!!)

Travel Propaganda Leans Left

Mulder

Last Wednesday I took off for San Jose, California on a work excursion. While travelling I began to notice the trend that left leaning MSM propaganda is everywhere.

Over the last three years, I have probably been on about 40 different business trips and stayed in dozens of different hotels. While on all these trips I can conclude the following.

1) The TV station of choice for displaying in American airports is CNN.

and

2) The newspaper that inevitably sits on my hotel room doorstep each morning is USA Today.

This doesn’t usually irk me until I sat down for my 3 hour layover in Toronto, looked up and saw that the Greater Toronto Airport Authority has partnered up with CBC to propagandize our travellers.

Maybe the fact that I saw as many people on laptops as I did watching the TVs was a good sign of the way things are moving in the world.

If anyone out there knows what is on other Canadian airport monitors, please feel free to comment. Since most of my travel was to the US, I am not as familiar with other Canadian airports outside of the TV in the smoking lounge at the Ottawa airport which was flexible. (I would consistently change the station to CTV newsnet whenever I had a chance)

As an aside, on this trip I got to run into Tim Powers, the Conservative pundit who is on Mike Duffy Live a couple of times a week and on CFRA weekly. I took a few minutes to say hi and let him know I enjoyed watching him spar with the other party pundits.

Office Of The Auditor General Fumbles The Ball With Enviromental Report

Mulder

I have often posted about the Kyoto Protocol and Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions on my blog but never have I been as outraged and upset as I am this morning.

I have been reviewing the Report of the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development and I am shocked that the Office of the Auditor General would release such a report with it’s partial information.

Imagine you eating a pizza everyday. Imagine a report on weight loss providing the breakdown of content of ONE SINGLE slice of pepperoni. Imagine a report on weight loss providing information on what the caloric breakdown of pepperoni was. And then imagine that same report recommending how changing ONE SLICE of pepperoni could help you reduce weight without addressing the caloric aspects of cheese, crust, sausage, mushrooms, green peppers and maybe even anchovies.

Believe it or not, this is what the report does with respect to GHG emissions.

The report provides great information about

a) the breakdown of GHGs released by developed countries, and
b) the breakdown of where Canada’s man made GHGs are produced by sector.

But without correlating this to the total amount of GHGs in the atmosphere and what percentage our man made ones are of this total amount, the report is useless. Again the fact that simple water vapour makes up 99% of the earths GHGs is ignored.

This is simply gross negligence and for the OAG to ask Canadians to act on this is gross misconduct. I am just disgusted that the report ignores the fact that our nation produces less than 1/100th of 1% of the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

So when someone tells you the earth is warming because of man made GHG emissions, tell them to stick water vapour in their pipes and smoke it.

Caribou Boo By The NDP

Mulder

I think Ann Coulter is rubbing off on me. While reading one of her books I distinctly remember that the caribou populations in Alaska were growing dramatically and that they frolic next to the oil pipelines and that the warmth from the pipelines may actually make them frisky.

So while watching my recording of Question Period today, hearing Dennis Bevington, NDP MP from the Northwest Territories state that the caribou is a way of life to the north and that their way of life is disappearing.

I think what Mr. Bevington really dislikes is the fact that big oil brings big money and jobs and a cash based economy to his riding. This is a major threat to him since there is no way for the government to tax caribou. Once northerners start making money and getting taxed, they may not be so apt to vote NDP.

Keep lying to your constituents and the rest of Canada Mr. Bevington. Some of out here know the truth about the caribou.

If you can’t see the video by clicking once on the image above, try clicking on the link below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STAiJs38lYw

NDPussies

Mulder

Canadian Casualties Through History

The Great War (World War I) – 1914-1918
Military Deaths – 66,655 (approximately 13,000/year)
Wounded – 172,950 (approximately 34,500/year)

World War II (1939-1945)
Military Deaths – 42,042 (approximately 7,000/year)
Wounded – 53,145 (approximately 9,000/year)

Korean War (1950-1953)
Military Deaths – 516 (approximately 125/year)
Wounded – 1042 (approximately 250/year)

Afghanistan (2001-2006)
Military Deaths – 33 (approximately 5/year)
Wounded – 129 (approximately 20/year)

Note: for annual approximation averages, whole calendar years were used even if the war only took place for part of that year (for ease of calculations)

ADDENDUM In case the above post was misconstrued, it was not meant to put down our military one bit. It is meant to tell those who want to cut in run in Afghanistan to go take a flying leap. If we had cut and run against Hitler, where would we be? If we had not helped South Korea from being overrun, we would not have such great companies like Hyundai or Samsung.

The mission in Afghanistan must continue because the Afghanis need us. These oppressed people need strong humans to help them live free. When schools are blown up because girls are allowed to attend, they need us. When teachers are tortured because they teach girls along with the boys, they need us.

I, and my whole family, are very proud of every single soldier who has set foot in Afghanistan on behalf of the NATO mission which has been sanctioned by the UN. Just because the NDPussies want to get out, doesn’t make this mission wrong.

Don’t be fooled by their pansy asses.