http://www.jpost.com/MiddleEast/Article.aspx?id=219508
I feel like we've descended into crazy town with Iran. Not sure if I like the fact that one of the most oppressive leaders in the world might be kicked out of office by someone as equally oppressive and devious. Can't say the reason didn't make me chuckle though.
"Allies of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad were arrested this week for being "magicians" and invoking spirits, Iranian website reported on Wednesday."
Watch out Penn and Teller!
Friday, 6 May 2011
Wednesday, 4 May 2011
On how me and a friend could have been Canadian MPs.
Just a footnote before we delve into more stuff, since I thought this was an amusing story to share to everyone.
Basically, for people who don't know about the wonderful mess that happened in the Canadian elections and specifically Quebec, the NDP ran up from one seat in the province to 58, crushing the separatist Bloc Quebecois by unseating their party leader, and pretty much reducing the Bloc to the hinterlands by stealing all of their seats.
How this happened is still a little beyond me, though it seems to indicate that Quebec has finally tired of the Bloc and that the NDP had the right message and platform. Social justice has always been a strong theme in Quebec. It also doesn't hurt to have a charismatic and positive leader like Layton.
I volunteered for Mulcair's campaign in the Outremont riding, which had been the sole NDP seat after the 2008 elections. I met a few other volunteers---some of which are now MPs. Quebec elected a few student MPs, a bartender who doesn't know how to speak French and was vacationing in Vegas during the campaign, and other assorted randoms. It's a bit hilarious really. One of the MPs is the youngest MP ever elected to office at nineteen years of age, which I guess means you can't exactly say the youth are apathetic anymore when they're actually running our country.
I joined the campaign a bit too late, but I had a friend who was going to submit candidacy papers---but he didn't want to be sent to a random district.
Well, guess what happened to the people sent to random districts? They won overwhelmingly, despite the fact that sometimes they never stepped foot in the riding, were actually told not to speak in the media, and forbidden to actively campaign. Basically, they were a face and a name, and a nice still photo to put on posters and websites, but somehow they still carried entire districts. They beat cabinet minsters and parliamentary veterans despite the fact that many came into this race never expecting to win. I guess the old saying is true---a rising tide raises all ships.
If I had joined the campaign just a bit earlier, and if my friend had submitted his papers, this might have been a blog that would be written and frequented by two members of Parliament. While there's probably some Churchillian bit about the stupidity of the average voter embedded in the moral of this story, I cannot help but say that on that election day, Canada proved me to me that there truly were no barriers to election (age, race, sexual orientation, some would argue merit with how the orange wave progressed). Perhaps the one thing we can all take from this is that in Canada and other developed democracies, we are rapidly approaching the point where nothing will stop a good set of principles and ideas from blossoming into action and power.
Basically, for people who don't know about the wonderful mess that happened in the Canadian elections and specifically Quebec, the NDP ran up from one seat in the province to 58, crushing the separatist Bloc Quebecois by unseating their party leader, and pretty much reducing the Bloc to the hinterlands by stealing all of their seats.
The Orange Wave In Action
How this happened is still a little beyond me, though it seems to indicate that Quebec has finally tired of the Bloc and that the NDP had the right message and platform. Social justice has always been a strong theme in Quebec. It also doesn't hurt to have a charismatic and positive leader like Layton.
I volunteered for Mulcair's campaign in the Outremont riding, which had been the sole NDP seat after the 2008 elections. I met a few other volunteers---some of which are now MPs. Quebec elected a few student MPs, a bartender who doesn't know how to speak French and was vacationing in Vegas during the campaign, and other assorted randoms. It's a bit hilarious really. One of the MPs is the youngest MP ever elected to office at nineteen years of age, which I guess means you can't exactly say the youth are apathetic anymore when they're actually running our country.
I joined the campaign a bit too late, but I had a friend who was going to submit candidacy papers---but he didn't want to be sent to a random district.
Well, guess what happened to the people sent to random districts? They won overwhelmingly, despite the fact that sometimes they never stepped foot in the riding, were actually told not to speak in the media, and forbidden to actively campaign. Basically, they were a face and a name, and a nice still photo to put on posters and websites, but somehow they still carried entire districts. They beat cabinet minsters and parliamentary veterans despite the fact that many came into this race never expecting to win. I guess the old saying is true---a rising tide raises all ships.
If I had joined the campaign just a bit earlier, and if my friend had submitted his papers, this might have been a blog that would be written and frequented by two members of Parliament. While there's probably some Churchillian bit about the stupidity of the average voter embedded in the moral of this story, I cannot help but say that on that election day, Canada proved me to me that there truly were no barriers to election (age, race, sexual orientation, some would argue merit with how the orange wave progressed). Perhaps the one thing we can all take from this is that in Canada and other developed democracies, we are rapidly approaching the point where nothing will stop a good set of principles and ideas from blossoming into action and power.
Tuesday, 3 May 2011
Five Economic Myths I Would Love to Shatter-#5 (The Time Machine/Interest in a Bank Scheme)
I'm feeling real good about things lately, so let's get into some more humor-provoking stuff.
You've all seen it before. Guy goes into some kind of slumber, wakes up, and then he's like "OH GEE WOW, I'M RICH NOW, CAUSE THE BANK BE GIVIN ME INTEREST WHILE I BE DEAD".
The alternative "clever" version of this is someone from the future coming back into the past and actually setting up a bank account for themselves and therefore making mad amounts of profits in the future. This, fittingly enough, was proposed in Luke Wilson's Idiocracy, which we'll deal with later.
The reason why this doesn't work
Actually, it's quite simple if you realize the first rule of economics/finance---namely that the banks are always out to screw you.
Any interest rate the bank offers you is nominal, and does not account for inflation, or the loss of purchasing power that comes with it. One of the first things anyone learns in finance classes is how to calculate the real interest rate. For simplicity's sake, that can be aggregated, for discussion purposes, into this simple expression: real interest rate=nominal interest rate-inflation, which fully reflects the fact that any money you get is balenced out by the decline in purchasing power of this money.
The rate of inflation varies from country to country. In the United States, it typically hovers around 2-5%, although in the past (especially in the 1980s), it has shot up to around 14%.
So what did Bank of America offer its' regular savings customers?
0.05% Annual Percentage Yield. Seriously. You minus inflation from that (averaged out to about 1.5% for the whole of 2010), and you're actually losing 1.45% a year in purchasing power (but gaining 0.05% in green, official-looking paper!). I was so shocked that I actually had to ask a Bank of America Live Chat representative whether this annual percentage yield was in nominal or real terms, which he had no idea about. Finally, I asked him whether it accounted for inflation (how is it that I know more about banking than a bank representative? o_o)---and he quite simply said no.
This doesn't take into account the fact that you are sacrificing opportunity cost by not investing your money into stocks or hell, risk-free bonds, that would offer much higher average returns (and in the case of risk-free bonds, essentially, well the same risk). It doesn't take into account the fact that if America continues her current policies, the American dollar will be further devalued and lose purchasing power relative to other currencies. Finally, it doesn't account for a world where the bank you deposit in will have collapsed, or one where alien overlords have enslaved mankind.
basically, you're getting screwed
You've all seen it before. Guy goes into some kind of slumber, wakes up, and then he's like "OH GEE WOW, I'M RICH NOW, CAUSE THE BANK BE GIVIN ME INTEREST WHILE I BE DEAD".
The alternative "clever" version of this is someone from the future coming back into the past and actually setting up a bank account for themselves and therefore making mad amounts of profits in the future. This, fittingly enough, was proposed in Luke Wilson's Idiocracy, which we'll deal with later.
| Yes, hi, I'd like to open up a savings account. I plan to deposit my money for three thousand years. |
The reason why this doesn't work
Actually, it's quite simple if you realize the first rule of economics/finance---namely that the banks are always out to screw you.
 | |
| Three thousand years, you say? |
Any interest rate the bank offers you is nominal, and does not account for inflation, or the loss of purchasing power that comes with it. One of the first things anyone learns in finance classes is how to calculate the real interest rate. For simplicity's sake, that can be aggregated, for discussion purposes, into this simple expression: real interest rate=nominal interest rate-inflation, which fully reflects the fact that any money you get is balenced out by the decline in purchasing power of this money.
The rate of inflation varies from country to country. In the United States, it typically hovers around 2-5%, although in the past (especially in the 1980s), it has shot up to around 14%.
So what did Bank of America offer its' regular savings customers?
0.05% Annual Percentage Yield. Seriously. You minus inflation from that (averaged out to about 1.5% for the whole of 2010), and you're actually losing 1.45% a year in purchasing power (but gaining 0.05% in green, official-looking paper!). I was so shocked that I actually had to ask a Bank of America Live Chat representative whether this annual percentage yield was in nominal or real terms, which he had no idea about. Finally, I asked him whether it accounted for inflation (how is it that I know more about banking than a bank representative? o_o)---and he quite simply said no.
This doesn't take into account the fact that you are sacrificing opportunity cost by not investing your money into stocks or hell, risk-free bonds, that would offer much higher average returns (and in the case of risk-free bonds, essentially, well the same risk). It doesn't take into account the fact that if America continues her current policies, the American dollar will be further devalued and lose purchasing power relative to other currencies. Finally, it doesn't account for a world where the bank you deposit in will have collapsed, or one where alien overlords have enslaved mankind.
basically, you're getting screwed
 |
| Your face, after realizing you can only afford 20% of the Big Macs you would've been able to afford before you thought up this terrible plan. Also your face after realizing Future Earth's alien overlords don't make Big Macs. |
Canadian Elections-A Conservative Majority over the Orange Wave
It's a shocker. I volunteered for Mulcair's campaign and I voted NDP but I never expected this...
In brief, the Conservatives have a majority because the Liberals collapsed. Quebec went Orange CRAZY===to the point where I don't even think they realized who they were voting for, not that it mattered anymore.
Sovereignty is probably dead with Duceppe gone---
Change is in the air, and all that good stuff.
In brief, the Conservatives have a majority because the Liberals collapsed. Quebec went Orange CRAZY===to the point where I don't even think they realized who they were voting for, not that it mattered anymore.
Sovereignty is probably dead with Duceppe gone---
Change is in the air, and all that good stuff.
Sunday, 1 May 2011
The People's Budget
An interesting alternative to the Obama plan (which I do not think cuts enough) and the Republican plan (which I think cuts in all of the wrong places).
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/national-affairs/americas-only-honest-budget-proposal-20110428
The budget proposed by the Progressive Congressional Caucus aims to balance the deficit by substantially reducing runaway military spending, and reinstating the estate tax, and higher tax brackets for the wealthy (as well as letting the Bush tax cuts expire.) It purports to be able to balance the budget by 2021, which is about 10 years before the Republican budget (a notoriously anti-progressive program that focuses on cuts from education, low-income services and welfare for the elderly). Of course, these are all claims, and politicians are notoriously bad at delivering on their promises---but this is a bold approach to balancing the books that should be acknowledged. At the very least, I hope this puts more pressure on the Pentagon to slash military spending.
Even the Economist, which usually leans to the right, hailed the Progressive Caucus on taking a fresh, bold approach to reducing the deficit.
http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2011/04/debt_proposals
One thing's for sure---we can no longer ignore the catastrophe that is slowly unfolding before us.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/national-affairs/americas-only-honest-budget-proposal-20110428
The budget proposed by the Progressive Congressional Caucus aims to balance the deficit by substantially reducing runaway military spending, and reinstating the estate tax, and higher tax brackets for the wealthy (as well as letting the Bush tax cuts expire.) It purports to be able to balance the budget by 2021, which is about 10 years before the Republican budget (a notoriously anti-progressive program that focuses on cuts from education, low-income services and welfare for the elderly). Of course, these are all claims, and politicians are notoriously bad at delivering on their promises---but this is a bold approach to balancing the books that should be acknowledged. At the very least, I hope this puts more pressure on the Pentagon to slash military spending.
Even the Economist, which usually leans to the right, hailed the Progressive Caucus on taking a fresh, bold approach to reducing the deficit.
http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2011/04/debt_proposals
One thing's for sure---we can no longer ignore the catastrophe that is slowly unfolding before us.
America needs to solve that problem---without resorting to this.
 | |||
| Pictured: "The Path to Prosperity." |
 |
| Pictured: America after the "Path to Prosperity" |
Democracy
الديمقراطية
民主
Demokratie
демократии
민주주의
δημοκρατία
here's to hoping, in all the languages of the world, that someday everyone will be able to choose their leaders.
going to vote tomorrow, with all those who cannot in mind
民主
Demokratie
демократии
민주주의
δημοκρατία
here's to hoping, in all the languages of the world, that someday everyone will be able to choose their leaders.
going to vote tomorrow, with all those who cannot in mind
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