Buy/Sell or Sell/Buy?
Whichever we do, the results will be excellent. This is the paradoxical answer to the quiz posed by our stock markets recently. They’ve now become one of those IQ puzzles we’re so accustomed to. The market is volatile and everyone plus his dog is forecasting wild swings in the foreseeable future. Volatility itself is the clue to winning a fortune. Assume the worst, that the market swings down after you’ve bought. Just wait a day or two till it swings back up and sell pronto. In any other scenario, one’s options are easier. No problemo. You could even buy and sell the same amount of stock on Monday. If it drops in price, buy to cover your earlier sale. Wait a couple more days and sell the other half when it swings back up. Glory days. Talk about a sure thing. But don’t follow our advice. Goodness, no. Our lawyers tell us to make sure this is clear: do not follow our advice.
Calgary Mensa is growing by leaps and bounds. One explanation is Patricia Almost. Check out this month’s Events section for a sample of what’s happening. And get on board the prep for next year’s Regional Gathering. We’re talking games and puzzles and stretching the intellect till the pips squeak, all in the world’s most gorgeous setting.
This month, we do not study Calgary’s health care system, waiting times at hospitals, public transit interruptions, or traffic delays (inversely proportionate to expenditure). We publish no reports on political apathy. We ignore the performance of Alberta’s heritage fund compared to Alaska’s equivalent. Why? It’s provocative to foster dissent. We live in paradise. We’re content to send soldiers to die in a war they can’t win, that’s true, and the war is on the other side of the world, a country whose dominant product is heroin, that’s also true, but criticizing the war is frowned upon. It’s definitely gauche. We take another innocent look at it this month.
We glance at the colossal sums spent on war compared to pulling back from a global depression. Human beings are weird. It’s acceptable to dump vast sums into slaughter, but we meanly and with thin lips parcel out smaller amounts to prevent famine, disease, unemployment, illiteracy, and the like. Add currency shortage to the economic firestorms sweeping the globe and it’s a small stretch to food shortages and hoarding. Iceland is a harbinger of things to come in Canada, and we vouchsafe ourselves a brief look at the problems we may soon face. Other problems involve civil liberties and our propensity to throw them out the window. If you’re brown-skinned or have a brown-skinned friend, you may find your name on a CSIS or RCMP watch list. But you wouldn’t know till it’s too late. Best to stick to white sliced bread, right? Wrong? Safer surely to solve math puzzles than grapple with a government gone mad. Life’s too short.
Dirty tricks and politics seem to go hand in hand in the US. This isn’t a recent phenomenon. We look at a potted history of American lies and deception in the public arena. Joe the Plumber temporarily gained renown or notoriety; we see how and why, and gaze a bit behind the scenes.
The price of oil, now there’s a topic we can’t avoid. We get an ounce of historical perspective and, hey presto, things don’t look quite so bad. In fact, delusion and panic are the main elements in the picture. Good time for a vacation from the newspapers and TV. Read a book, fiction preferred. Though when we re-enter the world of suits, we have to ask where to place the few shekels we’ve saved. A bank, someone says. But which bank? Out of England comes the first systematic method which ordinary savers can apply to test the reliability of their financial institutions. Don’t judge by the Doric columns outside.
The sexist bias directed by the media against Sarah Palin should embarrass us all. Whatever her capacities or lack thereof, the double standard applied to men and women is degrading and a sobering reminder that prejudice is alive and well and as powerful as ever in public life. The same gender discrimination was directed against Hillary Clinton, but for the moment we look at Palin. See the study of the wardrobe issue in our Features section. And we remind ourselves that tribal and ethnic hatreds rage just below the surface of 21st century life. It follows that there will be other major wars. The only question is when and where. The longer we can delay them, the better. Or does this merely foster the foolish illusion that it’s as easy to finish a war as to start?
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