Castuserraticus

Sigh Big fish, warm water, dry flies, no snow on the ground.

Ed Stelmach is definitely a liberal. The NDP mantra is tax and spend big, the Liberal mantra is tax and spend medium, and the Conservative is to tax and spend small. It makes me sad. The energy industry is voting with money and jobs are leaving where companies have the choice. For small companies like mine, it's more difficult to pull up stakes and find projects in areas where the government is friendlier. I run the numbers on projects several times a week. This province is a tough place to invest. I disagree with bringing Klein back as his policies for education and health care helped create problems we see today.

Rickr - the US military is all about brute force. There's a book called "Blink" that has a true story within it about an American Admiral who was assigned to represent the "enemy" for a war games scenario. He devised a strategy, based on resources available to the middle eastern terrorist, that resulted in the disabling of nearly the entire on site US fleet in a surprise attack. The war game planners were flummoxed so they changed the rules to restrict his options and ran a successful scenario. This was done in preparation for the "successful" invasion of Iraq.

Sounds like a manager I worked for in the past after a 2 day brainstorming session. "Thank you all for the input. We're not going to follow your recommendations."

That sprayed a bit of tea out the nose.

I talked with a friend who used to race one of the amateur circuits. According to the car junkies, there are big differences between different refiners. Porsche mechanics recommend Esso and PetroCanada and discourage using Shell. They really dislike Husky's ethanol blends and any of the independent refineries/sellers. Canadian gasoline is better than US gasoline. BC gas has higher sulphur content than Alberta gas so produces more emissions. The lotus land people blame the smell on eating too much granola while chanting to statues of David Suzuki. My friend figures I fluked out that my motor had an affinity to premium or it may have had the chip changed. He gets noticeably better power in his porsche with mid grade over regular but doesn't track mileage. Wind wasn't noticeably different on the 2 trips and cruise control was set the same. The tire pressure was good on both trips. The mileage I got on the first trip was within the rated range of the vehicle. Since the historical refining profit margins are in the order of 6% or less I don't see any marketing windfall there. I don't mind paying 10% more for a 20+% increase in fuel economy unless it's going to hurt the engine.

It sounds like you had single-minded focus and were successful at it.

That would be great!! Shanahan will have many choices though.

Emergers rock. My eyes are middle aged. (Do they make size 20 hooks with size 3 eyes?)

?? overcombustion = running too hot?? I did not notice anything - still cooler than when I'm pulling the tent trailer.

Last November I did a road trip with a business partner from Calgary to Bonnyville for work. I got 18-21mpg with my '99 4runner. Last week I did the same trip alone and got 26+ mpg. The main difference is I filled up with premium (91 octane) for the latest trip. I'd heard burning premium on a long trip was like giving your engine a tune-up. I was astounded at the increased fuel economy (+25%) and there was noticeable power improvement. The premium is ~10% more expensive but the trip was still cheaper. The 4runner is rated for 21mpg hiway. Has anyone else ever experimented like this?

At that price it's definitely worth looking at. mkankmike is a mechanic at a Chrysler dealer in Canmore. Send him a note. The high mileage is not necessarily a big concern if they kept up with the oil changes.

There are at least a couple of guys who have been dragging chains in the bow for years. One swore at me when I questioned the legality of doing it - he's fished the river for over 20 years using the method. I saw another guy at the Carseland launch who had a length of chain in the bottom of his jet skiff. They drag about 5 ft of heavy logging chain and it works well to control their drift speed. One guy can fish from a drifter this way. They leave long thin lines of clean rocks behind them. This undoubtedly increases the concentration of bugs in the water column for a short distance downstream of the boat. As for suspending the chain, that's questionable. I understand the theory would be the same as a wind anchor on still water. In a river, the surface water moves faster than the bottom water. Anything hung down into the bottom water would tend to slow the drift down. It seems to me the chain bundle would have to be close to the bottom all the time to make a difference. In shallow riffles it would drag.

So are there health benefits for people around the "gas producer"? I could make a fortune!!!

My cult is better than your religion.

Your world is a happy place.

But people's opinions rarely do so most of us no longer choose to get drawn into this debate again - unless it's for the quiet pleasure of picturing someone turning purple on their keyboard as they indignantly respond to my well thought out analysis. We'll have a definitive answer in a few hundred years.

I classify Canada as conservative socialist. We haven't had laissez Faire capitalism for a long time. When there are funding issues with social programs the government listens to the actuarials and adjusts the payroll deductions. And we have protection of property rights and the freedom to make whatever we want of our lives. I think we have a real good balance.

It's scary. The Liberals think we'll happily pay the government all year for the pleasure of a tax refund the next spring. Layton is running around the auto sector towns promising untold riches if elected. He's going to single handedly rescue the continental auto industry by poring money into S. Ont? It's a good thing there's this endless flood of energy dollars in those dopey western provinces. Everyone there is so rich they won't even notice $billions being sucked out. Ontario can repatriate all those people who left the province seeking well paying jobs. They were used to paying higher taxes and working in government subsidized jobs in dying industries so it will be an easy transition back. It would be lovely if we could alleviate poverty, increase social benefits, and put a new car in every driveway. Unfortunately, we're dealing with people. More money never solves a money problem. If this wasn't true, millionaires would never go broke and people from poor backgrounds would never become wealthy. These parties somehow believe they can provide high paying jobs to poor people by taxing to death the companies that provide the high paying jobs. A multi year international study released earlier this year looked at the effects of tax increases on employee income. Irrespective of political or ideological system, for every $1 tax increase by governments payrolls, on average, dropped by $1.25. This massive study showed how hollow their promises of prosperity are. A GOVERNMENT CAN NOT TAX YOU INTO PROSPERITY. It's been tried innumerable times through history and has never worked.

Signed and broadcast.

Conductivity is related to which ions are dissolved and does increase with concentration. There are variations in the electrical effect of different minerals but there's a reasonable relationship between TDS and NaCl equivalent TDS and conductivity. When the mineral concentrations become too high they become poisonous. Cell biochemistry holds a pretty delicate balance via osmotic transfer but there are plants and bugs adapted to many different salinities. There are rich, buy highly specialized plant and insect communities surrounding brackish sloughs in E Alta and Sask.

A famous economist (Friedman I think) hypothesized that stability creates instability. After a generation or two, people forget why the rules were put in place. The assumption becomes "We're in a a new era of perpetual growth/stability". So, the rules are relaxed to allow greater creativity. "Give them enough rope to hang themselves" comes to mind. Many believe that if we can just put enough regulations and oversight in place we can prevent problems from happening. Human ingenuity can always find ways around barriers. Also, who sets the rules? A panel of experts? The talking heads are very good at providing infinite variations of who's to blame and what they would have done. This is not helpful at all because every new situation has new causes and effects. Which of the experts has a true handle on a problem that is in the development stage? I watched this situation develop via the perspective of several analysts who picked out different aspects of potential problems. None of them anticipated the collective result. Sub prime is the visible face but the true overall problem is credit gone wild. Providing loans became a competitive worldwide industry where $billions were made. Look at Iceland. The bank loan portfolios were worth more than the national GDP. Banks that saw other institutions raking it in joined the party. Canada seems to be the island in the storm. While credit standards were somewhat relaxed our conservatively socialist culture does not seem to buy into excesses. It just seems so obvious that loans to people/companies with bad credit is not a good thing.

Very interesting. A problem this large had to have a long history. Adding in rampant securitization compounded the willingness of banks to take on lower and lower quality customers because they didn't have to carry the loans on their books.

The "Hump Day" title indicated a different flavour of joke. Yes - we're idiots.

For a highly informative and balanced view of financial markets overall google John Mauldin and sign up for his free e-letters. Following his analysis saved me a lot of pain.