Sunday, June 08, 2008

i pick the ending


I have not been posting so much for a number of reasons. l'il solipsist is the biggest one, but I have been engrossed in other areas of study besides. I wrote a post over two days (many, many interruptions), and was just finishing, when blogger crashed it, and it was gone. I will try to reproduce it...

Politics are very interesting these days. I don't fixate on US candidate nomination races - that is all part of the "look at the pretty bauble", or the "lay back and think of England" type of distractions. Canada is a rudder-less ship over-taken by pirates who drink from lead tankards (it is the Canadian politics that have my attention lately).

I picked up a little snippet of curious information; the various churches, of various denominations, own 7-8% of all inhabitable land on Earth. That is a lot of land, and you can bet that those holdings are not mortgaged. Talk about cornering the market...

Driven to distraction by gas/energy prices? (pun intended) Do you think that it is "Peak Oil"? Hurricane Katrina? All those emerging economies like China and India? Horseship! This article on the Oil Pimps might have you revisiting those ideas. And you thought that price manipulation on a vast scale was unlikely...

This article entitled 20 reasons new megabubble pops in 2011 might have you thinking that all we "bears" who refused to buy over-priced Real Estate are actually pretty prescient, if not down-right genii. Those who bought in the last few years will be under water for a very long time, and may never recover their "investment". I smell a lot of foreclosures and bankruptcies in the pipe. I'm glad that I have respectable savings while the rest of the hemisphere has negative savings.

Still excited about the Olympics? An article over at The Republic has a few things to say about that. A couple of excerpts; (emboldening mine)
...the Olympics is not just the two-week show that happens on television in February 2010. It is a decade-long preparation process that includes real estate deals at a ferocious pace, road and rail and venue construction through zones that would never be allowed under normal, calmly-considered circumstances, and of course there is the ubiquitous security preparations comprising the biggest single expense item in the whole expensive affair.

...the IOC’s rules that insisted that publicly-released cost estimates for games preparations borne by the citizens of host cities cannot include allowance for inflation during future years of construction, even though all normal and routine budget plans for all projects public and private include calculations of the future value of today’s dollars over the course of multiyear construction projects. The purpose of this rule can only be to obscure the true costs for cities thinking about making bids to host future Olympic games.
Kevin Potvin goes on to explain that the only Olympic experience that Vancouverites will have is through television, and a city carved up by security perimeters (he neglects to mention the property tax increases and the years of living in a city under construction - with the concomitant traffic snarls, noise, dust, etc.)

My wife and I, and li'l solipsist are planning on being in Mexico for that time in 2010. We can't really afford it, but I won't be able to take running into military road blocks, etc. - especially as we can expect to see an American military presence here (thanks to Harper/Bush deal on that). I am likely to be shot, or at the very least arrested, in such a scenario.

This is all a bit of a pessimistic rant, but there is a bright spot; the neighbour who is flipping their house after 9 months are having an Open House today, and it is very quiet. Just a few tire-kickers, from what I can tell.

20 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm a sports fanatic to some extent, however I was opposed to the Olympics coming here all along. Hopefully, I will be living up in the Okanagan or Kamloops wating to score a nice, CHEAP house during that time. Good post.

pbell

seeker said...

I am set on getting out of here for that time also...since I'll have to watch on the tele anyway..IF I watch.

I have also been reading/hearing similar ideas about the oil issue. Things that make you go hmmm.

I went to an open house today. Too much money but a nice big lot in Fraserview. There were lots of people. Oddly enough I found myself getting irritated by their presence hahaa. Grumbling to myself that the place no doubt would be sold tomorrow.

Anonymous said...

From the oil pimps link Quote "While the oil industry has been spinning the myth that we are past peak oil (and that's why we have to pay more for each barrel of oil), they know that [a] oil is replenished by the Earth and [b] they are not about to create viable alternate sources of energy to compete with, and drive down the price of, oil. "

(a) oil is not replenished by the earth(what planet does this guy live on?)
(b) viable alternative energy is important but will never be a match for the amazing bounty of energy provided by fossil fuels.

I think high fuel prices from peak oil are here to stay and will serve as the pin to prick the Canadian and Vancouver housing bubble.

jesse said...

"I went to an open house today. Too much money but a nice big lot in Fraserview. There were lots of people."

I see aggressively priced properties still selling quickly. If it was staged well the emotions take over the greater fools right quick. Patience.

Art Vandelay said...

anon, that guy lives on Planet Marx. He actually called for the oil industry to be nationalized. Fidel Trudeau tried that; it didn't work.

The plethora of economic basket-cases he cites in support of his argument made me wonder if he was being satirical. If he was, and I missed it, I apologize.

markoz said...

I went to an open house in my neighbourhood (Main St. corridor between 41st and 49th) about three weeks ago. A very old house (70+) with an updated kitchen (still small) and bathrooms (modern, but cheap). $800,000!!! This baby will be on the market a looong time I smugly thought to myself. Well it sold in under 30 days. Will this ever end?

Anonymous said...

Anonymous 9:30, actually there is quite a lot of theory out there from scientists who would know that claim something called the abiotic oil theory, and they wuld suggest that peak oil is a scam to enrich oil companies. Which seems to be working.

Worth checking out. As the theory angers oilmen and their lobbyists every bit as much as environmentalists, it might well be true.

Tony Danza said...

I thought it was the abiogenic versus the biogenic theory? Anyway I know more than a few petrochemical engineers and geologists and more than a few believe in this theory, however they're really just amateurs when it comes to the science behind the theories.

Anonymous said...

Within the scientific community Abiotic oil theroy is akin to believing in intelligent design, its a splashy concept that appeals to peoples optimistic side but has 0 scientific supporting evidence, and as such is nothing more then pseudoscience.

seeker said...

Not versed in the oil theory enoughto comment but I thought I'd bring this beauty to your attention.

Been for sale for a while and for the life of me, I find that I shudder everytime I see the listing...only 698,000

MLS®: V707993 ( Single Family )
Excellent real restate opportunity! Solid bungalow w/ basement on a good corner lot, in much sought-after Killarney area. Hold now & build later. Excellent for self-use/investment. Don't miss out on this one! Showings Sunday 2-4 pm only.


http://www.mls.ca/PropertyResults.aspx?Page=5&Mode=0&vs=Residential&ret=300&sts=0-0&beds=0-0&baths=0-0&aid=3707&MapURL=%3fAreaID%3d6576&mp=0-0-0&mrt=0-0-4&trt=2&of=1&ps=10&o=A

(no doubt url won't work) I wish I could post the picture...yeeesh.

A real Hallowe'en house...you know, the kind you wouldn't walk up to no matter what candy they were giving away!

I laugh like a lunatic every time I read the realtors comments.

Anonymous said...

I thought it was the abiogenic versus the biogenic theory?

This is nothing but a red herring. We should have moved beyond this century-old+ technology long ago. It's a manipulated mindset.

And I agree with Sol. I plan on being in a nice warm climate somewhere in Mexico when the Winter Games debacle arrives in town.

solipsist said...

abiogenic versus the biogenic theory

I'm not a geologist, I just read, and weigh the balances of possibilities and probabilities.

Seems though, that this is well beyond theoretical. The Russians purportedly are extracting oil from 40,283 foot deep wells. It was written that no biologic matter is found deeper than 18,000 feet. That oil is coming from somewhere else.

It could be that tectonics have dragged that oil down in the distant past, but still, is there biologic matter down there too, I wonder.

I also read that a "dry" well in the Golfo de Mehico went back into production when it was found to have "replenished" itself. It was written in the same place that the oil was of a different geological age than the oil extracted previously.

I don't take everything I read to be factual, but I like to entertain ideas. I have never met anyone who knows everything, even in their own area of expertise. I doubt that anyone who has commented here is a geologist, and even if they were, their opinion would be tinged by the bias of their learning.

Climate change? We know just as little about that. Solar maxima, and a lot of other, unknown, little-understood stuff is going on. All of the planets in our solar system appear to be warming - without human imput. Is humanity a blight on this planet? No doubt.

The Mayans were brilliant astronomers, and calculated stellar movements back 100's of thousands of years, and far into the future - with an anomaly on December 21 of 2012. Some have speculated that we will have reversing poles at that time. It has been written in many prophecies about the sun reversing direction, and 3 days of night, likely observations in such an event.

At the centre of every galaxy is a black hole with intense gravitational and other phenomena. Our galaxy actually wobbles as it spins, and our solar system will be hitting that band of gravity, etc., in 2012. Expect weirdness.

If I remember correctly, these things happen every 36,000 years, or so, and is recorded in the geologic record.

Human knowledge is but a speck of what is, and I prefer to entertain ideas than to disdain them. But that is just my own preference.

Anonymous said...

In kits I've noticed a few listing go up last month, then after about four weeks the signs (without sale sticker) quietly coming down. I've NEVER seen that in Vancouver. When I first got here four years ago I thought they put them up in the first place with the sold sticker on just to save time.

I counted ELEVEN for sale signs on First avenue between trutch and dunbar - four on one block.

Strataman said...

"It has been written in many prophecies about the sun reversing direction," Try this site for a pretty good summary of magnetic variations as seen in geological record.
http://www.geomag.bgs.ac.uk/reversals.html

Anonymous said...

if you value your intellectual capabilities please read this site:

http://www.theoildrum.com/

they put abiotic oil to rest a long time ago.... wishful cornucopia thinking

blueskies

Anonymous said...

...the various churches, of various denominations, own 7-8% of all inhabitable land on Earth...

I thought that was a good thing. I mean, like, we're all about returning the Dalai Lama to his rightful place as head of a theocracy, and all.

Anonymous said...

Interesting article in the The Republic(of east Vancouver) linked above.Good to see someone pulling back the curtains and trying to see a little of what is really going on.
Canadians are so trusting of their government and so few understand the real forces behind the scenes, namely the big business/government connections. Of course local groups have been monitored, and it NEVER mattered how many British Columbians voted yes or no for the Olympics.
Canadian citizens lost their political say long ago.
This about money after all. A LOT of money!

solipsist said...

intellectual capabilities

Of which I have realized, are rather limited. Alas.

returning the Dalai Lama

Pfft! Is he not capanle of returming of his own volition - as he left?

Canadian citizens lost their political say long ago.

Last night, I dreamt that I was dreaming of a deja vu. Knowing that it was a dream, I roamed freely, and unseen.

I am going to do a post (once I get the video reduced) about the copper chopper circling my house after I wrote the post with the link to The Republic.

solipsist said...

I've been trying to do a new post, but blogger (in fact all of Google's gadgets) won't work for me. I can sign in to comment, but not to post.

VANOC spies have hacked me!

seeker said...

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3340274697167011147

The energy non-crisis as told by Lindsey Williams