Random links
- High-speed rail between Quebec City-Windsor could cost $21.3b: study
- Takes quite a while before the article has anything positive to say about high speed rail, telling of high costs and then net negatives. Then you discover that the core of the network would seem to generate a net profit - not the loss predicted by adding extensions to Windsor and Quebec City. "However, a project between Montreal, Ottawa and Toronto only could generate a positive net economic benefit at both 200 and 300 km/h." Quebec City to Montreal is the only time that I've ridden Via Rail though so I'd be a bit sad not to see it upgraded.
- The Mutual Fund Merry-Go-Round
- "individual investors should take control of their financial destinies, educate themselves, avoid sales pitches and invest in a well-diversified portfolio of low-cost index funds, like those offered by Vanguard, which operates on a not-for-profit basis. (Even [the research investment firm] Morningstar concludes, in a remarkably frank study, that low costs do a better job of predicting superior performance than do the firm’s own five-star ratings)."
- 'Free-range kids' benefit from safe streets
- The shocking (*gasp*) tale of area in Calgary in which kids might be allowed outdoors without direct adult supervision. "'You have to come to grips with the fact that even though things feel scarier than when we were growing up, they're actually safer,' she says by phone from her home in New York City. She rattles off some stats: Since the 1980s, child abductions have gone down and the number of children hit by cars has decreased."
- Is Harper putting dairy and poultry protection on the table in trade talks?
- Would be nice to have cheaper chicken / dairy though the Canada/US border is quite a drive away from my current location, but I've got my doubts. Of course Canada has some other types of restrictions on milk production that the US doesn't have, with Canada (and quite a few other countries banning bovine growth hormones