it's Sabres season again

i was so completely engrossed in the new hockey season that i clean forgot to tell you all about it! well, now that i've said it.. hockey's here!

my beloved Buffalo Sabres are off to a hot start this time, and six games into this season we're 6-0-1, with that one loss coming on a shootout on Saturday.

of course, there's lots of places to find out more about my boys in blue.. the Sabres official site, the independent site Let's Go Sabres, and the headline tgp site Sabres Space..

here's two of the game's biggest stars, goalie ryan miller & forward thomas vanek.. more pics as the season progresses..

say more, do more

if you knock long enough, and hard enough.. you will be heard
if you keep saying it, and living it.. your example will be followed

Blog Action Day 2008 was a success as far as raising awareness, bringing up issues and giving voice to the voiceless.. see for yourself how many people came together to blog about poverty.

however, this is just the first step. again i ask every one of you, what have you done lately for anyone else?

who's lying this time?

as the US presidential election draws closer, both candidates seem to be getting more desperate. despite previous promises of not resorting to slander etc, there's been lots of name-calling, slandering, pandering and general rumor-mongering as each is trying to undermine the other.

all three presidential debates have been travesties blatantly ignoring the whole point of having these debates. the questions posed to the candidates are actually supposed to the let the voting public know what their candidates stand for. but instead of actually answering the questions, both idiots have instead flipped from switching topic to topic and flopped from telling tale to tale.

which then got me searching.. how many of the accusations are actually real? how much of the electorate actually bothers to check? do the candidates lie through their teeth because they know most people will not look up what is true and what is not? aren't the majority of us taken in by first impressions and false pretenses? an independent site (at least i think it's independent!!) called Fact Check actually takes these claims made and tries to research them, and is a good site to take a look at.

in the meantime.. we will hopefully end up voting for the lesser of the two evils.. if only we could find out in time which one of Obama and McCain is less of a liar and more of a doer.

Blog Action Day 2008 - Poverty

Today, on Blog Action Day, thousands of people worldwide have decided that we are going to unite to discuss a single issue - poverty.

In this world of "what have you done for me lately", what have you done for any one else lately? I'm not talking just poverty of the economic kind here, but emotional and moral poverty as well. Do we stop to care any more? What's our collective issue? No time, no money?

In case you're wondering.. what can you do, as an individual? We’re told that poverty can be eliminated within our lifetimes, but even so, most of us feel stuck when it comes to taking action. There are in fact a range of things that anyone can do. (Info retrieved from Blog Action Day 2008)

What is Advocacy?
Advocacy is speaking up. Before change can happen, decision-makers need to know that their customers, community and constituents want change. Advocacy is letting them know.

Consumer Advocacy
Many businesses are in a position to make positive changes, by letting them know that customers want those changes, we empower them to do so. Some examples of consumer advocacy are:

• Investing in “Ethical” funds that balance social responsibility with financial return - showing businesses that social responsibility is profitable
• Letting your local coffee shop know that you would buy Fairtrade coffee if they stocked it
• Buying clothing from a company that doesn’t make use of sweatshops, so that business sees the profit in being ethical.

Political Advocacy
Politicians are elected to serve the people, so it makes sense that if they have a clear mandate that their constituents are all in favour of something, they will be empowered to chase those goals. Political advocacy is about letting them know, and creating that mandate. Examples of political advocacy are:

• Writing a letter to your local government representative - yes they actually read those letters!
• Visiting your local representative to discuss issues relating to poverty - a little more daunting
• Signing petitions to be delivered to government officials

Community Advocacy
By creating community awareness we broaden the support base for pro-poor action to take place and create a general environment conducive to change. There are many projects that anyone can easily join which are designed for exactly this purpose. A great example is the Stand Up Against Poverty project that falls just two days after Blog Action Day (October 17-19). Participants simply stand up, sometimes alone, most often in groups, to send a message to governments that people demand anti-poverty targets be met. Last year 43 million people participated, this year no doubt will be even larger.

By organising a Stand Up group in a local school, church or other organisation, you introduce other members of the community to the cause and issues and inform and educate them so they themselves become advocates in their own right.

There are a variety of ways that we can use our professional skills in the fight against poverty, that simply require thinking out of the box. Here are some examples:

• Volunteering time with charitable organisations to provide specialist, professional skills
• Getting your business or workplace to engage in pro-poor research. For example industries like agriculture and health are particularly important to developing economies. However even industries like finance and computers can yield innovations like microloans and the 1 Laptop per Child project, that can be of tremendous benefit to the poor.
• Doing business in areas that are both profitable and beneficial to the needy. Bill Gates calls this “Creative Capitalism”, that is using the creative spark of entrepreneurship to bring the benefits of capitalism to the disadvantaged.

Giving is the simplest of all actions that can be taken. There are many, many charities that do great work and benefit from our contributions. Recently giving has also grown to encompass microfinancing - small loans given to entrepreneurs in developing areas to help them life themselves and their communities out of poverty. Participants in Blog Action Day 2008 are encouraged to donate their day’s earnings to either the Global Fund or Kiva Microloans. You can find out more about both these organisations here.

Information is the platform for better decision making, but all too often we don’t know much about what impact our daily actions have. Informing yourself and informing those around you, enables you to make better choices in daily life.

For more information on what you can do to raise awareness and make a difference, today and every day going forward, go on to Blog Action Day 2008 and let's do something!

money..

.. get back,
i'm all right jack keep your hands off of my stack..

'Money' - Pink Floyd

i don't want to comment much on the whole stock market fiasco from the last fortnight or so.. people don't believe my conspiracy theories anyways, but it is slightly fishy when the only people who walk away from all these crashes with their pockets bulging are the same people who make policies and decisions. is it just me who sees something amiss here?!

anyways, for people who have 401k and IRA accounts, you must be fretting and spending sleepless nights wondering if your mutual fund accounts are going to be decimated any more at this point. there are two concepts to keep in mind here:

1. Portfolio balancing act - depending on what stage of your life you are in, the mix between stocks, cash and bonds will vary. Cash and bonds are low risk, low return methods; stocks are high risk high return, and among stocks you have several sections: low, mid and high cap, foreign, growth, etc.
   
   The closer you get to retirement age the lesser chunk of your savings you want to be in stocks. What you have at this point is worth too many years of hard labor to risk frittering away in an attempt to gain a pittance.


2. Dollar-cost averaging - this refers to investing a fixed amount at regular intervals (e.g. monthly), regardless of market movements and, by doing so, more shares are purchased when security prices are low, and fewer shares are purchased when prices are high.
   
   This strategy is intended to moderate the volatility of a portfolio over time by minimizing one's exposure to the risk associated with investing a large sum of capital in one asset (or asset class) just prior to a sudden decline in the asset's value.

don't bother trying to predict the market's next upturn, or which stocks are going to rise tomorrow. what you want to look at is the bigger picture. emerging markets like china and india will slow down, but still have higher growth rates than the usa. russian markets will always be unstable. when investing in mutual funds, research as much as you can on the expense ratios, alpha, beta and r-squared values - these tell you whether the fund is flagrantly mismanaged or the account management knows what it's doing. remember, investment people have no obligation whatsoever to make money for you, even though you might be putting your entire life savings in his hands!

the stock market is cyclical, on a roughly five-year loop, but overall it will keep rising. it's hard to see that right now because we are at pretty much the lowest point of the cycle that started about 2002. so hang in there, read and ask questions. don't sit around passively thinking ol' uncle sam is going to save you. hold your local legislators accountable. ask them about their energy policies. ask them where they stand with subprime mortgages. your future is not in your hands now, you need to snatch it back.