EclecticLip

We went to the Steveston marina in Richmond on the weekend.  The fishers there priced their catch uniformly — which I’m assuming wasn’t an unplanned coincidence.  It’s unlikely any of them had a big enough competitive advantage to undercut their peers and offer lower pricing to consumers.  Even if they did, they’d probably figure it better to pocket the extra profit instead risking being shunned by their partners-in-trade.  I believe Canada’s big banks work on the same system. 

On the weekend, it was determined that Barack Obama raised US$150 million in September.  This is:

(a) half the cost of the recent Canadian election

(b) one-and-a-half times the amount Canadian parties were allowed to spend during the entire campaign  (about Cdn$100 million)

(c) one hundred and fifty times the amount the Green Party raised during the entire campaign (!)

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I also caught Bill Maher’s Religulous.  It focussed on the big three Abrahamic (Western) religions.  I wasn’t that surprised*, if only because the main impressions of Buddhism and Hinduism for many in Maher’s audience, are probably shaped primarily by, respectively:

(a) a genial Tibetan monk prone to giggling
(b) Apu of Kwik-E-Mart fame

* Richard Dawkins also gave the eastern ones a bye in The God Delusion