Sunday, July 22, 2007

Glorifying Call Girls (Sugar-Babies), Johns (Sugar-Daddies), and Pimps (the Web-Master)??

To all the rich guys and beautiful girls.........


-------------------------------------------

MODERN DATING: SEEKING SUGAR DADDIES I'm yours - for just $5,000 a month

SIRI AGRELL

Josie, a 28-year-old publishing company employee from Montreal, loves to get dressed up and go for fancy dinners. She would also like whomever she is seeing to have a monthly budget of $3,001 to $5,000 (U.S.) dedicated to her whims.

Justin, a 24-year-old living in Fort McMurray, Alta., is primarily interested in sex, has a net worth between $1-million and $2-million and is willing to shell out more than $20,000 a month for the woman in his life.

Both have put this information out there on a site called SeekingArrangement, an online dating service that caters to people - including more than 2,900 Canadians - who want to be a sugar daddy or to have one.

"If you look at history, whether courtesan or geisha, such relationships have existed for centuries," says the site's founder, Brandon Wade, 36. "This is just taking it online." Mr. Wade insists that accommodating these partnerships does not make him a virtual pimp. "In prostitution, you exchange money for sex," he says. "In an arrangement, sex is not always involved or does not come into play until much later. This involves a component of romancing." Mr. Wade, who is married to a woman 13 years his junior, defines the sugar-daddy arrangement as a "mutually beneficial relationship, usually between a wealthy person and somebody who's really attractive." His site launched in July of last year and has about 100,000 registered members, with a wealthy-man-to-really-attractive-female ratio of 1:10 and Canada as its second largest market. Sugar daddies pay $35 a month, while "sugar babies" join free on the condition that they submit a completed profile and send in a photo.

Both men and women can pay additional fees to have their profile classified as "premium." Elizabeth Brown, a 22-year-old Toronto student, posted her profile a year ago and has so far met two men through the service. "I've only ever written to people who write to me first," she says. "You get some people who are sketchy and seem to be looking for escorts, which is weird because it's not that hard to find one in Toronto." She does not date men who are "much older" and agrees to a rendezvous only if she thinks she has something in common with her suitor.

"Honestly, it's just like regular dating," she says. "I don't meet up with people I wouldn't be interested in otherwise." Having recently ended a serious relationship, Ms. Brown says she is not looking for a commitment, which is why she chose SeekingArrangement.

"You're more honest about what it is you're bringing to the table," she says. "It's a lot easier to negotiate terms." And the terms negotiated by the site's 2,245 Canadian sugar babies and 716 Canadian sugar daddies can be amazingly specific.

Sugar daddy #126169, who claims to have a net worth between $2-million and $5-million, is looking for a smart woman with a nice body and pretty smile who "makes great salads." One Canadian sugar baby, who lists her occupation as "independent contractor," writes that she is "exceptionally orally skilled." Others are not so subtle. Sugar baby #147014, a 22-year-old from Toronto, describes herself as stunning. "Any man would be proud to have me on his arm or under the silks," she writes in her online profile. "I want my tution [sic] taken care of. In return I will show my gratitude in more ways than one!" A 20-year-old aspiring "glamour model" from Montreal says she is very turned on by power. "Ultimately," she writes. "I want a Sugar Daddy or Mommy who will provide me with breast-augmentation surgery." Some post pictures in which they pose with their children. A 19-year-old from Vancouver says she wants to live with her sugar daddy and another woman says she wants financial help buying her own home.

Toronto and Vancouver have the most users, although there are arrangement seekers everywhere from Drummondville, Que., to Dartmouth, N.S.

Mr. Wade says many of the relationships spawned on his site are long-distance, citing one sugar daddy who has reportedly "had significant success" flying girls to his Caribbean island.

Two people have cancelled their memberships because they are getting married to someone they met on the site, he says.
And Mr. Wade's 33-year-old sister has also used the service to meet two men, one of whom she is now dating. They meet once a week for lunch or dinner, and she is paid $4,000 a month.

So is he uncomfortable with that? "I, um, kind of, uh, was surprised at first. But no, I'm not," he says. "She tells me she's never had sex with him."

Monday, July 09, 2007

Very Interesting Article from the National Post!!

This is a very interesting article, about the press in China. I am totally surprised that a Chinese paper is allowed to publish such an article.

In the mean time, it is pretty scary if Edmonton and/or Calgary (or Alberta) is really thinking of implementing rent control. There is a saying by an economist (I forgot whom) said that rent control is the second-best way, other than nuclear bombs, to destroy a city. Let's hope this will not happen anywhere in Alberta.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

PUBLICATION: National Post
DATE: 2007.07.09
EDITION: National
SECTION: Editorials
PAGE: A12

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Beef noodles and Economics 101

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

There is an interesting controversy in north China at the moment, one that involves a staple of the country's culinary heritage. Mention the city of Lanzhou to any mainlander and one of the first items he will imagine are the delicious stretched yellow noodles served locally with beef, clear broth, radishes and caraway. According to one travel guide, a Lanzhou resident is literally defined by the beef noodles he eats.

Lanzhou beef noodle bowls have traditionally been an affordable treat, but last spring the average local price of a large serving suddenly jumped from 27 cents to 31 cents -- no small change in a city far from China's metropolitan centre, where many people are still living on Third World incomes. The resulting outcry was so great that it reached the pages of The New York Times. A Communist party-led investigation found that a cartel of noodle-shop owners had agreed on a price increase and sent around an ominous circular urging colleagues to go along or face the consequences. But even the shop owners who opposed the cartel had to admit that their overhead, particularly in the costs of labour and beef, had risen.

Recently the city government of Lanzhou announced a special price ceiling on beef noodle bowls and declared that sellers who violated it would be punished to the full extent of municipal law. One might expect that this measure would be welcomed in a poor Communist society. But according to an op-ed in the Beijing Youth Daily (translated into English by the media and culture Web site Danwei.org), the local public has actually been quite skeptical. It turns out they do not regard the shop owners as inhuman predators, but as fellow citizens and enterprising artists who share the common burden of rising costs for health care and housing.

The market for beef noodles, observed the paper, is a highly competitive one with low barriers to entry, making it a poor target for regulation. "In a society whose prices are soaring upward, the majority of Lanzhou's beef noodle shops are operating on slim margins, so if they have no way to increase prices in response, then skimping on materials seems to be their only way out. If that is the case, then even if the price does not change, I'm afraid that so-called 'beef noodles' will no longer live up to their name." Another regional newspaper stated that "beef noodles are not a monopoly product, so the market will naturally adjust their price.... Under this argument, isn't the Lanzhou Price Administration Department a bit too broad in its management?"

Reading the array of press and popular response to the price controls, one can only stand astonished at the apparent political and economic sophistication of today's Chinese public. The editorialists and interviewees reacting to the beef-noodle regulations display an understanding that government intervention is not necessarily the right way to protect an essential piece of the country's cultural heritage; that entrepreneurs are the lifeblood of a nation; that price controls on a good are likely to discourage differentiation by quality, and encourage corner-cutting.

Are Canadians, on the whole, so well-informed and sensible? Here's a hint: hop on a plane tomorrow and fly to the most conservative province in Conservative-led Canada, and the first thing you will find (when you get to Alberta) is a Conservative government seriously debating price controls on rental property -- even though the immediate effects, known from decades of empirical study, would be to discourage both the upkeep of existing buildings and investment in new ones. It's like treating a tumour with a bullet. We can't last long competing with China unless we rediscover the competitive and libertarian instincts that we once had and that they seem to have acquired in what is, on a historic scale, a mere heartbeat.

Saturday, July 07, 2007

Study: Canadians and Their Non-Voting Political Activity

This is a pretty interesting study by Statcan. It could help political parties to narrow their recruitment effort.

Here is the full report, and this is a summary of the study.

It is True that Trade Lowers Inflation

The more I think about it, the more I believe that trade helps lower inflation.......of course, I still believe that the most part of inflation has to do with unemployment rate, productivity, and economic growth, but trade definitely got a role.


--------------------------------------------------

PUBLICATION: GLOBE AND MAIL
DATE: 2007.07.06
PAGE: L2
BYLINE: REBECCA DUBE
SECTION: Globe Life
EDITION: Metro

The no-China syndrome

REBECCA DUBE What would life be like without "Made in China?" Sara Bongiorni decided to answer that question last year, when she and her family resolved to stop buying products manufactured in China.

The answer: harder, and more expensive.

"From the time you get up in the morning to the time you go to bed at night, we are so closely interconnected with the Chinese economy," says Ms. Bongiorni, a business writer in Baton Rouge, La., who chronicles the yearlong experiment in her book A Year Without "Made in China" - to be released on July 15.

Food was the least of her challenges, she says, though the family accidentally bought chocolates, oranges and a box of candy canes from China. She didn't investigate the source of every ingredient: avoiding items marked "Made in China" was challenging enough.

When her four-year-old son needed new shoes, she realized how accustomed she'd become to paying $15 (U.S.) a pair at Payless.

She ended up going online and paying $68 for Italian tennis shoes - buying them two sizes too big so they'd last longer.

The toy aisle at Target inspired at least one breakdown from her long-suffering son, who wailed at one point 10 months in, "It's too long without China!" Permanently banning products from China from your life would require major adjustments, she says: "If you decide you won't buy anything from China, you have basically decided you won't own a telephone." Her year without China was more a social experiment than a political statement. She's gone back to her old buying habits - but with a new perspective on how much North Americans rely on Chinese imports.

"We are so quickly becoming interconnected to places we don't understand that are so far away," Ms. Bongiorni says. "There's just no easy, clear, neat choices you get to make as a consumer in this world."