(Part 3) Top products from r/Calgary

I just finished reading this book to try and expand my background on this subject. I've always been against these kinds of massive events (and others, like publicly funded sports stadiums) as the benefits are always massively overstated and the IOC/FIFA/Team Owner walks away with everything.

https://www.amazon.ca/Circus-Maximus-Economic-Hosting-Olympics/dp/0815726511/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1487867513&sr=8-2&keywords=circus+maximus

That said, within the book lays out a couple of scenarios wherein hosting the games has been successful. The 1984 LA Olympics were a success, partly because they were in a similar scenario to what the IOC is in now. After Munich and Mexico City, the Olympics were seen as tainted. LA was able to leverage that in to a deal where they could use existing infrastructure, secured significant private funding, and actually had the IOC guarantee all operating losses.

Secondly, the 92 Barcelona Olympics. These were a success, to parrot the author, because the City used the Olympics to help achieve goals that it was already striving towards. After Franco fell, committees were put in place to revitalize Barcelona. Infrastructure, arena's, etc were already planned and did not have to be purpose built for the Olympics. The influx of tourism and global attention helped demonstrate that Barcelona was a world class city, so it proved to be a net positive.

When we look at other recent Olympics, nearly all of them have seen significant cost overruns. While Vancouver may have been profitable from an operations perspective, I don't believe that captures the actual infrastructure spend. The way the games are set up, the Organizing Committees come out ahead, while the City's themselves are left holding the bag. The IOC often asks specifically for new, purpose built facilities to host the games. These costs are massive and leave cities with older, useful stadiums and new, white albatross stadiums. The upkeep costs are then frequently overlooked when talking about legacy.

In light of Budapest dropping out of the 2024 bidding, and with many Scandinavian countries rejecting Olympic bids, I think the IOC is losing leverage. I believe it was a Dutch study that said it will only be countries with limited democracy who can host the Olympics/World Cup (I.e. Russia, Qatar, China) as they are the only ones who can divert enough funds to make it work.

Calgary has some significant infrastructure spends coming up, some of which would dovetail nicely with hosting the Olympics. If we can continue those programs and put forward a reasonable bid, I can live with that. If we instead have to build a bunch of purpose built stadiums that require additional money to repurpose (i.e. London's Olympic Stadium did not provide the legacy it was planned, costing more money and providing terrible atmosphere to West Ham United) then I am against it.

Edit To expand on these points now that I've done the survey, my biggest concern is that whatever benefits would be gained from hosting the Olympics can simply be gained by spending the money on those projects without the actually having the Olympics.

Within the book mentioned above, there was a study completed in the 90's looking at tourism and knowledge boosts. The '88 Olympics did provide a boost in recognition world wide for Calgary (mostly that it looked cold), but that boost was lost be 1989.

London actually saw a decrease in tourism during the year of the Olympics, which I think makes intuitive sense. While that does bring a huge number of people to a country, many more people who may have wanted to visit are going to be turned off by the prospective crowds and construction.

Long story short, I think the benefits are always overstated, because the folks pushing bids are those who stand to gain the most (hotel operators, construction companies, etc). The true benefits are minimal and can be achieved for the greater populous with smart civic planning.

The UBC engineering program is one of the best in Canada. U of S is great if you want to get into Civil Engineering, but is still very competent for Mechanical. I did quite a bit of research on this before I decided to go to SAIT for their Mech Eng Tech program instead; but limited to those two choices based on school performance alone, I would most definitely choose U of S.

"Wait, what?" I hear you saying.

Well, that's the thing. Your friend's daughter is likely not thinking about post-school factors even while she should be. In chapter 3 of the book David and Goliath by Malcom Gladwell, he explores this specific issue. What school you choose to go to as a young person determines almost everything about the rest of your life. A lot of research has been done on this concept, but the part that he chooses to focus on is based on the Big Fish-Little Pond effect theory. Essentially, if you go to a bigger, more prestigious school (Gladwell uses the example of UMaryland vs. Brown), you can reduce your chances of graduating by almost 30%. Given that the engineering discipline is already high-stress and a significant percentage of students do not finish their degrees, why would you make it tougher on yourself than you have to? All engineering programs, more or less, will teach you the same maths and concepts, and it's going to depend more on your motivation to learn them than anything else. In the book, Gladwell goes on to explain that students who graduate at the top of their class in smaller schools have better job prospects than those of the same initial SAT marks who went to 'prestigious' schools.

But seriously, buy your friend that book and make the girl read it before choosing. And tell her to go to U of S.
Please.

Edit: I may have found a PDF of the book online. This is probably not legal. I'll just leave it here on the internet for all to see.

I'm very inspired by Jane Jacobs, organic growth, and "density done right." I want to see more growth driven by the market, so long as those who are receiving the benefit are the ones paying the cost. The more choice, the better. I oppose Ward 11 communities having to subsidize growth on the outskirts of the city.

In Calgary, we see a focus on commuting people into a planned downtown core. Allowing more employment/education/housing options elsewhere enables a multitude of transportation options besides driving - if you so choose.

That's interesting, because a few of these ideas come out of Harvard. Daniel Goleman has done a lot of good work on leadership. If you want to improve your people skills, I'd recommend reading a bit of his work:

• Primal Leadership
  
• Emotional Intelligence
  

This rumour supposedly has to do with the high mineral content of the water creating greater crunch in the crust. It was disproven by Kenji Lopez-Alt in his book The Food Lab (https://www.amazon.ca/gp/aw/d/0393081087?psc=1&ref=ppx_pop_mob_b_asin_title). It’s a great read if you’re looking to understand the why behind food science.

It's hard to say what Trump has actually done, besides show up to rallies to spout insane drivel, but Cambridge Analytica very much ran a successful campaign to suppress the vote in key states to get people who were likely to vote for Hillary to stay home or vote third party instead.

You can read about the details in various in depth articles and even books on the subject.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/janetwburns/2018/05/19/cambridge-analytica-whistleblower-bannon-sought-to-suppress-black-voters/#2043e25e7a95

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/may/06/cambridge-analytica-how-turn-clicks-into-votes-christopher-wylie

https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2018/04/26/suppressing-us-votes-was-a-goal-of-cambridge-analytica-canadian-whistleblower-says.html

https://www.amazon.com/Zucked-Waking-Up-Facebook-Catastrophe/dp/0525561358

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULLJ_2MR0Ok Here's an interview with the author of Zucked, which gives an incredibly in depth, scary, and convincing look at the downsides of social media prevalence and Big Data. The part specifically about how Cambridge Analytica, via Facebook, helped swing the election is at 1:18:40 if you want to get 5 minutes on it.

This book helped me to understand which also is improtant before treatment. Best of luck.

https://www.amazon.ca/Quiet-Power-Introverts-World-Talking/dp/0739341243/ref=asc_df_0739341243/?tag=googlemobshop-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=293019384127&hvpos=1o3&hvnetw=g&hvrand=10019723557502606949&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=m&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9001337&hvtargid=pla-491151817107&psc=1

In addition to everyone's recommendations here, as an additional tool I highly recommend picking up one of Eckhart Tolle's books

This book is not a bunch of "spiritual mumbo jumbo". It contains tons of practical advice that we all can use. If it carries more weight with you, Oprah considers Eckhart's book one of the 10 favorite books from the last decade.

Mostly religious reasons, traditional taboo, etc.

Here's a fantastic book on the subject overall - https://www.amazon.ca/Here-Eternity-Travelling-World-Death/dp/0393249891/ref=asc_df_0393249891/?tag=googlemobshop-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=293027174108&hvpos=1o2&hvnetw=g&hvrand=7916633068069963334&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=m&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9001326&hvtargid=pla-304773371916&psc=1

This happens every year, often several times per year. The ants that fly are both males and virgin queens, and this is called a mating flight. Ants are really cool in that they are able to time the flight across different colonies and huge distances, so all the colonies send out their males and queens at the same time.

In about 24 hours all the males will have died, and the queens will land and lose their wings. They now have a few months to get the basics of a colony going before winter begins, and naturally only a small percentage will be successful.

Source: I've read this book.

EDIT: It's also called a Nuptial flight, and here is a Wikipedia article about it.

> The flight requires clear weather since rain is disruptive for flying insects. Different colonies of the same species often use environmental cues to synchronize the release of males and queens so that they can mate with individuals from other nests, thus avoiding inbreeding. The actual "take off" from the parent colony is also often synchronized so that predators cannot eat the ants one by one.

That would be quite the twist: https://www.amazon.ca/Naked-David-Sedaris/dp/0316777730/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1506615196&sr=8-3&keywords=naked+book

See if they have this book. http://www.amazon.ca/Death-Grizzly-Maze-Timothy-Treadwell/dp/0762736771

Plus give them a frying pan.

This is a so-so book, but relevant to the topic.

https://www.amazon.ca/Dominion-Wyley-McFadden-Scott-Gardiner/dp/067931105X

http://www.amazon.ca/Escape-Camp-14-Remarkable-Odyssey/dp/0670023329

and here's [your reply] (http://www.amazon.ca/Dude-Youre-Fag-Masculinity-Sexuality/dp/0520271483/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1456965122&sr=8-1&keywords=dude+you%27re+a+fag)

Not magic.

> Stats don't lie

Feel free to order these books online:

http://www.amazon.ca/How-Lie-Statistics-Darrell-Huff-ebook/dp/B00351DSX2/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1422311052&sr=8-1&keywords=statistics+lie

http://www.amazon.ca/Damned-Lies-Statistics-Untangling-Politicians/dp/0520274709/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1422311052&sr=8-2&keywords=statistics+lie

While some undoubtedly had an inkling of what was going on, given the National Socialist stance regarding jews was well known, there were only a few conflicting, first-hand reports of people that had escaped, and anonymous "reports" coming from Germany. Not high-quality, verifiable information. Remember, this was a time with limited instant communication and adding to that the fog of war, made information hard to verify.

But correct, given this and other reasons, was not the primary reason the Americans became involved in WWII (Canada came along when the UK declared war).

Anyone interested in the topic might find Novick's "The Holocaust in American Life" interesting.

You are a poor, uneducated piece of %$St. The famine in Ukraine was artificially organized by Stalin and his cronies.

Here, read and educate yourself before you continue to stomp on the graves of victims, you holocaust denier:

https://www.amazon.com/Red-Famine-Stalins-War-Ukraine/dp/0385538855

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor