BP #43 – Pancreatic Cancer Canada

///Pancreatic Cancer Canada///

(TL;DR: donated $270 to Pancreatic Cancer Canada as a sincere thanks to everyone.)

As many of you know, Flight Centre (in the spirit of its Lowest Airfare Guarantee) did something very Santa Claus-like this week. I found a cheap airfare for a Christmas flight to Edmonton, they initially said “no” to beating it, the fare met the conditions of their “fly free” guarantee, and the company made the flight free for my partner and I by reimbursing $1348.04.

Flight Centre deserves recognition for this, as do the Dear Readers of TimelessFinance and hard-working consumer advocates like Ellen Roseman.

November is Pancreatic Cancer Awareness Month. It’s important that we don’t forget this horrible disease. It’s the deadliest cancer, but it receives only a tiny fraction of the funding committed to “better known” cancers (e.g. prostate or breast cancer). The biggest marginal improvements in screening and treatments will come from research on the deadliest cancers. Therefore I think donations to Pancreatic Cancer Canada (or, in the US, the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network) offer the biggest bang-for-the-buck as far as disease research goes.

I donated 10% ($135) of the rebate to Pancreatic Cancer Canada in honour of all of you. I also made another $135 donation in memory of my Dad who died in 2009 from this disease. I imagine he would have been extremely pleased by these events.

Thanks to everybody who made this donation possible.

///Catherine a.k.a. “Cat-got-your-tongue”///

///Mentions///

This website’s entry in the “best financial tip” campaign for financial literacy got a ton of mentions this week, so I’m simply going to list these mentions:

• Our tips got a highly approving nod from DQYDJ.
• FinanceFox mentioned it — Eddie also happened to be the winner of the $500 (congrats!).
• Dividend Ninja.
• LifeInsuranceCanada‘s official list of participating websites included TF.
• As did the list published by Canadian Capitalist, another of the contest’s supporters.

///Tweet(s) of the Week///

The Realtor whose article I referenced gave me a polite RT.

lol epic housing pornographer spouts typical Realtor nonsense truecondos.com/toronto-condo-… via @andrewlafleur Gotta make $ before the market dies!

— TimelessFinance (@TimelessFinance) November 17, 2012

///Keyword Fun///

Money-Smart Keyword Award goes to:

i want to go into trades but my parents said i have to go to university

Go into the trades, young man/woman. Build wealth, not debt. You can become a pretentious intellectual for free by reading TF every day.

Money-Stupid Keyword Award goes to:

telus lowest iphone plan 2012

lol wut? Keyword Award goes to:

my turkey is missing

Notably missing keyword to SEO-optimize this post by increasing the keyword density:

Pancreatic Cancer Canada

///YouTube///

Pow! Right in the kisser:

///Quote of the Week///

///Links///

1. Stunning research about persistent vegetative states has been produced by Canadian scientists. They used fMRI to monitor the brain activity of people in vegetative states. They asked the subjects to think of certain things, recorded their brains’ responses, and then used those images to ask yes or no questions. Just to put it out there: if I’m ever completely incapacitated, I want them to do this test. If I’m non-responsive then dope me up on pain meds and pull my ventilator plug or my feeding tube or take more direct action to end my life. Perhaps I need a personal power of attorney.

2. There is no doubt that free speech is threatened if not extinct on university campuses. More specifically, the voices of right-leaning students are being silenced by the threat of academic sanctions and vicious libel (e.g. “You support Israel? That’s HATE SPEECH!”). It’s no longer about academic discourse; it’s about catering to militant supporters of terrorist groups like Hamas.

3. Speaking of the recent conflict between Israel and terrorists: Israel is not the problem. A lot of people have moaned about Israel and Hamas pointing fingers of blame at each other. The average person is unable to critically analyze issues, so he or she lazily states that each party is to blame. Thus they recklessly promote a death sentence for Israel — the only free country in a sea of tyranny (if the last two years haven’t made this fact abundantly clear to you, then you’re one of the fools I’m talking about).

But let’s delve deeper: the average person’s ignorance of the facts and arbitrary judgment does not generate an acceptable substitute for truth. Lending equal credence to two warring claims is not only a cowardly way to decide an argument, but it’s unwise insofar as it perpetuates the conditions that led to the conflict in the first place. This is another example of post-modernism’s perversion of legitimate discourse. Every story, in the world of the typical journalist, now requires a counterpoint — no matter how blatantly false that counterpoint may be. This results in western media outlets (and outright anti-Semitic institutions like Al Jazeera) running Hamas’ staged stories and photoshopped images. This kind of “equal airtime” policy has replaced proper vetting among lazy fauxporters, to the detriment of the entire profession. The result is that airtime (and therefore credibility) is given by big media outlets to false propaganda flowing from terrorist organizations like Hamas.

///lol-worthy///