Tater’s Takes – Bottled Water

June 10th, 2010 by Potato

The diet this week was horrible. Ice cream was on sale, which lead directly to ice cream being in the house, which lead to me eating ice cream (for lunch one day, no less), which lead to a 2-pound weight gain this week. Cycling didn’t go so well since the weather’s been so crummy, but I’ve got big plans to go on a personal record-breaking trek tonight to make up for it.

I figure that since BP has made such a wreck of the environment, I don’t need to be quite so good to it, so I bought a few cases of bottled water. Generally I try to avoid bottled water except for when I actually need my water to be portable, and use Brita filters at home (drinking London tap water straight is not usually a very tasty exercise… in the heat of summer it tastes slightly more chlorinated than many municipal pools). However, I’ve been so incredibly lazy that I haven’t wanted to get a glass and pour some water out to drink water; or, when I get to the fridge, I succumb to the tastier options that are in there, like Coke Zero, juice, and milk. Since I don’t mind tepid water, I now keep a case right by my office door to encourage water drinking (don’t even have to go all the way to the fridge!). Hopefully that’ll help the diet too…

Speaking of BP and the environment, I meant to focus more on the horrible nature of the situation in my post, on the Chernobyl-like precedent this tragedy might have in the public mind. How things like the deepwater drilling ban might spur us to say, tax oil a bit more to reflect the costs, or encourage better, faster implementation of crude alternatives in our power and transportation systems.

But I got on the investment thinking train, and that seemed to prove popular, so let me just continue briefly here, hopefully without going into such depth that it deserves its own post. Actually, it deserved it’s own post. This is a quasi-weekly summary/link post-a-ma-gig that I do here, and that was way too detailed.

Links!

The writers of Metatropolis were giving away copies of their books. I got an honourable mention in Karl Shroeder’s contest. That doesn’t get me a free book, but hey, saving on heating bills by using a pain ray on yourself is pretty wild… While it wasn’t a productive week for exercise, it was a productive week for writing, as I now have some drafts ready for the Scalzorc/Wil Wheaton nightmare story contest (and working on my thesis too, honest).

New Scientist has a series of articles on science deniers that look like they might be interesting — too bad they’re behind a paywall (HT: Barry Ritholtz). I’ll see if I can find them through the library later.

Michael James has a post about do-it-yourself investing and how many people want to become DIY-ers to save on fees, but for whatever reason (fear? laziness? momentum? loyalty?) end up sticking with their high-free mutual funds (which hopefully at least come with an advisor). He suggests perhaps taking baby steps, by putting new money in a self-directed account before trying to take the big step of moving out of the old funds. I can relate, as I similarly helped Netbug get set up with a TFSA and TD e-series over a year ago, but AFAIK he never ended up putting any money in that account, choosing instead to “invest with his guy.”

John Hempton of Bronte Capital is always worth reading, especially when he’s tearing apart proposed solutions to the GSE “problem” in the US.

One Response to “Tater’s Takes – Bottled Water”

  1. Michael James Says:

    On the subject of people choosing to invest with their “guy”, when I ask people to tell me about what they like about their advisors, the answer is usually some variant of “he’s a really great guy.” They go on to describe someone who is fun to have a beer with. I have a hard time with this way of thinking. When I think of the most fun people I spend time with, I wouldn’t want them to handle 10 cents of my money.