Help! Should I buy a house/condo in Toronto right now?

Any advice would be helpful. I started looking in May, but stopped when it looked like we might go on strike at the Globe and Mail.

Now I'm starting to look again and... I've lost my nerve a bit.

It some ways it seems like the perfect time to buy: House/condos in the Toronto neighbouhoods I like are more affordable now, interest rates are really low and the market seems to be headed back up.

But I have this friend, we'll call him The Pessimist, who believes Canada's bubble hasn't burst yet. Low interest rates are artificially stimulating the market right now, he says, and when they go up in 2010, demand will drop and house prices will drop too. (He believes another 10%.)

The Pessimist is not the only one. According to a recent Globe story:

[L]ow rates are also one of the reasons analysts are worried about the surprising surge in the housing market. “It's all happening because of the crack cocaine of housing, which is rock-bottom interest rates,” said Garth Turner, author of Greater Fool: The Troubled Future of Real Estate . “They're so irresistible, especially to inexperienced first-time buyers. That's what's propelling the market.”

Mr. Turner's concern is that rising rates will eventually propel the market lower by making houses less affordable. His level of confidence that the boom will last? Zero.

In his book, published in early 2008, Mr. Turner warned that the Canadian housing market was in a bubble just like its U.S. counterpart. After a peak-to-valley decline of almost 14 per cent in Canada's national average price, he's predicting another plunge for home prices that will be triggered in large part by rising interest rates.

“We're now into the housing bubble, Part Two,” said Mr. Turner, a former member of Parliament who now gives financial seminars and promotes his books. “I think this bubble is going to burst later this year. It's going to be short and intense.”

Yikes! That's my concern. And why I'm beginning to think I should rent for another year and see what happens.

But those low interest rates are so irresistable!

ACK!

Any advice?

Billy Bob Thornton pwned by Jian Ghomeshi!

From Willie Nelson:

It has been reported that Billy Bob Thornton & The Boxmasters will not be continuing the Canadian tour with Willie and Ray. At this time, no reasons have been announced but the remainder of the tour will continue as scheduled without The Boxmasters.

FTW! ROTFL! MSTRKRFT!

I resent having to use Google to understand the Times.

The New York Times writes a story about the censorship of an obscene pun in China - but won't tell us what the "especially vile obscenity" being punned is. Isn't the newspaper industry dying quickly enough without these self-inflicted wounds!?!

This may top the time they wouldn't print the word "poo" in an album title. (The Edmonton Journal has no such qualms, obviously.)

Yeah, I joined Twitter.

Tweet.

Five-four those of y'all who wear fanny packs.

Better than the Nixon tapes: Barack Obama swearing

Oh god, these are so good. Someone has digitised the sweary bits from the audiobook of Dreams of My Father... yes, the audiobook that Obama reads himself.

I give it five minutes before the first YouTube video mashing this up with Christian Bale is created...

"You ain’t my bitch, nigga! Buy your own damn fries!"

Now I understand...

... why I couldn't follow any of the action sequences in the last two Batman movies. It's not that Christopher Nolan is a lousy director - it's that Christian "Dark Knight" Bale chased all the lighting guys off the set so he could maintain the concentration needed to sustain that ridiculous growl...

Remix!

Big Peanut: Everybody's enemy now...

From the wires: "There is new information available about the recent salmonella outbreak linked to peanut butter from a plant in Georgia.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said at least 12 times over the past two years the Peanut Corporation of America has knowingly sold products that had tested positive for salmonella."

I know at least one anthropomorphic arachide bigwig who just dropped his cane and let his monocle fall out of his eye in rage that his plot to poison America has been foiled...

Thanks, language, for being confusing.

From CBC Arts:

For the first time in the 34-year history of the César Awards, a Quebec actor has been nominated for the French film awards.

Marc-André Grondin is nominated as most promising young male actor for his role in the film Le Premier Jour Du Reste de Ta Vie (The First Day of the Rest of Your Life). ...

Oh, neat! First time ever? But what about...

Marie-José Crozes [double sic!] was nominated as most promising young female actress in 2004 for her role in Denys Arcand film The Barbarian Invasions.

Oh, first Quebec ACTOR, not first Quebec ACTRESS...

OK, so there's nothing, strictly speaking, wrong with what the CBC has done here... But some news sources use actor as a gender neutral term and others use actor and actress, so I was confused... I wish there was a universal style guide for this - and, frankly, I think the old way was much clearer. Can we go back, though?

Headline of the day.

Couple Suing After Being Hit By NES Truck

The long-awaited return of... CBC Arts Headline Watch!

Today's doozy: "Errors are human, says Wikipedia founder"

I look forward to tomorrow's follow-up story on what Jimmy Wales thinks of forgiveness...

(Past editions of CBC Arts Headline and Lede Watch here...)

The death of the newspa-- whaaaaaa?

Will wonders never cease: The National Post turns a profit.

Things that make you go hmm....

Have you noticed that every time the Canadiens have faced the Leafs so far this season (and again for the rest of the regular season), the Habs have played a game the night before and the Leafs have had the night before off? Is this some sort of attempt to even out the teams by tiring the Habs out? CONSPIRACY.

Merry Christmas!

That is all.

Leonard Cohen takes #1, #2 spots on British charts.

With Hallelujah, covered by Alexandra Burke and Jeff Buckley. How awesome is that?

Leonard Cohen's song "Hallelujah" made British chart history Sunday when it became both number one and number two in the Christmas singles charts -- although both versions were covers...

The last time [the same song was in first and second place on the charts] was in January 1957, when Tommy Steele and Guy Mitchell held the top two places with Singin' The Blues.

In another twist, Cohen's own version of the song -- which he first released on an album in 1984 -- entered the charts as a new entry at number 36.

Go Christmas, go!

David Mitchell on being pro-Christmas without having to sacrifice on the fun misanthropy that comes from being anti-Christmas:

This is a time when we all come together to disagree about how Christmas is supposed to be done. It's not so much "love thy neighbour" as "mock the neon Santa on thy neighbour's roof". I think these divisions might be what saves my pro-Christmas policy because I love asserting my way of celebrating it over everyone else's. In another life, I could have been a great witchfinder general, paranoid anti-communist or warrior ant. I will root out people who slightly differ from me in their Christmas traditions and blow them away with the twin barrels of my British disdain gun, which are, of course, snobbery and inverse snobbery.

To test your suitability for this fight, consider your reaction to the phrase: "We actually had goose this year." It's not the nature of your reaction that's important, but its strength. I'm hoping for a strong one. Either: "Yes of course, goose is a much tastier meat and an older tradition. I can't believe those turkey-eating scum are suffered to live. They should be locked up in the same hell sheds where the bland objects of their culinary affection are chemically spawned." Or, and this is the one I favour: "Fuck off back to Borough Market with your talk of goose deliciousness. We're supposed to eat turkey - that's now the tradition. Stop pretending you're Victorian, drop this obsession with flavour and get defrosting a Bernard Matthews."

This is embarrassing.

I think this lack of video just killed the coalition.

Will Harper still go prorogue?

UPDATE: This is the best description of the evening's events I've come across so far: "Harper looked like a rapist on trial and Dion looked like he was using Skype from his basement."

Badly devised Jeopardy categories

Last night, on the teen tournament, there was a category called, "An 'F' in History". All of contestants shortened the category slightly when they asked for it. So, this is what it sounded like:

Overconfident Boy #1: Let's go with effin' History, Alex.

Overconfident Boy #2: I'll take effin' History for 400.

Quietly confident Girl, who eventually trounced the boys: Let's try effin' History for 1000, please.

I think to get more kids to take history as an elective in high school, they should change the course title to something like this. ("What you got next period, dude?" "Effin' History." "Awesome!")

Two words: Omar Khadr.

Good column by Rick Salutin.

Tune on, drop in, turnout...

I hate all these contextless statistics being bandied in attempts to prove various tenuous points about the American election.

In particular, I find turnout percentage stats not very useful, given that they don't accurately reflect what I would consider to be turnout.

That's because the state-by-state turnout stats are based on the number of registered voters, not on the population of eligible voters.

Look at Virginia, for instance. 3,223,156 voted in 2004 and 3,474,202 voted in 2008. That's approximately an 8% increase in turnout, right?

Well, no, because registered voters increased from 4.5m to 5m between 2004 and 2008.

So even though 250,000 more people voted in 2008 than 2004 in Virginia, officially voter turnout went down from 71.3% to 69%.

(These numbers are all from Virginia State Board of Elections.)

As for making sweeping statements about racial division based on exit polls - exit polls, people - in a single state like Alabama, that's even less useful. I think the most telling stat that I've heard is that a higher percentage of whites across the country voted for Obama than any Democratic candidate since Carter.

Saying that racial division persists in the USA is a truism. But saying that race played a negative or positive role in this election - difficult to prove.

What BBC coverage lacked in holograms, it made up for in crazy Gore Vidals.

"We need new idioms, we need to stop talking like beatniks."

Love that Alice Glass, who tops NME's dumb-fun Cool List this year.

Lost in translation.

From the BBC: "When officials asked for the Welsh translation of a road sign, they thought the reply was what they needed.

"Unfortunately, the e-mail response to Swansea council said in Welsh: "I am not in the office at the moment. Please send any work to be translated".

"So that was what went up under the English version which barred lorries from a road near a supermarket."

Lysiane Gagnon tells you what you thought.

"During the election campaign, many wondered how the Liberal Party would have fared if it had been led by Michael Ignatieff. My guess — and everybody else's — is the party would have been a formidable rival to the Conservatives and the Bloc Québécois."

Gagnon's column is brought to you by Steve Murphy's new set of English-language Bescherelles.

Speaking of Dion, here's a column from Rick Salutin that sorta snapped me out of my spell:

What impressed many was Stéphane Dion's idealism and "vision." Yet, the 20th century was littered with the damage done by idealistic visionaries who implemented their visions even if the people didn't get it, on the assumption they'd fall in line. Of course, that isn't Stéphane Dion; he accepts the voters' verdict. But his exclusive reliance on his noble vision is still troubling.

Politics basically divides between those for whom it's about ideas, about their notion of what's best for everyone, and those for whom it's about working with others to formulate a vision, or program, on the premise that people have the right and ability to determine their own fate. This distinction is muddied by the cult of leadership, or "strong" leadership, which exists among us in its way, as it did in those 20th-century political disasters. Does it ever occur to anyone that you can have leadership without a vision? Or that a leader could cheerily accept rejection of his vision and continue to lead - in a different direction chosen democratically?

Ouch.

Just realised Stephane Dion is the first leader of the Liberal party since Edward Blake to not spend any time as Prime Minister. (Aside from the interim leaders, of course.)