Tickets To The Big Game

So Canada is bidding for the 2026 world cup. That's the sort of thing that will be greeted with laughter both in and outside Canada.

I've always thought that it's not that crazy an idea. Most CFL stadiums could be expanded with end-zone seats, giving us plenty of venues without too much expense.  The missing element is a giant, 80,000-or-so seat stadium for the final.  But Toronto will need a stadium that big if it is ever going to host the Olympics or an NFL team, so it doesn't have to be a white elephant.

We have another thing going for us: pragmatism. For the last little while, the big sports events have been given out with the apparent belief that anything can be fixed by the vortex of money that follows major sports around. And for a while that seemed true. The 2004 Summer Olympics was given to debt-ravaged sentimental choice Athens. That didn't blow up until years after the games. The 2008 Summer Games and 2010 World Cup were given to Beijing and South Africa respectively, in spite of human rights violations and a high crime rate respectively.

Those worked out, but now the flight of fantasy is catching up to us. Giving this year's Winter Olympics to a southern city in a corrupt pseudo-dictatorship is looking like a bad idea. FIFA must already be regretting giving Russia the 2018 World Cup. That is, if they have any spare time while regretting giving the cup after that to Qatar, without considering the whole "desert" thing. You could forgiven them for the looming disaster of the 2014 World Cup to Brazil - who would have believed that Brazilians have priorities higher than soccer?

So I figure that both FIFA and the IOC would be looking for someplace a little more reliable this time around, even if that means less exotic.  So we might have a chance. But having said that, it's still a crazy idea for the Canadian Soccer Association to spend any energy on this.

While I appreciate that hosting the World Cup would grow the game here, the fact is you need some basic level of support before you can deign to host the world championship of something. I figure the base requirement should be this: we only bid to host the World Cup when we we’re confident that Canada can play Italy in Toronto and the crowd will cheer for the home team. Right now we're nowhere near that.

Power To (A Lot Of) The People!

There seems to be an ongoing problem where countries are hugely divided.  In both Ukraine and Thailand, there are mass protests against the government. But the catch in both cases is that the governments also have support from many in the country, and would likely win any new elections.

It's a new paradigm for protesters vs. governments. Those of us who came of age in the eighties are used to the idea of people standing up against oppressors. But this is half the people rising up against the government of the other half. Also, we've all heard of elected governments that go on to abuse their power, but not governments that could get re-elected.

There are less dramatic examples elsewhere. The U.S. famously has its red state/blue state divide, and Toronto has its bewildering love/hate relationship with Rob Ford.

It makes one wonder if there can be compromises made to please both sides. Certainly in the American situation, people have proposed - tongue in cheek - splitting the country up along ideological lines. I don't really expect that to happen any time soon, but one wonders what else can bridge the divide.

Maybe countries should be organized by ideologies, not culture. Ironically, all this is happening at a time when Scotland and Catalonia are pushing for separation. In both those cases (and Quebec, too) the culture looking to separate isn't that ideologically different. That is, Quebec does have political differences with the rest of Canada, but they're small compared with the differences between America's two political solitudes. What do you think, fellow citizens of Healthcaria?

Snowbirds and Penguins And Gnomes, Oh My!

That's it, I can't take it any more! I know winter is nearly half over, but it's driving me crazy; it's just so much more intense than it has been in years. Oh, I'm not talking about the weather. I mean the travel commercials.

With Canada finally going through an old-time Canadian winter, all the businesses that profit on travel are smelling blood in the water and working themselves into an ad frenzy, promising you beaches, and sand, and not freezing.

It wouldn't be so bad if they weren't so obnoxious. I blame the Travelocity Roaming Gnome. I complained about him earlier, and I have to apologize for saying he ripped off Amelie - turns out the idea of travelling garden gnomes goes back farther. But it seems every travel agent dot com wannabe is intent on starting their own running joke. Special contempt goes to Booking.com for trying to make "booking" a profanity. All I can say it, go book yourself.

Strangely, none of the ads really make their getaways seem fun or exciting.  They're so focused on the mundane annoyances of travel.  Bad hotels, extra fees, arbitrary restrictions.  And when did "Travel Rewards Card" become a thing?  And they always try to appeal to a bourgeois need to appear better than the Joneses.  Don't use our credit card so you can fly to Florida, get it so your neighbours will wonder how you earn points so quickly.  The impression one gets is that air travel is expensive and inconvenient, and hotels are unpredictable and full of Canada's most superficial consumers.  Suddenly the wind-chill doesn't seem so bad.

Canada Defined

A while ago I saw a funny graphic: for each state in the U.S., they had typed "<state name> is" into Google, to see what Google's would suggest based on other searches.  They took the funniest one and put it on a map of the U.S.  So if you type in, "Wyoming is" and Google suggests, "Wyoming is a big rectangle", they label Wyoming on the map as, "A Big Rectangle."

Of course, I had to try the same thing with Canada.  Here's the result:

Just so it's clear, none of these are my opinion.  And the title of the map is what you get when you type in, "Canada is."

In case you're wondering, "Prince Edward Island Is Heaven To Me" and "B.C. Is On Fire" are both songs.  Very, very different songs:

Supercar Sanity

Yes, it's another post questioning how rich people spend their money.  I'm hoping any rich readers won't be too offended.  I know you're a bit touchy about criticism, but at least I'm only complaining about your spending choices, rather than starting a revolution.  So hopefully you'll find this a bit refreshing:

Currently, McLaren sells two cars. The MP4-12C costs in the $300,000 range, putting it in line with similar cars like the Ferrari 458 and Lamborghini Aventador. And the P1 costs well over a million dollars, similar to other most-expensive-cars-on-earth like the Bugatti Veyron.

But now they're planning new models. The P13 would cost about $150,000, and the P15 would cost about $500,000.

First of all, they need to hire someone to come up with names for them. They don't make any sense, and even the German manufacturers would find those boring. I can make exciting alphanumeric names: T-17, GF6, 538c. Call me, I've got dozens of these.

But also, I’m wondering at these prices. I figure there are three levels of sports car prices:

• you're upper-middle-class, and you can afford a fairly expensive car, so you buy a Corvette or a cheap Porsche.
• You're rich, money's no object, so you pay a quarter mil' for the best car available.
• You're rich, money's no object, and you're slightly unhinged, so you buy a race car for the street for a million dollars.

So why would they need those cars at other levels? Who is out there that can afford a $150,000 car, but not a $250,000 car? You can spend over a hundred thousand dollars on a car that has little practical value, but no, not two hundred thousand, that’s ridiculous? And who spends half-a-million dollars on a car, but not a million. If you’re spending that much, you want something that’s better than everything on the street, so why cheap out to get second-best?

Cold Olympics

It's too bad we never got to see a real U.S./USSR Olympics. There were only two summer games in the superpowers during the cold war. And both of them (Moscow 1980 & LA 1984) were boycotted by the other superpower. Yes, I know, the USA hosted the winter games a couple of times (Squaw Valley 1960 & Lake Placid 1980) but the winter games have a modesty that tends to defuse nationalism. It's hard to chest-thump over your superiority in events that are, to quote Seth Meyers, 48 different kinds of sliding.

I wish there had been a Cold War Olympics. It would have been entertaining to see each side pretending to play nice, taking subtle shots at each other, and trying to extend each success into a national victory. But more than anything, it would have been good for us. Because at a big event like this, no matter how well scripted it is, humanity will leak out, and the rivals will see each other in a better light.

The upcoming Sochi Olympics may be the closest we'll get to seeing major players at the games really angry at each other. I’m trying to be optimistic and see it as a good thing. Like a lot of people, I disagree strongly with Russia’s new anti-gay law, or their treatment of Pussy Riot and other dissidents. So I don’t like the idea of the country being “rewarded” by hosting the Olympics. But I don’t think it’s really going to benefit them much. In the modern world, a major event doesn’t allow a country to cover up its flaws, it puts them under the microscope.  It would be nice if everyone would figure this out, and only bid on Olympics or World Cups if they have nothing to hide.  Start building that Stadium, Reykjavik.

We're Cruisin' For A Nukin'

Canada hasn't had a good week on the public stage. First, Rob Ford reminded the world that he's still Rob Ford.  The good side of this is that he at least introduced the world to Toronto's multiculturalism by doing a Jamaican drunken rant. So maybe the Ford train-wreck could turn out positive for Toronto: council could make a deal that he can stay on as mayor as long as he agrees to have his stupors in places that reflect well on the city.  He could start flirting with the dancers at Caribana, throw up on a rollercoaster at the CNE, try riding one of the dinosaurs at the ROM.

Then there's Bieber.  He's deep into the Michael Jackson trajectory now: acting crazy, hanging out with whatever sycophants will tolerate him, all while cheered on by clueless fans. I could have had a tiny bit of sympathy for him if he at least showed some regret. But smiling for your mug shot after getting charged with  DUI? That was about the most punchable photo I've ever seen.

But the last straw, the thing that will finally get the rest of the world hating us, is something that has been under the radar so far. It's only getting media play in Britain, and predominantly for the remarkable headlines it generates. Those headlines are things along the lines of, Ghost Ship of Cannibal Rats Headed for Britain.

See, there was a Russian-owned ship that was abandoned in a Canadian port when the owners could no longer pay for its operation. The ship was going to be towed away to be dismantled for scrap, but it came loose in a storm, and an empty ship isn't worth risking anything to go after. It's believed to have made it most of the way across the Atlantic.  There are likely rats on board, and with no supply of food, they'll turn to cannibalism. The ship will eventually get to UK or Ireland and run aground.

One article I read tried to use the cannibal angle as reassurance, pointing out that there will be fewer rats left. True, but that means that only the strongest, champion rat will survive. Not just the usual rats you might find in the London sewers; this will be a giant rat, kicking open the ship's hatch, carrying the head of its rival, yelling, "There can be only one!" and ready to lead Britain's rats in an apocalyptic battle for revenge.  It will be a terrible mash-up of 28 Days Later and Watership Down, and whatever humans survive it are going to want to rescind confederation.

Facebook Outbreak

Today, The Guardian reported on a study suggesting that Facebook will lose most of its users over the next few years, and fade from relevance. A lot of it is based on esoteric statistical observations of social networks and their similarities to the spread of diseases. The biggest piece of evidence that's directly related to Facebook is that there's been a significant reduction in Google searches for Facebook.

So yes, a reduction in people's interest in Facebook is one explanation for that. But might I offer my own explanation, which is that EVERYONE ON THE %$@#& PLANET ALREADY KNOWS THE #@$&# URL.  Granted, lots of people Google a site, even if they know the site's name.  For instance, in looking up The Guardian, I typed "Guardian" in Google, rather type it in the URL bar and play Russian Porn Roulette. But if I read The Guardian daily, I'd know it is theguardian.com.  I memorized the URL of Facebook on about the second day I used it.  I also bookmarked it, which brings me to a second explanation for the reduced Googling of Facebook: People have figured out the "bookmark" feature on every browser in existence. I'll give the researchers credit that they did think up the third explanation I came up with, which is that more and more people are accessing Facebook through apps. 

So no, I'm not convinced that Facebook will be going the way of the Bubonic Plague.  I may have been critical of Facebook in the past, but I do admit that it does have a real purpose in allowing people to communicate and keep in touch, and that usefulness isn't going away just because the hype has died down.  So just as the people saying Facebook will take over the world were exaggerating, the predictions of its doom are just as inaccurate.

Ba-Da Ba Ba Baaa, I'm Hijackin' It

Today, McDonald's promoted the Twitter hashtag, #CheersToSochi. The idea was to have people send well wishes to athletes and organizers of the upcoming Winter Olympics.  Not surprisingly, the hashtag was quickly taken over by people protesting Russia's anti-gay laws.

This isn't the first time tweeters have turned a company's hashtag against itself. I'm left wondering how these corporations don't see it coming. It's easy to say that these companies are hopping wildly in to the social media bandwagon before they understand it. We've seen organizations misuse new technology trends throughout the Internet era.  And JPMorgan had a similar problem when they apparently forgot that some people hate banks.

But banks are kind of out-of-touch with public opinion; this is McDonald's we're talking about here. They're the masters of marketing.  If they're that clueless, what hope is there for everyone else?  They do understand that Twitter is a participation medium, not a broadcast medium.  They just don't seem to realize how varied the general public's opinions are.  So have they always believed that everyone loves them?

Burning Questions

I often find answers to programming problems at a site called Stack Overflow.  It's a site where programmers can post questions for anyone to answer.  So if you want to know what's on programmers' minds, here it is:

(Note that "Hello World" refers to a simple demonstration program.)

Statues Of Limitations

There's been a proposal for Victoria Park, near where I live. The idea is to build statues of each of the Prime Ministers of Canada.

There are plenty of reasons not to like the idea. For one thing, it's going to be expensive, at about $2 million (though most of it through grants from higher levels of government.) Also, I'm not sure statutes are the right thing for a park that is blessed with more wildlife than your average groomed and neutered city park. And of course, there's been a recent drawn-out debate over replacing the park washrooms, which has many locals sick of discussing the park. 

And of course, it commits us to continually pay for new statues as new PM's come along.  In our system, where a John Turner or Kim Campbell can pop in and out of office in a few months, that could get pricey.  They could perhaps have a rule that you have to be in office for a couple of years before you get a statue.  Or better still, the size of the statue is proportional to how long the Prime Minister was in office.

But what gets me is the number of people whose criticism just comes down to:
The Prime Ministers are politicians, and politicians are the worst kind of scum.


I again say that we have to get over our dichotomy of politicians as entirely evil, and the rest of us are their innocent victims. I'm used to seeing the voters' persecution complex in the Letters to the Editor, but I still find it kind of shocking that our loathing of politicians goes back to people who have been dead for a century.

The Americans don't seem to have this problem; they hate politicians more than anyone, but I don't see any of them complaining about Mount Rushmore. But then the Americans mostly focus their hatred on the other party's politicians. Canadian society is not as divided, but incidents like this make me think there is just as much unfocused anger in it.

So I propose a statue of the hard-done-by taxpayer.  Say, a statue of an anguished person turning their pockets inside-out.  Perhaps a fat politician behind him, chomping a cigar, and stealing the taxpayer's wallet.

Here's Your Gold Stopwatch

Netflix HR recently said that their way of keeping good employees is to make sure they are working with quality co-workers. And the way they ensure those workers are high quality is that they are quick to get rid of employees once their skills don't match what's needed.

To be fair, they did also emphasize generous severance packages as part of this strategy. But it does also exemplify the unrealistic view tech companies have of finding talent.

As many have noted, there's a contradiction in the way employers relate to employees: they try to get enthusiasm and loyalty from their employees, while also reserving the ability to reduce the workforce whenever they want, and there doesn't seem to be much recognition that these two desires are contradictory. The Netflix situation seems to be the ultimate embodiment of this contradiction: they think they can get loyalty and enthusiasm from their employees because they are quick to let them go.

Any business wants the best employees they can get, but in high tech, the need is particularly acute. And yet, there doesn't seem to be much intelligence given to finding the best.

Part of the problem is the speed with which modem tech companies can grow. In other areas, there's an understanding that you need a great reputation before you can be demanding of your employees. Not so much in technology.  I remember one company I came across during my post-graduation job search, who wanted to see the transcript of recent grads, and said they would only consider applicants in the top quarter of their class. Who would do this, IBM? Microsoft? Google? Nope, some start-up that didn't even have a product on market yet.  But since everyone assumes their start-up is the next Google, they have all the swagger from day one.

What's curious is that in other areas, businesses are acutely aware of the different factors that go into a company's positioning. For instance, expensive, luxury products tend to be more lucrative than cheap products. But companies don't all simplistically go after the luxury market to make more money. They understand that the luxury market is small, and if someone else has captured it, you're probably better off to make do with a less profitable segment. But when it comes to hiring, no one seems to even acknowledge that there are only so many above-average employees, and a lot of companies will have to make do with less.

The Self-Help Section At The End Of The Universe

Like any long-time geek, I was quite disappointed that this book was not filled with facts that would help me travel the galaxy:

Hello Squirrel

Have you seen the ads for this new movie The Nut Job which is about to be dumped into the motion picture no-man's-land that is January released?  It's a computer-animated movie about squirrels trying to steal nuts or something.

I'm left thinking, shouldn't squirrels be cuter than that?  Squirrels are thought of as inherently cute animals, loveable to anyone who doesn't have a bird feeder.  To put it another way, rats are seen as squirrels' uncute cousins.  They're squirrels without the PR of a big bushy tail.  And yet Pixar managed to make them more likeable in Ratatouille.

It seems like animated movies are trying so hard to make in-your-face goofy characters that they don't make something that looks good on the screen.  It's been all downhill since that little...whatever it was... in The Lion King.  Look, the world doesn't need more aggressive manic characters.  Especially with Kevin Hart starting up his movie career.

Fans Of Denial

An odd thing happened in one of the NFL playoff games today.  The San Francisco 49'ers managed to sack Carolina Panthers quarterback Cam Newton.  The 49'ers were then flagged for Roughing The Passer.  The commentators expressed surprise, since it had looked like a fairly ordinary sack.  But on seeing the play again from a different angle, the reason for the flag became obvious: the defender had hit Newton helmet-to-helmet, which is a no-no in the modern NFL.

What was odd was that I seemed to be the only person who noticed that.  The commentators continued to rant about how that was a terrible call.  Wondering if I had missed something, I checked the tweets on the game.  But they were just the same generic comments about how that was the Worst Call Ever.

Obviously, the crackdown on head-shots is not popular with everyone, so I don't expect it to be a popular call.  But no one was saying, "I hate that rule." rather, they seemed oblivious to the rule.  And no one seemed to remember that this has been illegal for several years now.  I was starting to wonder if I was the one suffering the head injuries.

The incident brings up an issue I've been meaning to mention for a while:  The accusations that the NFL has not been doing enough to protect players from head injuries.  Particularly, the accusations have come from the recent book, League of Denial, which claims the league has been ignoring the science on concussions for years now.  I don't know much about the evidence that the NFL has covered up the sport's dangers in the past, so I can't really comment on that. 

But many people extend the criticism to the present, and claim that the league is continuing to drag it's heels on the issue.  That, I do have to disagree with.  I see incidents like the one above as evidence that the NFL is willing to anger its fan base in the course of fixing the sport.  It's relates back to what I was saying earlier this week about how all sports have fans that want to push the sport towards more violence and physicality. It's hard for a league to turn its back on such a large constituency, and it's tempting to compromise with them, or roll-back changes when the complaints start.  I'm impressed that the NFL has remained steadfast through the howls of protest.

Clippings On Clipper

Back in the 90's, there was a proposal from the U.S. government to allow encryption and surveillance to co-exist. It was called "Clipper." And it worked like this: the government got some cryptography experts to create an encryption system on a microchip. Any company that wanted to make any sort of encrypted communications equipment could use this chip in their computers, phones, whatever. But the catch is that each chip would have a unique code that could be used to decrypt communications using that chip. An independent organization would keep a big list of all the chips and their respective codes. When law-enforcement needed to eavesdrop on someone's communications, they'd get a warrant, and present it to the code keeping organization, who would then hand over the code to that person's chip.

Techies of the time howled in protest. The basic idea of allowing warrant-based spying wasn't so bad, but there were a lot of flaws:

• We have to use this government-approved encryption, and just hope that it doesn't turn out to be flawed later.
• We have to trust that this private organization will hold everyone's codes securely.
• We have to hope that the government doesn't change the terms later, say by deciding they don't really need a warrant.

But more than anything, it just seemed presumptuous that the law had a right to listen in on us (even to a liberal like myself.) With no one in tech willing to go along, the idea died.

That incident comes mind because we essentially ended up with Clipper anyway, since backdoors got built-in to all our encryption products. Only we didn't even get the warrant protection. To me, that's the most disappointing aspect to all this: the debate on Clipper didn't matter.

But what we should have done was have a wider discussion on encryption and surveillance back then, rather than a small talk in the tech sector.  Even now that the issue has been pushed on us, we as a society are only slowly realizing that we have to confront these questions.

Moving Architecture

Recently I read about the city of Kiruna, Sweden.  It's famous for starting the first ice hotel.  But now it's in the news because they may have to move the downtown.  See, the area is also known for mining, and that mining has destabilized the ground under the centre of the town.

It's unfortunate, because there are a few old buildings that will be lost.  But at the same time, a lot of cities would benefit from a second chance to build part of the city. You could skip trying to make an urban mall work, cut back on the condos or office blocks, or take a Mulligan on zoning that Planet Hollywood.

Or you could just keep it the same, but put it in a more appropriate place.  Screw with those suburbanites by dropping the downtown right next to the latest subdivision.  Kitchener-Waterloo could call a truce and build one new downtown on a neutral location.  Or we could move Cambridge up between KW and Guelph to make one big city.

So good luck to Kiruna.  It sounds like a pretty cool place. Coming up with the ice hotel is the sort of winter adaptation Canada could use, as I complained about earlier.  And I see on Wikipedia that it's even the home of Borje Salming.  What else...it even has its own spaceport?  That's it, I've found my new home!

He's Not Just Tough, He's Sold

Tonight, country singer Will Hoge performed on Letterman. I had not heard of him before, but he just got one line out of his mouth before I - along with most of the viewers, I'm sure - said, "it's the pickup commercial song!"

Of course, we're getting used to the idea of commercials using songs from less-famous artists. But still, this song, glorifying a hard-working, reliable truck-owner, seemed to mesh with the truck ad atmosphere so well, I assumed it had been custom-written for the ad campaign.

I'm not sure artists are going to be totally happy with the close association with products. Musicians got comfortable with the idea of selling music to commercials a while back, around the time changing media made it harder to make a living off CD sales, and to get their music discovered by listeners. But it can't be good for your career when people heart your song and think of trucks, not you.

Life Is A Bowl Full Of Cherrys

It hit me that every sport has its advocates for toughness and less rules.  It seems like any time there's a borderline call by the officials, one of the commentators or analysts will complain that the sport is being neutered, these are men, it's not for the faint-hearted etc.

That attitude is not really surprising, but what's odd is when you consider them all together, you realize that there are soccer fans who want more contact, along with football fans who want to be able to decapitate on the field.  And those  soccer fans that lean towards rough play are asking for a level of violence that would seem gentle compared to football.

Wouldn't it be better for each of them if everyone would just move up a sport? Say, if you're always complaining that basketball players should be tougher, wouldn't you be happier watching football?  If football and hockey are not enough, move up to mixed marshal arts.  And if you are an MMA fan and that's not enough, then kindly turn yourself in to the authorities.

Muad'Dib, Eh?

A few years ago I read the science fiction classic Dune. It's set on a planet that's entirely desert (hence the name, "Dune.") And this planet is inhabited by people called Fremen, who have adapted their lifestyles to the extreme environment they live in. They treat water with religious reverence, they have a system of underground hideouts, and they have clothes that recapture the moisture from their bodies and turn it into drinkable water (and the less you think about that concept the better.)

It occurred to me that we Canadians are sort of like the Fremen, only with a different environmental extreme to deal with.  Sparsely populated, in a land most people wouldn't choose.

Except that, really we're not. It's actually surprising how little Canadians alter the basic North American lifestyle to suit our climate extremes. We haven't shaped our roads, streets and sidewalks to reduce the amount of snow that accumulates, we just shovel a lot. We think nothing of commuting hours to our jobs, even though it's hard to drive for a third of the year.  Heck, we haven't even adapted Roomba technology to snowblowers yet.

Maybe it'll just take a while. After all, Dune did take place 10,000 years in the future. Maybe, given that much time, Canadians would develop a more sensible approach to winter, with underground, geothermally-heated cities, cars that convert into snowmobiles on command, and genetically-engineered crops that grow year-round.

Who's In Centre Field?

The American Dialect Society has chosen "because" as its word of the year.  I know, you were expecting either a young-people's slang term, or a tech term that some editor thinks is about to take off.  So, they chose a word that has existed since time immemorial.  As you might guess, a Dialect Society is a little more sophisticated than a mainstream dictionary, so they are not choosing a word so much as a use of a word.

They're choosing its new and trendy use as an agrammatical expression of vague explanation, as in, "I'm writing about words because boredom."

It's interesting because just the other day, I had one of my epiphanies where I suddenly and immediately get tired of a trend.  I read yet another tweet using "because reasons," and I was finally done with it.  This use of because can be useful to ridicule lack of reasoning, (e.g. "because science") but it's just become a grating way to excuse laziness.  So I'm going to create my own uses of words, result fame.

Baku: The Future

I wrote a few weeks ago about that ultra luxury condo in Miami with the car elevator. I'm disappointed with thongs like that because they're so unnecessary. I don't have a problem with rich people buying luxuries;I don't expect them to live in squalor and give everything to the poor. But you can only really spend a few million dollars on yourself. Beyond that, you're just spending money for the sake of spending money, buying things like this Bugatti belt buckle.

I'd like to think that if I were super duper rich, then I'd use my fortune to do positive things for humanity, like Bill Gates and Warren Buffet. Or maybe investing in technologies that are too risky for others, like Elon Musk has.

But if I wasn't that charitable, a reasonable second best use of wealth might be going on in Azerbaijan. Business tycoon Ibrahim Ibrahimov is building a new city on the artificial Khazar islands in the Caspian Sea down the coast from the capital Baku.

If that sounds like something Dubai and the United Arab Emirates would do, there are some similarities. Like the U.A.E., Azerbaijan was a poor, not particularly advanced country off the beaten track, with no reason for the rest of the world to take notice. And then they found oil.  And money.  And an ego.

Building a city isn't the most altruistic thing you could do with your fortune. But at least it's something that could end up benefiting others. Even if it is just encouraging everyone to learn to spell Azerbaijan (remember, the "i" goes before the "j".)  I've always been intrigued by planned cities, but the fact is they often don't work that well.  Still, it's an interesting idea, and our timid world perhaps needs people to just try something adventurous.

So I think it would be nice if more of the super-rich did stuff like this. But given the number of super-rich in the world, vs. the number of crazy-audacious construction projects, it looks like there are way more Porsche elevators than island cities. So how do such boring people make so much money?