I'm not sure how we got to the point where two different Canadian companies are using penguins in their ads. But here we are watching CIBC and People's Jewellers alternately sending flightless avians to sell goods and services.
The CIBC penguin began with an ad that seemed like a one-off, using that flightlessness to sell its flight rewards program. That was cute, so they wrote in an entire family for him, and now the penguin is selling all kinds of banking services that don't seem to have any connection to his species.
Here's a fun fact: the female penguin has pink around her eyes, which you might assume is an outdated way of indicating her gender without stuffing her into a dress. But these are Magellanic Penguins, and they do have a pink spot around the eyes where there are no feathers. That's apparently not related to gender, but at least the ads are more accurate than you would think.
People's (or Kay in the states) is taking a different approach, showing penguins in a more natural habitat, and making reference to the fact that male penguins sometimes impress a mate by offering a pebble. This really shows how advertisers are quite different from other people. Most of us hear about that beautifully simple practice among a beloved animal, and find it heartwarming to feel a connection with a living thing so different and far away. Ad makers say, hey, let's make fun of those silly birds.
It doesn't help that it has a cheesy english accent narrator. You'd think they would have had a Morgan Freeman impersonator to reference March of the Penguins. Maybe they were trying for a David Attenborough sound; if so, it didn't really work. It just sounds like the generic slightly silly pompous english accent used to indicate stuffy authority.
Sadly - though not surprisingly - the pebble story is not really true. Male penguins do present pebbles to their mates, but it's not a proposal; it's just to help build the nest, which is made of pebbles. There's no attempt to impress the mate with a particularly nice pebble. And that leads to the ultimate irony of the ad: We're supposed to look down on these uncivilized animals for trying to get a mate with a particularly nice rock. And the ad is using this to sell diamonds, which themselves are just really shiny rocks. That's silly to begin with, but it turns out that unlike us, the penguins' rocks have a purpose, while we've created a huge global infrastructure just to get at the shiniest rocks on the planet.
Friday, December 22, 2017
Saturday, December 16, 2017
Ghost Of The Machine
Apple is running a TV commercial showing a child doing all sorts of things with her iPad, ending with a neighbour asking what she's doing with her computer. The child responds by asking "What's a computer?" I suppose the message is that the iPad is so unlike a conventional computer as to be unrecognizable. But I'm thinking that it's still pretty inconceivable that a kid would not have encountered a computer at that age, so the message I'm getting from it is that if you give your kid an iPad, your kid will be an idiot. I can't be the only one thinking that the child-actor's line delivery is particularly wooden, presumably because it's so unbelievable. She's probably wondering to herself why these adults find it so important that they see a distinction between computers with keyboards and computers without.
I don't really get it either. But there seems that adults have a big fascination with kid's not knowing what obsolete technology is. Although the trend has subsided a bit, I can't count how many links I've seen passed around Facebook of videos of children perplexed by VCR's, Walkmans, phone dials, etc. First of all, I don't really know what the attraction is. I try to avoid seeing evidence of my age, but apparently some people can't get enough, like being unable to avoid picking at a scab or something.
But I also wonder about some of these kids. Just because you've never used something personally, you still get introduced to things a number of other ways. Usually that would be your parents and the media. I never had to place a call through an operator at a switchboard, but I saw them in movies. I never bought any records, but my parents had them. At some point it did occur to me to ask my parents why they had all these flat boxes with pictures of Elvis on them, as well as who this "Elvis" person was.
The fact is that we're all subjected to old-fashioned technology throughout society. Many people have noted the oddness that the 3.5" floppy is the universal symbol of saving a file, even though they haven't been used for years. And as I was thinking about this post, I came across this comic on that very idea. Old fashioned ideas often become symbols. I'm typing this entry on a web page that uses a picture of a bell to represent "notifications" even though bells have just been Christmas ornaments during my lifetime.
And also, you might be surprised how many things that are still in used in society that kids don't understand. I remember as a young child thinking that it was turning the steering wheel back and forth that made a car move. That wasn't because cars were obsolete, it was because this is a complicated world, and it takes a while to learn all about it. I was too distracted by learning grammatical structures and object permanence to learn the details of current technology. We all end up learning about a lot of the culture that came before us. You'll probably find that even kids have learned a lot about what came before them, eventually. Some kids are faster at picking it up, and some are slower. I've always assumed that they single out the latter for those "today's kids don't know what a flip-phone is" videos. Those kids are easy to find; they're the ones with iPads.
I don't really get it either. But there seems that adults have a big fascination with kid's not knowing what obsolete technology is. Although the trend has subsided a bit, I can't count how many links I've seen passed around Facebook of videos of children perplexed by VCR's, Walkmans, phone dials, etc. First of all, I don't really know what the attraction is. I try to avoid seeing evidence of my age, but apparently some people can't get enough, like being unable to avoid picking at a scab or something.
But I also wonder about some of these kids. Just because you've never used something personally, you still get introduced to things a number of other ways. Usually that would be your parents and the media. I never had to place a call through an operator at a switchboard, but I saw them in movies. I never bought any records, but my parents had them. At some point it did occur to me to ask my parents why they had all these flat boxes with pictures of Elvis on them, as well as who this "Elvis" person was.
The fact is that we're all subjected to old-fashioned technology throughout society. Many people have noted the oddness that the 3.5" floppy is the universal symbol of saving a file, even though they haven't been used for years. And as I was thinking about this post, I came across this comic on that very idea. Old fashioned ideas often become symbols. I'm typing this entry on a web page that uses a picture of a bell to represent "notifications" even though bells have just been Christmas ornaments during my lifetime.
And also, you might be surprised how many things that are still in used in society that kids don't understand. I remember as a young child thinking that it was turning the steering wheel back and forth that made a car move. That wasn't because cars were obsolete, it was because this is a complicated world, and it takes a while to learn all about it. I was too distracted by learning grammatical structures and object permanence to learn the details of current technology. We all end up learning about a lot of the culture that came before us. You'll probably find that even kids have learned a lot about what came before them, eventually. Some kids are faster at picking it up, and some are slower. I've always assumed that they single out the latter for those "today's kids don't know what a flip-phone is" videos. Those kids are easy to find; they're the ones with iPads.
Thursday, December 14, 2017
A Fast Car From China
In a previous post, I discussed my inability to find a car company that could be a lifestyle statement. Though one of the leading candidates was Volvo. Their combination of unapologetic dorkiness, and design appealed to me. But that discussion was limited to practical cars.
In the impractical car category, I've always appreciated Lotus. I know, their cars are cheaper and less powerful than most dream cars, since they go for small and light, rather than big and brawny. But small and clever overcoming strong and dumb is my fantasy, so Lotus embodies it better than some expensive behemoth that they crammed a huge engine into. And I figure that I might as well take advantage of being able to fit in tiny, lightweight cars.
Now here's the interesting part: Volvo and Lotus have one more thing in common besides quirkiness and my fandom. They're also owned by the same company: China's Geely, who have owned Volvo for a few years now, and recently bought Lotus.
Like many western car fans, to me, Chinese manufacturers are this unknown amorphous blob. We've heard various things about them ripping off foreign designs, building small but unexciting cars, and occasionally funding oddball companies. And there's a general assumption that they'll eventually burst forth, start exporting to Europe and the Americas, and destroy everything in their path. Or maybe they'll discover that the West's preference for cheapness over quality doesn't extend to automobiles.
Anyway, the point is that we don't really have any reason to have an opinion on the Chinese manufacturers. That may seem obvious, but car fandom is all about rivalries. You're expected to have opinions on Ford vs Chevy, Porsche vs Ferrari, Bentley vs Rolls Royce, VW Beetle vs Citroen 2CV, Delorean vs Bricklin, Subaru WRX vs Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution etc. It honestly feels weird to see cars and not have an opinion on them.
But now that's changing. I'd already noticed that Geely seemed to have done a good job with Volvo, a company that had been struggling to compete with the world's big luxury brands. Normally, when one car company buys another, it goes wrong in one of three ways: They integrate the small company into the big one lose what was special about it, they force cost-cutting on it and it makes crappy cars, or they just buy it and ignore it, and the smaller company is no better off.
But Geely had been clever with Volvo, giving it the money it needed to turn around, while not forcing it to be something it isn't. They're gradually integrating it into the rest of the company, with plans to build Volvos in China, but being patient. It's reminiscent of how India's Tata has turned around Jaguar Land Rover, so perhaps rising Asia will be good for western brands after all.
Lotus certainly needs that sort of treatment. They were owned and mismanaged by GM, who had them build a - I can barely say it - a front-drive sports car. Then they were owned by Malaysia's Proton, who didn't seem to know what to do with it. Then they had a CEO who announced an ambitious slate of new cars they couldn't afford to put into production. Since then they're been treading water, offering an endless stream of "new" special editions of their existing cars.
So stable and wise ownership is just what they need if they are going to stay in business long enough for me to earn enough money to buy one. I'm even okay with the fact that they'll probably end up building an SUV. But now, I'm just getting used to the fact that I apparently have an opinion on Chinese cars. Geely rules, Chery, BYD, um... Dongfeng drools.
In the impractical car category, I've always appreciated Lotus. I know, their cars are cheaper and less powerful than most dream cars, since they go for small and light, rather than big and brawny. But small and clever overcoming strong and dumb is my fantasy, so Lotus embodies it better than some expensive behemoth that they crammed a huge engine into. And I figure that I might as well take advantage of being able to fit in tiny, lightweight cars.
Now here's the interesting part: Volvo and Lotus have one more thing in common besides quirkiness and my fandom. They're also owned by the same company: China's Geely, who have owned Volvo for a few years now, and recently bought Lotus.
Like many western car fans, to me, Chinese manufacturers are this unknown amorphous blob. We've heard various things about them ripping off foreign designs, building small but unexciting cars, and occasionally funding oddball companies. And there's a general assumption that they'll eventually burst forth, start exporting to Europe and the Americas, and destroy everything in their path. Or maybe they'll discover that the West's preference for cheapness over quality doesn't extend to automobiles.
Anyway, the point is that we don't really have any reason to have an opinion on the Chinese manufacturers. That may seem obvious, but car fandom is all about rivalries. You're expected to have opinions on Ford vs Chevy, Porsche vs Ferrari, Bentley vs Rolls Royce, VW Beetle vs Citroen 2CV, Delorean vs Bricklin, Subaru WRX vs Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution etc. It honestly feels weird to see cars and not have an opinion on them.
But now that's changing. I'd already noticed that Geely seemed to have done a good job with Volvo, a company that had been struggling to compete with the world's big luxury brands. Normally, when one car company buys another, it goes wrong in one of three ways: They integrate the small company into the big one lose what was special about it, they force cost-cutting on it and it makes crappy cars, or they just buy it and ignore it, and the smaller company is no better off.
But Geely had been clever with Volvo, giving it the money it needed to turn around, while not forcing it to be something it isn't. They're gradually integrating it into the rest of the company, with plans to build Volvos in China, but being patient. It's reminiscent of how India's Tata has turned around Jaguar Land Rover, so perhaps rising Asia will be good for western brands after all.
Lotus certainly needs that sort of treatment. They were owned and mismanaged by GM, who had them build a - I can barely say it - a front-drive sports car. Then they were owned by Malaysia's Proton, who didn't seem to know what to do with it. Then they had a CEO who announced an ambitious slate of new cars they couldn't afford to put into production. Since then they're been treading water, offering an endless stream of "new" special editions of their existing cars.
So stable and wise ownership is just what they need if they are going to stay in business long enough for me to earn enough money to buy one. I'm even okay with the fact that they'll probably end up building an SUV. But now, I'm just getting used to the fact that I apparently have an opinion on Chinese cars. Geely rules, Chery, BYD, um... Dongfeng drools.
Friday, December 8, 2017
Tomorrow I'll Be Perfect
I once read one of the What Color Is Your Parachute books. In trying to explain how to find your ideal career, the author related an incident where he was advising a client. He asked the client to find three things he really enjoyed, and the three he chose were psychology, gardening and carpentry. A little research showed that there is a branch of psychology that deals with plant therapy, thus combining the client's top two interests. The author then points out the need for wooden shelves to hold the plants.
When I read that, I wasn't sure I'd that was the dumbest or most brilliant thing I'd ever seen. I mean, surely you could combine those interests in a less literal way. Like if you're interested in carpentry, it's probably not just exposure to wood that you're looking for; it's probably a more abstract working with spatial ideas, or honing a craft. Surely you could find those things in some other, less contrived career.
But at the same time, I secretly was jealous. I mean, wouldn't we all love to be working in a job that combined our favourite things? Doing something you love would be great, but this would be better, since you could never get bored, or come to resent that one activity. Curse you, modern economy, for not providing a job that combines political punditry, driving, and watching sports!
And strangely, it was watching sports that made me think of this passage from the book. During a baseball game, the commentators informed us that the Dodgers' Cody Belanger was the only player in the Major Leagues to hit a home run in every possible count this season. That is, there are twelve possible counts of balls and strikes, and he had hit at least one homer while in each of them.
At this point, I asked the question every modern sports fan asks from time to time: how the hell do they come up with these stats?
But between my knowledge of sports and computers, I can understand it. If a person has a strong knowledge of both sports statistics and databases I think it would be pretty believable that they could come up with oddball facts like that. You have an inkling about a possible statistical point of interest, compose it into a database query and check it out.
Of course, that means having a great interest and experties in two different areas. But if you do happen to fit the qualifications, then it's your perfect job. Those are some pretty specific requirements, but then, there won't be many openings for it either, so this occupational serendipity is pretty rare. That's unfortunate; wouldn't you love a world where everyone got to work in a job so perfectly tailored to them? I'm still looking, so I'll have to go back to the book.
When I read that, I wasn't sure I'd that was the dumbest or most brilliant thing I'd ever seen. I mean, surely you could combine those interests in a less literal way. Like if you're interested in carpentry, it's probably not just exposure to wood that you're looking for; it's probably a more abstract working with spatial ideas, or honing a craft. Surely you could find those things in some other, less contrived career.
But at the same time, I secretly was jealous. I mean, wouldn't we all love to be working in a job that combined our favourite things? Doing something you love would be great, but this would be better, since you could never get bored, or come to resent that one activity. Curse you, modern economy, for not providing a job that combines political punditry, driving, and watching sports!
And strangely, it was watching sports that made me think of this passage from the book. During a baseball game, the commentators informed us that the Dodgers' Cody Belanger was the only player in the Major Leagues to hit a home run in every possible count this season. That is, there are twelve possible counts of balls and strikes, and he had hit at least one homer while in each of them.
At this point, I asked the question every modern sports fan asks from time to time: how the hell do they come up with these stats?
But between my knowledge of sports and computers, I can understand it. If a person has a strong knowledge of both sports statistics and databases I think it would be pretty believable that they could come up with oddball facts like that. You have an inkling about a possible statistical point of interest, compose it into a database query and check it out.
Of course, that means having a great interest and experties in two different areas. But if you do happen to fit the qualifications, then it's your perfect job. Those are some pretty specific requirements, but then, there won't be many openings for it either, so this occupational serendipity is pretty rare. That's unfortunate; wouldn't you love a world where everyone got to work in a job so perfectly tailored to them? I'm still looking, so I'll have to go back to the book.
Sunday, December 3, 2017
The Royal Weed
I have to admit a little bit of Schadenfreude when I found out that the soon-to-be-legal pot in Ontario will be sold through a small number of government-owned stores. I mean, I've always supported legalization, so that's good. But the government-owned stores concept gives me mixed emotions.
Just to be clear, I think this is a dumb decision by the government. It's essentially replicating Ontario's traditional way of selling alcohol in government stores. That never made sense to me: Alcohol isn't really dangerous enough to require such oversight, the government-run stores did nothing to keep alcohol out of the hands of minors, and for some reason, we're totally okay having private companies sell tobacco. And of course, we're now moving away from that approach in alcohol, selling it in grocery stores. That change, and the complete lack of a societal collapse resulting from it, would seem to show that the old approach was wrong, and we know it.
The decision to sell pot through government stores also makes little sense politically. Premier Wynne and government may be looking at this as a compromise between a ban and complete deregulation, so it will be a good way to sell the public on a change not everyone in comfortable with. But I think it's more likely to cancel-out support. Libertarians will hate the government control. Social conservatives won't be placated because they've been taught that pot is the creation of Satan, so careful distribution of the creation of Satan will seem no better. And even left-leaning people like me will see the move as paternalistic, rather than socialist.
Further, it looks like Wynne is developing a Hillary-Clinton-like anti-cult where a large segment of society has decided that they just don't like her or anything she does, not really sure why, but it couldn't possibly be sexism, really, I'm sure. As such, trying to reach a please-everyone compromise is impossible; people will just focus on what they didn't get, because the narrative is that everything Wynne does is bad. It doesn't really make sense for her to try to grab the centre; she'll find little traction there. She'd be better off trying to prove here bona fides to the left where more people will give here a chance.
But I am having a bit of Schadenfreude for Canada's prince of pot, Marc Emery. See, I've been waiting years for a chance to talk about him so that I could point out that I've actuality met him. After bragging about this to someone, that other person would then ask, "how did you meet him?" And I'd reply, "he spoke at my high school."
Okay, he technically spoke at our model U.N. assembly, invited by a school that was drifting towards the proto-alt-right. Back then, Emery wasn't concentrating on legalizing marijuana; he was just a general hard-core libertarian. For me, that was the beginning of a lifetime of finding extreme libertarianism both fascinating and scary. It's like how you might enjoy mob movies, but then you find out that people actually look up to their characters and suddenly it's not so much fun.
So I've taken note whenever Marc Emery's name has come up, as he's moved out west and taken marijuana as his life's cause. Living in Vancouver, he won't have to care about Ontario's nanny-state pot stores. But I'd like to think that his head did explode just a little bit when he heard about it.
Just to be clear, I think this is a dumb decision by the government. It's essentially replicating Ontario's traditional way of selling alcohol in government stores. That never made sense to me: Alcohol isn't really dangerous enough to require such oversight, the government-run stores did nothing to keep alcohol out of the hands of minors, and for some reason, we're totally okay having private companies sell tobacco. And of course, we're now moving away from that approach in alcohol, selling it in grocery stores. That change, and the complete lack of a societal collapse resulting from it, would seem to show that the old approach was wrong, and we know it.
The decision to sell pot through government stores also makes little sense politically. Premier Wynne and government may be looking at this as a compromise between a ban and complete deregulation, so it will be a good way to sell the public on a change not everyone in comfortable with. But I think it's more likely to cancel-out support. Libertarians will hate the government control. Social conservatives won't be placated because they've been taught that pot is the creation of Satan, so careful distribution of the creation of Satan will seem no better. And even left-leaning people like me will see the move as paternalistic, rather than socialist.
Further, it looks like Wynne is developing a Hillary-Clinton-like anti-cult where a large segment of society has decided that they just don't like her or anything she does, not really sure why, but it couldn't possibly be sexism, really, I'm sure. As such, trying to reach a please-everyone compromise is impossible; people will just focus on what they didn't get, because the narrative is that everything Wynne does is bad. It doesn't really make sense for her to try to grab the centre; she'll find little traction there. She'd be better off trying to prove here bona fides to the left where more people will give here a chance.
But I am having a bit of Schadenfreude for Canada's prince of pot, Marc Emery. See, I've been waiting years for a chance to talk about him so that I could point out that I've actuality met him. After bragging about this to someone, that other person would then ask, "how did you meet him?" And I'd reply, "he spoke at my high school."
Okay, he technically spoke at our model U.N. assembly, invited by a school that was drifting towards the proto-alt-right. Back then, Emery wasn't concentrating on legalizing marijuana; he was just a general hard-core libertarian. For me, that was the beginning of a lifetime of finding extreme libertarianism both fascinating and scary. It's like how you might enjoy mob movies, but then you find out that people actually look up to their characters and suddenly it's not so much fun.
So I've taken note whenever Marc Emery's name has come up, as he's moved out west and taken marijuana as his life's cause. Living in Vancouver, he won't have to care about Ontario's nanny-state pot stores. But I'd like to think that his head did explode just a little bit when he heard about it.
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