Lifestyles Of The Rich And Inconvenienced

Someone is building a condo tower on Miami aimed at the super rich. And when I say super rich, I don't mean someone who can afford a condo in Miami. They are trying to target billionaires. It's called the Porsche Design Tower, because it is being designed by Porsche Design (the cash-in-on-the-name division of Porsche, the car company.)

It's appropriate that the building is associated with a car company: The big draw is that it actually has a car elevator in it, so you can park your car (actually, "cars") in a garage adjoining your condo, with a glass wall so you can enjoy a view of your automotive collection in your condo. And your cars can be terrified by the view from the sky they were never meant to experience.

This brings up something I've thought odd about rich people: their desire for expensive versions of inherently cheap things. The best example is in plane seating. Airlines keep coming up with more luxurious first or business class seats, with mini desks, seats that recline into something approximating a bed, etc.

Emirates first class, which you can see in Google Streetview

If you look at the first class cabin in the context of an airline cabin, it looks luxurious. But in any other context it looks torturous. Imagine walking into the office of your new employer and seeing that all the desks look like that; you'd either leave, or form a union. Or to put it another way, the occupants of these seats will be paying tens of thousands of dollars to spend seven hours in an environment that's less comfortable than a modest basement apartment.

And this condo tower is much the same. It's still prone to all the problems of apartment/condo living. You still might get caught with a neighbour that plays loud music, or someone who smokes on the balcony. And worse, in this tower it will be a smelly cigar, and music played by the actual band.

A Few Things Left To Say-ay-ay-ay-ay

Do you ever have that thing where you wake up with a song you heard the day before, going through your head, and it ends up going through your head the rest of the day? Well for me, on Mondays, that is often the Sunday Night Football theme, as belted-out by Carrie Underwood. Sometimes that's annoying, but now it's a welcome respite from Christmas carols.
 

But it also got me thinking about it.  For one thing, why would anyone Wait All Day For Sunday Night?  There are games on all afternoon. But there's also the way they work in a line describing that night's game (eg, "Saints and Panthers: a division showdown")  I always wondered if that means they had her sing the song over and over again, with the line changed for each game.  If so, how do they avoid getting snarky with the lyrics ("Bills and Vikings, there's nothing else on.")  Or they call her into the studio every week to re-record that one line.  That would surely also lead to some resentment ("Falcons and Texans, it looked good in July.")

That doesn't seem likely, but then it occurred to me that some of the Sunday night games aren't scheduled ahead of time; they wait until that week before deciding which game to move to prime time.  Maybe they call her up that week and get her to sing the week's teams into the phone.  "Hi Carrie, we've decided on Saints-Panthers.  Don't worry, we can fix it with autotune."  I wish I'd seen her Sound of Music special now, I could probably do some sarcastic joke about it here.

Count 'Em Up

Canada's Olympic curling trials are nearly done.  The Ron Burgundy appearance went better than I expected.  My apologies to Will Ferrell; I'll go see Anchorman 2 as soon as it comes out.  Well, let's say when it gets to on-demand.  Anyway, watching the curling this week has made me think of the odd aspects of the sport that other sports could benefit from.  So here's my list of "Things other sports should borrow from curling."

More than one game going on at a time. 

If you get stuck watching a meaningless game between incompetent teams, just cast your eyes to the next field over.

Players make up their own teams.

Don't fight with teammates subtly passive-agressive quotes in media. Instead, start your own team and get some real revenge.

Coaches only get involved when they're asked for their input.

Some coaches are entertaining, but most are micromanager control freaks.  It would be better if they were forced to watch from the stands and only intervene when the players are totally perplexed.

Everyone is miked up all the time.

They often have microphones on some of the players in, say, football.  But that's just so they can play sound bites as a montage leading in to a commercial break, but it's usually just inane chatter. I want to hear them argue strategy, so we can finally find out who doesn't really know what they're doing.

Middle-aged super stars.

I find it's easier to cheer for someone when you don't have to resent their youth.

Vic Rauter. 

Lots of commentators know less about the sport than the audience, but only he has the courage to be open about it.

Clock limits time between action, not the action itself.

Think how much better sports would be if there was some limited amount of time for mound visits, soccer throw-ins, etc.

Name the teams after the star players. 

Let's drop the pretence and rename the Denver Broncos as the Peyton Manning Team.

I Did Not Find This Review Useful

There's been plenty of attention paid to Amazon's demonstration of delivering small packages by drones. But as technology previews go, this wasn't too impressive.  For me, future technology is exciting if there's a high ratio of life-changing to how difficult-of-implementation. 

The Amazon drones won't be that fast, and there's a host of yet-to-be solved problems with huge numbers of tiny flying things.  There's also the fact that it can't really hold that much.  Not only will it not be able to deliver a big order, the fact that it can't carry many people's orders means that there are going to have to be thousands of them, each ferrying a small order between the warehouse and one customer.

It's also a bit of a backward step in terms of centralization.  In order to deliver in reasonable time, there'll have to be a warehouse in your town.  Having an Amazon warehouse/droneport in each city would cost a fortune.

So for all these reasons I'm assuming Amazon isn't about to get into drone delivery, and this was just a publicity stunt.  If not, I'll be hoping that 3-D printing makes the very idea of delivering objects obsolete first.

Stadium Love

As a fan of both sports and architecture, I've always been interested in stadiums. (And as a fan of proper English, I've always been interested in "stadia.") And like many people, I'm no fan of the two most annoying trends in stadiums: ever more extravagant stadiums built with civic money extorted by teams threatening to move, and the often ridiculous sponsor-purchased names.

Both those trends reached new heights recently. The disposable stadiums problem was emphasized when the Atlanta Braves announced a deal to replace their current home, Turner Field. That stadium isn't too old itself: it was built for the Summer Olympics in 1996, then modified for baseball the next year.  It seems the Braves didn't like the location of the old stadium, and the city of Atlanta wouldn't pay for renovations, but one of the suburbs would pay for an unspecified amount of an entirely new stadium.

This gets more bizarre when you see that the Atlanta Falcons are leaving the Georgia Dome (built 1992) for their own new home.  So this most conservative part of America is going to be building two unnecessary partly-taxpayer-funded stadiums at the same time.

How does this happen?  Sports teams are very visible and have an emotional connection with the public, so losing them looks really bad for politicians, and money gets spent on them not the sewage treatment plant no one knows needs replacing. Eventually sports teams are going to push this too far and finally ask for too much.  But it's hard to image it could get sillier than abandoning a stadium barely old enough to drive. 

Both these buildings will have the naming rights sold to the highest bidder, so Atlanta-area taxpayers will have to live with not just paying for a stadium, but paying for Chick-Fil-A Field or the Piggly-Wiggly Dome or something. The idea of sponsors buying naming rights has already produced names that are difficult to talk about with a straight face. But now Rogers is going to make it more difficult, with news that they've bought the naming rights to the new arena in Edmonton. It will be known as Rogers Place. But wait, don't they already own the rights to Vancouver's arena? Yes, but that's Rogers Arena. Which is also not to be confused with Rogers Centre in Toronto (nee SkyDome.) If you have trouble remembering which of Disney World or Disney Land is in California and which is in Florida, them you're never going to get this straight. 

Dry Humour, Or Bathroom Humour

Occasionally you see clever graffiti on the hand-driers in public washrooms.  For instance, in one of the men's rooms in the University of Waterloo Math building, someone had modified the drier instructions so that it read, "For a message from Bill Davis, press button." Davis was already long gone when I got to UW, so the message must have been pretty solidly scratched in. Or the custodians really hated Bill Davis.

But I think this display at the University of Guelph may have taken the hand-drier satire crown:

Apocalypse (Google) Now

I've been continuing to use Google Now, the Android-based software that's supposed to act as a digital assistant.  I've already mentioned my experiences before.  There's been an upgrade, and it seems a little easier to use.  And then just today, I came across this article from the Economist on personal assistant software.

One of its features is that it senses (using GPS) which places you go to often, and then offers directions and travel times to them. So wherever I go, I always know how long it will take to get home. This feature is kind of hit-and-miss. The directions are fine, but it has a bizarre way of deciding which places it should keep track of. A couple of days ago, it offered to keep track of travel distances to Dawson Market, a cafe in Woodstock. I’ve been there a number of times, so I might be interested in directions there. But what odd is that I haven’t been there in months, because it’s been closed for renovations. What caused Google Now to just decide it was important to me?

It's also hit-and-miss when it gives me time updates.  For instance, it figured out that I often go to my hairstylist. (What?  I do have some hair, and it has to be cut.)  Of course, it might be useful to get traffic times to get there.  But it's not smart enough to figure out which places I go to at which times.  It would be useful if it noticed that I only go there at times I have marked in the calendar, and then only gave me updates when my appointment is coming up.  But it can't figure that out, it just gives me all the traffic updates it can, all the time.

Another of the places it keeps track of is my parents' house, and I was quite surprised when it suddenly told me that it would take ten-and-a-half hours to get there, rather than the 50 minutes it usually takes. So what caused that, a massive traffic jam on the back roads of Southern Ontario?

No, here's what happened: In looking through the configuration screens, it asked how I usually get around, with the options being walking, cycling, driving, and public transit. As a downtown resident, I answered it truthfully as walking. So now it thinks that every trip I take is by foot.