I ♥ Over-analysing Minutiae

Today i saw a minivan with a tiny little "I ♥ Europe" bumper sticker.  (If your browser choked on that last sentence, that's "I <heart> Europe.")

• I don't really understand how people decide to put on bumper stickers.  Sure, there was a time when it was common for a station wagon to have a collection of stickers chronicling the family travels.  Today you don't often see that, but occasionally you'll see a car with, say, one lonely Niagara Falls bumper sticker.  I can't figure out what inspires those people. There you are in the gift shop at Niagara Falls, looking at the snow globes and Inuit sculptures, and then you say to yourself, I think I'll immortalise this day with a bumper sticker.  But more amazing is that you don't change your mind on the way to the car.
• Why would you buy such a vague sticker?  It's not, "I ♥ Luxembourg" or whatever country he actually went to.  No, it's commemorating that he likes the whole continent.  You can't even find people in Europe who like the whole continent.  And I don't remember any "I ♥ North America" bumper stickers at Niagara Falls. 
• Part of the great tradition of bumper stickers is to commemorate road trips.  It helps to explain how they get on the cars: permanently telling everyone you went to Rock City may seem like a good idea when you've just been there, but not so much a week later when you're back home.  But this guy must have bought the sticker in Europe, flown home with it, then at some point hiked out to the garage to stick it on the minivan.  Meanwhile, I can barely be bothered to put the license plate stickers on my car.
• I can't believe they have bumper stickers in Europe.  Don't they get sucked off the car on the autobahn, or vandalized by Dadaists or something?  Though that would explain why it was a particularly small - to fit on their tiny cars.

What's Powering That i3? Don't Ask

I thought I'd continue my theme of German environmental stories.  Today a newspaper article caught my eye.  Germany's government shut down half its nuclear power plants two years ago, after Japan's earthquake/nuclear accident.  And in those two years, CO2 emissions have gone up both years.  This comes in spite of the fact that Germany - where the Green party is a major political force - has generally made progress on greenhouse gasses.

See, it turns out that eliminating nuclear power doesn't cause the spontaneous creation of windmills and solar panels, nor does it cause people to suddenly use less power.  Instead, it forces utilities to replace that power supply with the quickest cheapest thing available.  That's coal, and it produces more CO2 than any other major power source.

For the last freaking time, environmentalists, you've got to get over your fear of nuclear power.  Yes, I know, it's expensive and technological, and - worst of all to the activist heart - not the perfect solution.  But it's the only workable, non-disasterous solution we can get now.

And remember, it's "right now" that's the important point here.  To illustrate, the German Green party's energy plan would move to 100% renewable energy by 2040.  Yes, in the teeth of environmental catastrophe, they're going to take decades to implement the ideal solution, all the while pumping out CO2 from coal plants, apparently.  Is that really any better than the suburbanite who's hanging on to his SUV right up until the day they can make the recharge-in-a-minute, thousand-mile-range electric model that will allow him to keep his lifestyle without any compromise?

i3, Me Too

BMW has made headlines by announcing their new i3 electric car.  It seems pretty nice.  They've made it mostly out of plastic and carbon fibre, so it will weigh even less than normal cars that don't have to haul around hundreds of pounds of battery.  The styling is a bit chunky and boxy, with side windows and moldings taking random turns up and down the body; So now I understand why BMW usually just goes for plain and minimal styling.  Though I see they have still used their traditional "double kidney" radiator grille, even though it's not actually a grille on a radiatorless electric car.

The price starts at $41,350(US) which is par for the electric course.  But with this being a BMW, it seems to be a little easier to stomach.  If BMW were to build a compact crossover, it would probably cost almost that much anyway, so I'm guessing it will be an easier sell than say, Nissan selling an electric compact for $30,000.  And BMW is trying to make it even more appetizing by selling them "cellphone style," paying a monthly lease rate that will slowly pay off the car along with paying for servicing and charging equipment.

Though personally, if I were a BMW customer, I think I'd be inclined to save up to buy the $70,000(US) Tesla S, and be able to drive a car that's more the size I'm used to.  So I still say that Tesla has the best approach for taking electric cars mainstream: forget doing accounting gymnastics to get the average consumer to buy an electric car that's twice the price of a normal car.  Instead, sell luxury electric cars while evolving the technology to make it incrementally cheaper.  But whatever the business strategy, this seems like a significant step closer to a practical electric car, even if we aren't there yet.

No Urge To Merge

Lately a lot of people on Twitter have been discussing the idea of merging Kitchener and Waterloo.  It's an idea that stays around even though there's not a lot of support for it.  And indeed, the Tweets seemed to be against it too.

Personally, I think it would be a good idea.  Usually the fear expressed by those against the merging is that Kitchener and Waterloo have different cultures, and we shouldn't mess with that by unifying them.  I certainly agree that the two cities have distinct cultures, but I would posit that it has nothing at all to do with their separate governments, and everything to do with the fact that Waterloo has two universities and an economy built around insurance and technology, compared to Kitchener's no Universities and blue-collar background.

The fact is that all cities have distinct areas, and it's rare that their governance is what causes that.  As an example, let's look down the 401 at London.  If we were to arbitrarily cut the northern third of the city off and call it a separate city - let's call it "Elba" - we'd have to conclude that it has its own distinct culture.  But that would be in spite of it having always had the same government as the rest of the city.  Instead it would be because of the presence of UWO and a bunch of middle class and higher neighbourhoods, and suburbs expanding into small towns.

I've noticed that when the topic of merging comes up, people make the assumption that its all about cost savings.  Really, I doubt the savings would be significant - they'd be mostly in the form of eliminating politicians, high ranking civil servants and buildings and other things that get taxpayers mad but don't really make up a big part of the budget. 

I think the bigger reason for uniting is in decision making.  As an example, take development.  Both cities have committed to not sprawling any further than their current boundaries, but that commitment is going to be tested soon, because Waterloo is almost out of undeveloped land.  The sensible way of dealing with this would be to encourage more development in Kitchener, which still has lots of land.  A united city would probably make that decision, but Waterloo probably won't: once the fees from developers stop flowing in, the anti-sprawl agreement will be quickly forgotten. 

But the merger won't happen any time soon, since the two cities value their cultures, feel superior, and don't want to take on each other's expensive projects (RIM Park and Kitchener's downtown.)  And the region does elect some Conservative MPPs, so Hudak won't be forcing it on us as a cost cutting measure.  Instead I'll dedicate my energies to preventing them from changing the name of Kitchener back to Berlin.

iPatience

I keep seeing reports getting on Apple's case for not having introduced any major products since Steve Job's death.  Of course, you know everyone was just waiting to say this.  Truthfully, it hasn't been that big of a gap, but people have been wondering if the company can survive without him, and this is an opportunity for people in the press who don't understand technology of the tech industry to sound informed for once. You know they're just waiting for a full-scale round of told-ya-so's.

I wonder if these people have even been paying attention:  Do you really remember Apple under Jobs?  Did you get the impression that they were releasing new products every week?  Because here's how it actually happened:

• iPod - 2001
• iPhone - 2007
• iPad - 2010

The truth is, part of Apple's secret is to not release too many products too quickly.  They've always been careful not to rush products out without thinking them through (Hello, Windows 8!) or make a bunch of quick cash-in products.  That keeps the brand strong, and maintains the reputation that leads to business reporters having unrealistic expectations.

As you can see from their product releases of the past, they really aren't behind schedule when it comes to releasing some new line.  So the one thing the current Apple management had better have learned from Steve Jobs is: don't be afraid to be stubborn.

Knees Of Fire

I was relatively late in going from a desktop computer to a laptop.  So even as the world moves on to tablets and smartphones, I'm still getting used to the laptop.

For one thing, the heat this thing generates is really noticeable this time of year.  It takes away from my heating needs in winter, but if you actually want to use it on a lap, it can get uncomfortable this time of year.  I notice that fashionable lengths for shorts have increased with the popularity of laptops.  Coincidence?

And then there is the seating position.  If you're going to sit with it on your lap, you're limited to sitting there, legs together, facing forward.  No crossing the legs or slouching.  At least we'll be promoting a generation of good posture.  Though one of these days I'm going to dislocate my thumb reaching for the touchpad.

So how will tablets affect us?  Aside from a return to 70's short shorts, we'll be able to tolerate much more heat in our fingers.  And they'll discover a new form of wrist injury caused by trying to reach for the middle keys of the virtual keyboard without dropping the tablet.  Maybe they'll name that after me.

Damn You Zdeno!

I found a store selling hockey pucks as Canadian souvenirs.  Yes, there are lots of examples of embarrassing origins of souvenirs, but it's not often that it's something as distinctly Canadian as a hockey puck: