This Bloomberg article neatly encapsulates the financial zeitgeist at the moment — and as such, is a fitting year-end piece.
Akio Mikuni, President of one of Japan’s rating agencies essentially suggests letting the US default on some of its debt and investing in its infrastructure. Though it couldn’t possibly be as extensive as the Marshall Plan, perhaps this could be termed the “Mikuni Plan”.
The new Honda Insight — which it clearly hopes will be the mongoose to the cobra of Toyota’s Prius — is coming. Globe & Mail articles such as this seem to go behind subscriberwall, so here’s an alternate if lighterweight article.
We decided to order a “butter chicken” pizza from local pizzeria Mona Pizza, so googled them. This is what came up…
Never one to pass up a chance to work the keyboard, here’s the preamble to our first-annual Christmas letter… I added it after reading this and deciding that a little humour would be nice. __(’Read the rest of this entry »’)
Again via Rob Cottingham, an intriguing article that pre-workforce Millenials (aka Gen Y, aka the Net Generation) use e-mail less than their workforce Millenial counterparts — a lot less.
Continuing Casino Royale, I burst out laughing to read the following:
“…On the straight stretches the Amherst Villiers supercharger dug spurs into the Bentley’s twenty-five horses and the engine sent a high-pitched scream of pain into the night.”
James Bond’s first car was a twenty-five horsepower Bentley! Suddenly, the 110 horses of my first (and thus far, only) car, doesn’t seem so shabby. 
Christian Children’s Fund of Canada is using John Lennon’s Happy Xmas (War is over) as background music for their latest funding campaign.
It’s been forty-two years since that whole “(we’re) bigger than Jesus” thing, so I guess it’s a case of forgive and forget. Clearly, he got off easy — it took about 380 years or so for Galileo to be cleared. 
In the past few decades, GM has sunk while Toyota has soared. I suspect a big part of this is that GM extended division of labour too far. The principle of division of labour went from being a strength, to a crippling strength.
Specifically, by dividing “manufacturing” from “improving manufacturing” and assigning specialists to each (line workers and engineers, respectively) GM dammed up the supply of cost-cutting solutions. The people with the most expertise couldn’t contribute.
In contrast, Toyota kept “manufacturing” and “improving manufacturing” together — and so benefited (and continues to benefit) from a torrent of ideas for improvement.
Pericles made an analogous point in his Funeral Oration during the Peloponnesian War, describing why Athens would beat Sparta: words to the effect that “Sparta has one leader but we have thousands”, in reference to Athens’ democracy.
__(’Read the rest of this entry »’)
Doubtless it’ll’ve lost its novelty by next year, but as far as neologisms go, “snowmageddon” is undeniably catchy. People are all a-twitter about it…
(Hat tip to Robert at SmartPEI.)
While in school, I either wasn’t taught (or wasn’t paying attention) when the topic of black Nova Scotians was raised. I only (re-)discovered their cause when reading John Ralston Saul’s latest, A Fair Country.
I’d known black loyalists fled north after the American Revolution, but didn’t realize that they mainly settled in Nova Scotia. (All the more reason to visit there!) And it was a shock to learn that in 1792, a thousand Black Nova Scotians sailed to Sierra Leone, in search of a better future. A year later, the parliament of Upper Canada became the first jurisdiction in the British Empire to pass legislation against slavery.
The anti-slavery legislation beats the US Thirteenth Amendment by seventy-two years.
And the Black Nova Scotians’ trip to Sierra Leone preceded by thirty years, the emigration to neighboring Liberia, of freed American slaves.