Engineering humour
The latest APEGBC (Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists) newsletter arrived in my e-mailbox the other day.
I couldn’t help but laugh at the first topic (see below the fold):
Archive forJanuary, 2009
How tar sands companies could turn a new leaf
The tar sands continue to (deservedly) attract condemnation.
Since I wrote earlier about Nippon Oil’s transformative plans to add major solar and fuel cells businesses to its petroleum core, I got to wondering what similar transformations tar sands miners could undertake.
The miners are under pressure from the Alberta government to reduce freshwater use. What this effectively means is that instead of using fresh water from the Athabasca River for their chemical processing, the miners have to use the water from their tailings ponds. In order to do that, they have to clean it, separating out the finely-dispersed oily residues. Doing so is difficult, and is thus expensive.
But if the miners did develop a way to separate the water from the residues… perhaps they could get into the business of water purification. Demand for oil may decrease as new technologies evolve, but demand for clean water should remain strong for, well, forever.
It would be nice to reassert Canadian primacy in the water-filtration field — just a few years ago, Ontario-based water-filtration company Zenon Environmental got assimilated into the Borg known as General Electric. It was a terrible pity, considering that Zenon appeared to be first among peers in its field, the ‘RIM’ of its industry.
The decline of the Prius has been WAY exaggerated
Toyota’s in an interesting spot this year. The new Prius is being overshadowed, what with the flurry blizzard of electric car announcements from naerly every carmaker, including Chinese battery upstart BYD.
One of the newer members of Warren Buffett’s investment stable, BYD deserves kudos for nipping the First World automakers with their product — which is already on sale in China! __(’Read the rest of this entry »’)
Are we Icarus?
In Greek mythology, Daedalus is the one who created the labyrinth on Crete which held the Minotaur. For his work — no good deed goes unpunished, after all — he was imprisoned by the king, Minos. So he made wings for himself and his son Icarus, and they escaped the island of Crete.
Big D’s other son Iapyx doesn’t seem to’ve made the trip, which I suppose makes the Icarus legend the mythological forebear of “Home Alone“. 
In the legend, despite his father’s warnings, Icarus got carried away with his newfound ability… and flew too close to the sun, melting the wax on his wings, causing the feathers to fall off, and leading him to fall to his death in the sea.
Whereas Daedalus is an archetypal craftsman / inventor, Icarus seems symbolic of youth — impetuous and unheedful of the warnings of wisdom.
It seems an eerily parallel to where we stand today on global warming. In the developed world, our standards of living have soared to levels inconceivable a century ago. (Jules Verne possibly excepted.) And just as Icarus’ new freedom drunkened him into ignoring Daedalus’ warnings… as societies, we’ve lent deaf ears to our scientists’ escalating alarm.
Nippon Oil on the Nokia path…
A couple days ago, I came across two articles about Nippon Oil’s plans to JV their way into solar power and fuel cells production, respectively. Both projects are with Sanyo (recently taken over by Panasonic, the new official name of Japanese behemoth Matsushita Electric).
This struck me as inspirational, because Nippon Oil is Japan’s largest oil company! Its core competency, or comparative advantage, is fossil fuels and petrochemicals. But instead of choosing to fight a bruising, unethical, long rear-guard action to deny global warming or defend its old ways… management has decided the company needs to evolve.
It’s reminiscient of the decision by pulp-mill / tire-maker Nokia to get into telecommunications. I’m sure there were doubters — especially since their telco division took seventeen years to turn a profit. But was it worth it in the end? I’m sure every Nokia shareholder would now vote “yes”.
Sweet!
“Someone” suggested an aggressively catchy title for the upcoming DeSmogBlog book.
I hope they’re one of the three finalists. 
Microsoft Windowoes
Yes, that’s an attempt at a pun.
In the past twenty-odd years, Microsoft has proven exceedingly good at dispatching business rivals. They’ve been unstoppable spider-killers.
Even Google’s search dominance is a limited direct threat — Google has captured a new market, they aren’t “eating Microsoft’s lunch”. And open-source alternatives (Linux, OpenOffice) have been the business equivalent of blackflies, as opposed to, say, Viking raiders.
Until now.
Events - Vancouver gold show
I figure I’ll continue my (seven? eight?) year streak of attending the Vancouver Gold Show this week. Given the annihilation of the junior miner sector in the past six months, it’ll be interesting to take a pulse of the show. Will it be swarming with contrarians, confident in the imminence of better times? Or will it be relatively dead — the public having more to worry about than how to invest their capital? (Like, oh, keeping their jobs.)
The steady-state fallacy
I’ve encountered a major fallacy in two fields, relating to the incorrect application of a steady-state assumption. So I’m making it a category.
I’m going to say arguments suffer from a steady-state fallacy when they improperly assume that a present-day circumstance will carry over unchanged into the future. Because over time, most circumstances do change. People get older. New technologies emerge. Empires fall, and new ones rise. And so forth.
A few examples below the fold…
Foiled!
Aya’s workplace had a Casino Royale-themed post-Christmas party the other night. Keeping with the theme, each table had a page of James Bond trivia questions to fill out, to win prizes. Thirteen questions — not the intuitive seven. (”007″ and all that)
Our table was populated by one casual James Bond fan, and seven other neophytes / ignorami. So, summoning my inner Voldemort, I grabbed someone’s iPhone, whipped up Wikipedia, and began filling it out.
Then our table was called up for the buffet, and in the feasting we forgot to fill out our trivia form. And we lost. Still, I can’t help suspecting that the team that scored a “perfect 13″ had a bit of Wikiassistance also…