I attended the Peter Senge lecture at the Vancouver Board of Trade yesterday. He’s the MIT lecturer who wrote “The Fifth Discipline” years ago, about learning organizations. His latest is “The Necessary Revolution”, about corporate efforts to develop true, legitimate, authentic sustainability. He made some very interesting comments, detailed below the fold:
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Seems Men’s Health spoke too soon in impugning Outback Steakhouse’s Aussie Fries (see earlier post here).
Armour brand pork brains in milk gravy contain more than 1000% of your daily recommended intake of cholesterol. On the other hand, it is brain food.
(Hat tip consumerist.)
(more under the fold)
A New Scientist article from a few years back suggests that vampire legends were how our ancestors tried to explain rabies. Interesting to think of vampire stories as educational tools. 
Nowadays, of course, kids learn about rabies through Old Yeller, that “sick doggy snuff film”, to quote Phoebe from Friends.
[Rabies/vampires] is then analogous to [Williams Syndrome/elves]. The latter is a genetic disorder which causes elfin features and a love of music, clearly the inspiration for elves in various fairy tales.
Given the visually-staggering inventory piling up, it is difficult to foresee good times returning for automakers, anytime soon.
This image had a nice feel to it — the staggered and uneven rows made me think of the old “space invaders” arcade game.
Briliant minds at the UK charts website decided to:
This is an advertising analogue of a Rube Goldberg machine — a ridiculously complicated way of getting iPhone users to download an app.
As an encore campaign, I suggest:
The possibilities are dizzying…!
(hat tip Popjustice)
How much more
Male humpback whales — like Sir Mix-A-Lot — like voluptuous females. Or at least, what passes for voluptuousness in the cetacean world.
For their part, female humpbacks may prefer their males to be exotic foreigners — or again, what passes for foreign among creatures who migrate far enough each year to half-circumnavigate the globe.
There was a famous case in the mid-nineties (in nerd herds, at least) of some Indian Ocean male humpbacks getting lost and veering into the Pacific Ocean. Their songs were different from those of the males in the local Pacific Ocean population — but within two years, almost all the Pacific Ocean-male humpbacks had changed their songs to be more like the Indian Ocean males’!
And to complete a humpback hat trick, here’s a link to a website about a wild albino humpback named Migaloo.
Friday, the Dow dropped below its late-last-year low. Consequently, people who believe in Dow Theory conclude that it’ll drop a lot more. Like all popular investing superstitions, this one is self-fulfilling — because, well, it’s popular.
The idea is that, if the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the Dow Transportation Average simultaneously plumb new [twelve-month*] lows… then the primary trend of the US stock market is down, until proven otherwise. (To practitioners of this fiduciary faith, “otherwise” means having the DJIA and DJTA both soar to new [twelve-month*] highs.)
* I chose twelve months out of thin air; Dow Theorists look for local maxima and minima on multi-year stock market charts.
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I’ve seen estimates arguing for the Dow to hit the lower 6000’s before the current shakeout is done, which isn’t unreasonable, for various reasons.
Still, considering the Japanese Nikkei remains mired below its fifty-year moving average, we’re not so badly off. Yet. Check back in 2019. 
(Six years ago the Nikkei’s fifty-year moving average was 9070 as noted here. Friday it closed at about 7400.) __(’Read the rest of this entry »’)
So, I got to wondering just what the difference between Gatorade (Pepsi) and Powerade (Coke) really was.
My experimental samples:
Here are the ingredients lists.
So, there you go. Not really much difference. Or, maybe more precisely, really not much difference.
Maybe this speaks to first-mover advantage: Powerade sells essentially the same product, but despite its efforts to gain “official drink” status for various sports teams and events; it’s stuck at 14% market share in the US, compared to 83% for its rival.
Marc at the CCPA notes the BC carbon tax’s first birthday was Feb 18, with a rather depressing fairy tale. Hopefully her second birthday will find her better-appreciated than she currently is, in her stunted state. (Ten bucks a tonne won’t drive any consumer behaviour. Nor will fifteen bucks a tonne.)
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I suppose the appropriate analogy would be that this is the first anniversary of the conception of the carbon tax, July 1st being its actual “date of birth”.
Well, here’s to hoping that she has a dino-sized growth spurt from turkey-sized compsognathus to titanic T-Rex (or should that be tyrannosaurus regina?) with appropriate redirection of funds towards emissions-offsetting projects and infrastructure, and tax cuts veering strongly progressive.
The Tory government’s TFSA (tax-free savings account) is an example of a stunningly regressive tax benefit — its benefits skew disproportionately to the wealthy. And it’s projected to be expensive too - roughly $50 million in lost tax revenue in ‘09, $150 million in ‘10… pretty soon, you’re talking about real money!
This is the most encouraging news I’ve seen coming out of Alberta in a good long while. Sadly, the Globe and Mail still has a ridiculous paywall policy for anything more than a week old. So, in case this is being read after end-Feb, the news is this: the tar sands lobby has splintered!
Like Joe Biden in a Vice-Presidential debate, I’ll repeat that one more time: the tar sands lobby has splintered! Good to see the dirty-oil campaign has won some success.
This is a classic divide-and-conquer victory: fracturing your opponents and getting them to outflank each other, instead of you. Wonderful stuff.
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Basically, newer tar sands players using maybe-not-quite-as-lethally-destructive steam-assisted gravity-drainage extraction (SAGD) are trying to separate themselves from traditional tar sands miners.
The process is even more energy intensive than traditional tar sands mining, but it should be possible to extract the bitumen without denuding the boreal forest above. The process should use less fresh water, and eliminates the need for visible-from-space tailings ponds.
While the only “clean” tar sands are the ones left in the ground, I think SAGD could be marginally less environmentally destructive, on the whole. Whether a lifecycle analysis confirms this or shows otherwise, it is absolutely refreshing to see the tar sands lobby splintering.