Four (or Five!) Reasons Why

….Canada Leads the World in Donut Consumption

1. At last count, there were more than 3,200 donut stores in Canada (Tim Horton’s, Coffee Time, etc.), so the opportunity to buy a donut arises so often your resolve eventually disappears and before you know it you’re eating a double-chocolate fudge cruller with multi-coloured sprinkles.

2. They’re cheap and they go just great with coffee. This is a killer-combo for Canadians because, by and large, we’re frugal people who drink an awful lot of java.

3. Canada needs to the best in the world at something other than hockey and pot-smoking, right?

4. It’s cold in Canada, which means you need to fuel your body with copious amount of sugar so you can keep warm. Donuts are the perfect fuel because they can be eaten quickly without utensils (always a good thing!)…and without taking off your winter gloves.

5. Homer loves donuts, and everyone knows Homer is a Canadian.

More: Tim Horton’s sells more than three million donuts a day.

In a lengthy post about donuts, Bob Braughler talks about his love for donuts while trying to figure out how many donuts people in Pittsburgh eat a year. The answer, he figures, is 29.3 million. Meanwhile, Musings of Housewife compares donuts at Tim Horton’s with Krispy Kreme and Dunkin Donuts, and sadly determines that Tim’s ranks third.

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…We’ve All Mysteriously Become Foodies

1. Forn. Ok, I made up a new word - for “food porn”. Digital cable brings us 25-hours-a-day, 8-days-a-week, 366-days-a-year’s worth of food-related television. All these guys and gals make it look effortless and accessible. In reality, how many people actually scribble down recipes and make anything they’ve seen on TV. Mmm…maybe, just maybe, it’s a way of selling other stuff…like cookbooks!

2. The web has virtualized “forn” and extended its reach into every crevasse of our lives. Now we have giant databases of recipes - like Epicurious and the Food Network. We have video blogs that teach us everything we’ll never use - like iFoods.tv and Rouxbe. We even have dedicated social networks - like Open Source Food.

3. BAM! Everyone’s got a catchphrase. And those catchphrases make them famous. And fame puts them in commercials for toothpaste.

4. The kitchen has become the new living room. It has long lost its role as only a place for families to gather and as a functional centre of providing sustenance. It is now a centrepiece of the modern home, filled with little used equipment and gadgets.

5. It’s food. What’s not to love?

If this is making you hungry, go check out Foodporn.com and Slashfood. Sure to whet your appetite!

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….CEO Compensation is Obscene

1. For whatever reason, there’s a belief that CEOs are management superstars who can single-handedly make a business successful because of some mysterious, inherent gift. Look at Stelco CEO Rodney Mott, who will make $67-million after the steel maker was acquired by United States Steel Corp. earlier this week. Not bad for just over a year’s work. When asked if he expected a huge reward for doing his job, Mott said. “I expect to. I usually do.” Right.

2. The joy of stock options. Nothing like getting a bunch of cheap options to tip things in your favor. Given it doesn’t cost companies that much to offer, options are doled out like candy at a birthday party. Here, have some Mr. CEO. In fact, have some more.

3. Low or no interest loans, which allow CEOs to buy stock so shareholders can feel like the CEO is part of the gang.

4. A sense of entitlement. I’m a CEO; I’m the boss; CEOs are supposed to make millions; that’s just the way it is.

More: You have to love newly-appointed Chrysler CEO Robert Nardelli who declined to provide details about any performance-based bonuses he will collect. For those unfamiliar with Nardelli, he walked away from Home Depot in January with a $210-million severance package. As well, the Wharton School of Business offers up an article on the “Art and Science of Measuring CEO Performance”.

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…Urban Densification Is Good

1. Densification can put a cap on urban sprawl. And we all know that urban sprawl is bad. It leads to an overexploitation of budgets, resources and the landscape. Want proof? Click here to see how urban sprawl doomed the ancient city of Angkor Wat and here for a discussion about it.

2. Denser cities create “Consumer Cities” (a term recently coined by Edward Glaeser, Professor of Economics at Harvard). As Graham Bowley notes, “People now want to live in dense areas because dense areas offer what people want to consume - opera, sports teams, art museums, varied cuisine.” More people leads to more stuff to do. More stuff to do leads to more people. Ah, the beauty of the virtuous circle.

3. Densification creates communities. You get to know your neighbours. More local restaurants, shops and bars open up. Ultimately, we get cities within cities. Who needs to travel when you there’s so much to do at home?!

4. Walking, biking, public transportation – up! Commuting – down!

5. More people equals more renting. More renting equals economic growth. Sounds odd, but click here and here for details.

Also, check out All About Cities for some interesting posts as well.

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…”Made in China” = “Buyer Beware”

….Buying a New Car is Smart

1. Nothing beats that new car smell - the seductive combination of leather and plastic makes dropping $30,000 for the privilege of buying new versus used so much easier to handle. Of course, the auto industry is trying reduce the new car smell over concerns about all those toxins.

2. You’re not getting someone else’s baggage. No matter how well a used car is maintained, there’s always a problem lurking in the shadows that’s bound to make your mechanic happy.

3. You’re supporting the struggling North American auto industry…unless you’re among a growing number of people buying a foreign-made car these days. And how long will it be before you can buy a Chinese-made Chery?

4. You have the option of buying an environmentally-friendly hybrid such as a Prius, which raises the question about whether a “green car” (the phrase seems like an oxymoron, doesn’t it?) can actually have a beautiful design as well.

Check out Mother Proof for a take on the “psychological impact” of the new car smell, as well as PopGadget on you can get rid of new car smell using a corndog.

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