Four (or Five!) Reasons Why

…LEGO Will Always Be Cool

1. LEGO pieces are an engineering marvel. While designed to snap together and fit snugly to maintain structural integrity, they are easily pulled apart and put back together again countless times. Even more amazing is that as part of a universal system, all LEGO pieces ever made are compatible - those made in 1968 still interlock with ones made 40 years later.

2. LEGO has sparked the imagination of countless children and continues to be a source of creativity. Few adults in North America and Europe will forget the hours spent building and destroying great edifices, monuments and ships. And when presented with the a bucket of bricks, it’s pretty hard to resist getting down to work. Those with a little more inspiration have created some amazing creations - check them out at Techeblog.com. (Did you know that every year, children spend over 5 billion hours playing with LEGO bricks?)

3. LEGO is not just for the young, aspiring engineer. It has been used to great effect among artists. Brickfilms.com is dedicated to stop-motion annimation, commonly using LEGO pieces, while the White Stripes “Fell In Love With A Girl” was filmed live, digitized and recreated entirely with LEGO bricks.

4. LEGO products are now being used as a consulting tool to foster creativity in the workplace. Since 2000, the LEGO Group has been promoting LEGO Serious Play. While their promotional material in the site sounds a bit flaky (”This kind of hands-on, minds-on learning produces a deeper, more meaningful understanding of the world and its possibilities”), you can’t help but be intrigued by the process. There are not too many toy companies that have successfully made the leap into the corporate environment like this.

5. LEGO Mindstorms. Arguably one of the first forays of any company into user generated content, the Mindstorm project released into the wild a line of programmable bricks based on the Robotics Invention System (now upgraded to the NXT platform). Realizing early in its development that the best way to develop the product was to let its user do the heavy lifting, the company has enabled a strong community to form, made up of professionals and hobbyists involved in the sharing of designs and programming techniques. This should be a case study for anyone interested in user generated content.

For a bit of Friday humour, check out this series of LEGO shorts set to stand up routines by comedian Eddie Izzard. As well, here’s how you can build a dock for your iPod using LEGO.

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….I Want to Go on a Cruise

1. Going on a cruise now looks like a lot of fun - a stark contrast to the previous perception that cruising was for retirees that wanted to play bridge and shuffleboard. I mean, you can now even go rockclimbing on a cruise. How cool is that? Check out this video from Royal Caribbean, and then tell me that cruising has changed for the better.

2. Unless you’re taking a cruise to Alaska or the Antarctic, cruises usually happen in places where there is warm weather. At this time of year in the arctic-like Northern hemisphere, that sounds like a really good idea. Think of it, the warm ocean breezes flow by as you stroll on the Lido deck with a drink that comes with an umbrella and a maraschino cherry in it.

3. Food - and lots of it. If variety is the spice of life, then it’s probably pretty spicy on a cruise given the number of dining choices. And the nice thing is that many boats come with well-equiped good gyms, which means you can work off all those calories that you’re taking in….or, if you’re into relaxing and gorging, maybe not.

4. There’s lots of things to keep children busy, which allows parents to relax and have fun without worrying about whether their offspring are getting into trouble. Better yet, your children will probably have a better time doing all those activities than when they’re with you so it’s a win-win proposition.

5. You can visit a number of ports of call along the way to experience some local culture as opposed to spending all of your time on the big boat, which could be sailing anywhere given how busy you’ll be eating, drinking, etc. Of course, you can always just stay on the boat if the idea of spending a few hours on-shore to visit overly-expensive tourist traps isn’t your idea of fun.

Technorati Tags: Cruises

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…The Debate Around Global Warming Is Irrelevant

1. Casting aside whether global warming is occurring or not, the threat of global warming should be strong enough to encourage action. The debate surrounding the issue is ridiculous on a basic level. Game theory and Pareto efficiency suggest that accepting the threat of global warming, even if untrue, will benefit the planet without harming anybody. Think about it - what harm can really occur due to the movement to change wasteful behaviour? Does anyone really suffer?

2. The threat of global warming should encourage industrial investment into searching for innovation and alternatives. For example, while TXU canceled 8 of 11 coal-fired power plants it had on the drawing board in Texas, the state has become the nation’s leader in wind-power generation and is aggressively building similar facilities. It is also leading the charge on carbon sequestration from power plant emissions into old oil fields and saline aquifers. These may not necessarily be the answers, but they can only serve to move the needle on innovation and encourage alternative thinking.

3. All the things that can be done to reduce the idea of global warming can also translate into financial savings for the average consumer. Nearly all of the suggestions on the Top 50 Things To Do To Stop Global Warming will eventually lead to keeping more of your money in your pocket. Global warming or not, the strive toward energy efficient behaviour is good for our pocket books! Saved money is earned money!

4. The climate is changing, whether through the natural course of time or due to the influence of humankind. Much, if not all, of the debate’s focus, however, revolves are blow-hards from both sides spending too much energy trying to convince everyone that the other side is wrong. To make the debate relevant, we must take a holistic perspective on the alternatives to our current behaviour, as well as the need for society to adapt to our climate.  

5. As Amory Lovins, the winner of the 2007 Leadership Breakthrough Award from Popular Mechanics and the executive director of the Rocky Mountain Institute, notes, nations and corporations will go green because it makes economic sense and provides a competitive advantage. The debate is relevant only to extent that it makes citizens and consumers think more about the world in which they live. 

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….Spam is Still Alive and Well

1. It’s easy to send hundreds of thousands of spam messages with a single click of a mouse. This explains why 78.5% of all e-mail is spam. And it can be difficult to track who’s sending them, which makes cracking down on spammers a noble, but often Don Quixote-like, exercise.

2. Despite lots of warnings and stories of people being ripped, people still open spam and click on all those nasty links they contain. Who knows, maybe there are lots of men who want to be larger or better lovers….or both. For many people, checking out spam may just be another form of digital entertainment.

3. Spam’s a lot like direct mail. No matter how much you want it to stop, there are too many being delivering it. It’s like trying to plug holes in a dam with your fingers. Pretty soon you run out of fingers, and you’re feet start to get wet.

4. Spammers are smart and foxy. Every move to block or shut them down leads to a counter-move. It’s the ultimate game of digital chess with both sides scheming on how to outmaneuver each other. With concerted efforts to crack on phishing, many spammers, for example, have moved on to scam-based letters looking for suckers, er, people to get involved in real estate, investment or loan deals.

Update: Here’s a CNet story on why spam isn’t going away any time soon.

Technorati Tags: Spam

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…The High-Def Revolution Hasn’t Begun

1. To the average user, the technology surrounding high definition is confusing compared to traditional, analog standards. What’s the difference between 1080i, 1080p and 720p? Then you get into components as changes in television connections have furthered complicated things. Component video has led to DVI, which in turn as led to HDMI. All of this had left a lot of non-techie consumers scratching their heads.

2. It took forever for the HDDVD versus Blu-Ray battle to settle. At least it felt that way. The effects of this have only served to confuse consumers and angered those who are now stuck with HD DVD players. And where is the Internet content? Only Daily Motion has launched HD capabilities. Where’s YouTube? How long is the planet’s biggest video sharing service going to make us sit through fuzzy, pixelated home movies?

3. HD content is expensive to produce and requires a whole host of advanced/new skills to bring a program to life, not only in the technical art of HD, but also in fields that are generally overlooked by viewers. Vanity Arts, for example, has been significantly affected by HD programming. As pointed out The Victory Studios, traditional make-up appears painterly and obvious on HD. Production houses now need access to greater behind-the-scenes talent that can make our favorite actors not-ready for-HD flaws look flawless. (Side note - it looks like the cosmetic industry is already climbing on board with Blu-Ray make-up.)

4. HD is expensive. Cable companies already charge an arm and a leg for “added value” channels in their monthly packages. They then charge an additional premium to access HD content. For sports, it’s definitely worth the price. But do we really need to pay a premium to watch CSI in crystal clear detail? And if HD ever carries over into the world of IPTV, the same cable companies are going to have to charge a fortune to recoup the bandwidth costs, which are outlined here.

5. The porn industry is not entirely on board yet. Early predictions of adult entertainment being an early adopter, as they are with many developments in broadcast technology, have not materialized as producers struggle with the idea that HD porn is too graphic. Not much is left to the imagination when you can see a little extra cellulite, a few eye wrinkles and the occasional scar from the seemingly required breast augmentation surgery. (It also doesn’t help that Sony has said “no” to Blu-Ray porn).

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