Governmental regulation can be good

Dodge Dart Grille, courtesy of Autoweek MagazineBack in the 1970s, air pol­lu­tion was really bad. The aver­age car back then put out lit­er­ally 20 times the amount of harm­ful emis­sions than today’s aver­age car. If the gov­ern­ment had not stepped in and made laws that forced car man­u­fac­tur­ers to clean up what was com­ing out of tailpipes, I am sure we’d have dirt­ier air today.

I haven’t been to China, but I under­stand the air in Bei­jing is a lot worse than the air in any Amer­i­can city. Why? A lack of gov­ern­men­tal regulation.

I fully under­stand that not all gov­ern­men­tal inter­ven­tions in life and pub­lic pol­icy are ben­e­fi­cial. But some are.

I chal­lenge you to argue with me on this one.

The photo is an enlarge­ment of a shot from Autoweek Mag­a­zine. Their May 14, 2012 issue has an arti­cle about the new Dodge Dart. Its front grille shuts at cer­tain speeds to improve fuel econ­omy — because of gov­ern­men­tal reg­u­la­tions for car man­u­fac­tur­ers to increase fuel econ­omy. I think that’s awesome.

Amazing cameras

The cell phone has replaced the point-and-shoot camera.

If you have an older phone, its cam­era is prob­a­bly not very good, but if you’ve bought a recent smart phone, you now know how good a cell phone’s cam­era can be.

I’ve always been a pro­po­nent of small dig­i­tal cam­eras. (My sec­ond, in about 2002, was a tiny Sony that was incred­i­bly sim­ple to use. I still love Sony cam­eras — my cur­rent non-cell-phone cam­era is a Sony.) The eas­ier a cam­era is to use, the more often you’ll take pho­tos. And if it’s small and light enough, you will carry it in your pocket, thus increas­ing your chances of not miss­ing a shot.

Soft­ware is the biggest rea­son why smart­phone cam­eras rule pho­tog­ra­phy today. I took the pho­tos below with my iPhone and used the Dynamic Light app to add effects. B is way over the top, but the fil­ters make the pic­ture a lot more inter­est­ing. I applied fil­ters with a lit­tle more care to cre­ate D. You might argue that C (the orig­i­nal) is bet­ter, but I like the more dra­matic result of D.

And then there is the abil­ity to share your pho­tos. With a reg­u­lar cam­era, it takes a lot of work to share a photo with your friends. With a smart­phone app, it’s just a few clicks away. Cre­at­ing art is great, but shar­ing art is even better.

In-phone photo apps are extremely easy to use. A pro­fes­sional using Pho­to­shop would spend ten times the effort to gain a sim­i­lar result. And yes, a “real” cam­era will give an ama­teur pho­tog­ra­pher bet­ter results, at least for the orig­i­nal. But again, the has­sle of lug­ging around a huge cam­era will cause many lost shots — and mem­o­ries of life events.

Another photo app I enjoy is Cam­era Awe­some, if only because of the fun mes­sages is pro­vides while the image is pro­cess­ing. “Carmeliz­ing kraken tenacles.”

Go forth and have fun with a smart phone, if you are able.

iPhone photos comparison using filters

Duplicate sets of cars

Floyd Mayweather, Jr's carsSo there’s a boxer. His name is Floyd May­weather, Jr. He has two iden­ti­cal sets of cars — a white set in Las Vegas and a black set in Miami. Each set includes a Bent­ley, a Mer­cedes Benz SLS AMG, a Fer­rari and an unknown fourth car. My guess on the total value (and there may be more than four cars) is about $2 mil­lion. Some­how it’s not the money spent that both­ers me. It’s the identical-but-different-color aspect.

Of course I’m think­ing of how one man has all those opu­lent and amaz­ing cars, and how the money could have been spent on a slightly bet­ter edu­ca­tion for kids in either city. Or how some kids in Africa might not die because they have clean water.

But some­how I mostly think of what a strange thing is is to have two identical-but-different-color sets of cars.

(Thanks to the May 10, 2012 Rolling Stone Mag­a­zine for the arti­cle fea­tur­ing this photo.)

Fun for your Friday, number 19

Cano's Castle of Antonito, Colorado

This house — or tem­ple — is in the remote town of Antonito, Col­orado. We passed through there in March and I thank­fully saw it from High­way 285, even though it’s maybe half a mile from the main road.

I was amused at the arch across the entrance: “ALCOHOL+TOBACCO IS KILLS” and “MARY JANE IS HEALING.” The cre­ator of this west­ern Grace­land is or was quite pro­lific. Every sur­face of both spires is iron­i­cally cov­ered with the ends of beer cans.

Thanks to Wikipedia, I dis­cov­ered that this is “Cano’s Cas­tle,” built by Don­ald “Cano” Espinoza.

Badge inflation

Mercedes Benz SLMer­cedes and BMW are both guilty of padding their num­bers. Not in a finan­cial sense but rather in mak­ing their prod­ucts appear larger than what they really are. This reflects an accu­rate under­stand­ing of how Amer­i­cans value big­ger things.

The forth-coming Mer­cedes SL550 has a 4.7 liter engine. It used to be that Mer­cedes would badge such a model as the SL470. No longer. BMW does the same thing with their 328i ... the lat­est model has a 2.0 liter engine.

In Europe, this infla­tion is slightly less. The SL550 is badged as the SL500.

Engine sizes are going down, as vehi­cle man­u­fac­tur­ers are fig­ur­ing out how to get more power out of less engine. That’s a good thing. Fuel econ­omy usu­ally goes up when these changes hap­pen. And then you save when you fill up at the gas station.

I long for the day when real num­bers will be given for things.

Photo cour­tesy of Desertspot­ter.

Something you can do for Earth Day

Choose to walk

This is a re-post. I thought you might enjoy this lit­tle idea that orig­i­nally appeared on Octo­ber 7, 2011.

You know you need to exer­cise. I know that I do. You know that you need to run lots of errands each week.

Why not com­bine the two?

Rid­ing your bicy­cle or walk­ing to that place will take you more time. But you have to go there any­way! Why drive to the gym and run on a tread­mill when in the same time it would take you to do both, you could save fuel, help the envi­ron­ment and enjoy being outside?

Dis­claimer: I real­ize this only works if you live in a town that’s laid out where you can do your errands close to home.

Tradeoffs

KombuchaI like the weird taste of kom­bucha. It’s a fer­mented tea bev­er­age (with lit­tle or no alco­hol). There are many touted health ben­e­fits, such as reawak­en­ing your mind and repur­pos­ing your life (at least accord­ing to the brand I tried most recently). I don’t believe that any more than I believe the tooth fairy will visit me again next week.

But I like the taste. It’s a refresh­ing break from the cof­fees I love so dearly and so many sweet drinks.

The prob­lem is that I nor­mally get a headache after I drink some. But the unusual taste expe­ri­ence is worth the pain.

What expe­ri­ence do you choose to do that causes you pain — but you do it anyway?

Do it today

Blossoms by the side of the roadAbout a week ago, Den­ver expe­ri­enced some of the most amaz­ing flow­er­ing spring-ness that I’ve ever seen. But it quickly started dis­ap­pear­ing. A major wind storm blew many of the blos­soms to the ground. Then a quick hail­storm fin­ished off more of the blooms.

I was able to get out and enjoy the spring beauty by tak­ing a bicy­cle ride one day. I would have regret­ted miss­ing that short win­dow of opportunity.

If you have kids, they won’t be with you for more than maybe 18 years. If you’re mar­ried, your beloved may not be with you for­ever. If you have a dog, she may not be at your side ten years from now. I don’t say these things to be mourn­ful — but rather to remind you — and me — to make time to spend time with the ones we love today.

Count your blessings

british parking officerWe recently drove down to Texas for a short spring break visit. On a remote back­road in south­ern Col­orado, a state trooper pulled me over and showed no mercy. I wasn’t thrilled at the prospect of pay­ing a shock­ingly high fine. My cal­cu­lated risk did not pay off.

Then I remem­bered back to the park­ing war­dens in Thame, Oxford­shire, Eng­land, where we lived from 1995–1998. That town of 11,000 peo­ple had a full-time park­ing enforce­ment offi­cer. When you arrived down­town, park­ing had to be paid for and no park­ing was free.

Be thank­ful that you can park for free — or that you’ve dri­ven for a while with­out being pulled over.

Time flies

Last Fri­day evening was a sig­nif­i­cant occa­sion for our fam­ily. Our old­est son Jay, a senior, was voted “Mr. Eagle” at a big high school event. He beat 11 other con­tes­tants. (His class has roughly 500 kids.)

It was thrilling to hear them announce the new Mr. Eagle, in a room of more than 700 scream­ing kids. Well, a few were adults, though I’m not sure how many of those were scream­ing. Heather and I screamed along with the rest.

Look­ing back, I remem­bered one of the events that shaped who Jay is today. We moved to Kenya, Africa in 2005, for a two year work assign­ment. Shortly after we arrived, Heather enrolled both Jay and Ben in Ligi Ndogo (“small league”) — a soc­cer club for boys. They were the only white kids in the whole league. They learned to relate to kids of another cul­ture and to speak a lit­tle Swahili. They didn’t want to go every Sat­ur­day, but we basi­cally forced them to take part. “Eat your spinach, it’s good for you!”

The Mr. Eagle evening included answer­ing ques­tions that the con­tes­tants were not pre­pared for. Jay’s ques­tion: “What one thing would you do dif­fer­ently, if you could live your life over?” He paused and said he wished he had been able to spend more time in Africa.