Critical Brain Candy

The world is buzzing with news of Apple’s most recent incredible quarterly earnings and profit.  Their profit was $13 billion on revenue of $46 billion.

Also staggering was the number of iPhones sold in 3 months: 37 million.  I thought it’d be interesting to see how that number broke down.  Assuming uniformly distributed sales volume over the entire 3 months (which isn’t true, but stick with me) that’s:

• Every month: 12.3 million
• Every week: 3.1 million
• Every day: 441,000
• Every hour: 18,400
• Every minute: 306
• Every second: 5.1

Holy crap.  That’s a lot of iPhones.

I’ve never understood why there was a supposed agreement that Rae wouldn’t run for the leadership.  Doesn’t that seem a bit un-democratic?  I have no idea if him running would be a good thing, but if he ran and won, who should argue with that?

A few days ago I received a BlackBerry PlayBook.  I’m not really in the market for tablets, just because we have enough computers and iPhones in the house that I don’t see a need for one.  I do want a tablet for a few things, like as an eReader and to watch videos, so I’d rather say I’m not in the market for an expensive tablet.

My only other experience with a low-cost tablet didn’t go well.  Last year I bought a cheap Android tablet but it was really underpowered and had a resistive screen, so was almost unusable for anything but simple pressing actions and web browsing was out of the question.

My hesitation with a PlayBook would be the app ecosystem.  If I’m not in the market for an iPad (the best apps), and the Android app store frankly sucked for low-end devices (most apps I downloaded just didn’t run), then I guess I shouldn’t be concerned about the PlayBook app store.

Anyways, my impression of the PB has been great so far.  The hardware is great.  The OS is slick and works well.  It’s not as slick as iOS, but it’s way better than Android 2.x on my other tablet (I know Android has progressed a lot since then).  The OS still has some bugs, but it’s version 1, so that doesn’t concern me.  The app store is definitely the weak point for me; I’m used to there being multiple good choices for whatever I want in the iOS app store.  But, I have been surprised at some of the good selection.

I haven’t been very optimistic for RIM lately, but the PB is the first BlackBerry device I’ve ever actually wanted to use, and it’s all about the software.  RIM has always been pretty good on hardware.  I’m really disappointed they delayed launching any phones with the new OS yet again.  Even still, if they execute this well they could stay a major player in the market.

I posted a new article over at YouSustain: Meat and Sustainability: The Facts.  It has some interesting comparisons of how resource-intensive it is to produce various types of food.  Let me know of any comments and please share it if you like it!

Sounds good: World’s Largest Solar Power Plant Produces Power with Canadian Solar Modules.

Well, not quite so dramatic, but still a big deal if true: Gone in a Flash? Adobe Said Halting Development on Mobile Version of Its Plug-In.

I’ve mentioned a few times in the past that I think Flash on mobile devices is a bad idea.  Since Google and RIM announced Flash support on their devices, I’ve actually heard zero good things about it, so Adobe’s move isn’t surprising.  Most existing interactive Flash apps just cannot work very well on a touch screen.  Personally, I run into zero Flash apps on sites that I notice blocking functionality, aside from video.

I still think it would be in everyone’s best interests to integrate support for Flash video into mobile OS’s, just like YouTube video links seem to get special handling.  This would only be useful for a short time, though, since it seems most sites are now supporting HTML5 video.

It’s good to see the rules loosening up a bit in Cuba: Cuba Legalizes Purchase, Sale Of Private Property.  Hopefully this continues.  It’s too bad the US can’t just get over itself and open relations with Cuba again.  I know it won’t happen because some people in Florida will be upset, but they shouldn’t be.  If everyone’s true goal is to help turn Cuba into a much more free country, the way to do that is by increasing interaction, not reducing it.  Most people who are exposed to western-style democracy and consumerism end up wanting them, to some extent, so the internal changes often flow naturally.  Even in the middle east, where many people are opposed to the extremes of western values, most people still want to move in that direction to a point.

I got Chad VanGaalen’s new album Diaper Island when it was released a couple months ago and I’m still listening to it as often as when I first bought it. It’s his best album yet, which is refreshing for me after being disappointed by several new releases this year by bands I really like.

Here’s the Pitchfork Review from back in May, and here’s a link to my favourite song on the album, Sara.  I love the sound of his guitar on this track.

It’s great to have some real estimates on this, and wow: Economists: Every $1 of Electricity from Coal Does $2 in Damage to U.S.

Plus, the original source article even indicates this is a very conservative estimate because it doesn’t include costs related to climate change.  I imagine it’d be a lot harder to tie the climate impact of emissions in the US directly back to problems the US, since climate change is a more global effect.  Detecting health problems due to local pollution is easier.

I know there isn’t a specific goal, given the movement doesn’t have a leadership and hasn’t made a clear attempt to define the goals, but I’m still confused.  I imagine there should be some broadly accepted goals and even better would be at least a few that are clearly attainable, so the movement knows if it is making progress.

I’ve heard complaints in the media like “They took all our jobs and moved them overseas”, which is definitely a valid issue, but I’m confused what that has to do with Wall St.  There are things to be concerned about in the financial system, but that’s not one of them.

Anyways, as a start, I’d love to see the movement start pushing to get big money out of politics.  Honestly, nothing’s going to change until that happens.

Another common thread I’ve seen in talk of the protests is income inequality, which reminded me of a very illustrative comparison I’ve seen before and happened to stumble on again this morning:

That, right there, says it all.  It shows what are the core priorities of a society in very clear terms.

But, what to do about it?  As ridiculous as I think it is for the CEO of any company to make 10′s or 100′s of millions a year in salary (and don’t forget, they tend to make lots more from their stock holdings), I’d also be wary of trying to legislate a fix for it.  I don’t see any good reason that a non-governmental organization can’t set their salaries however they want, except to the extremes.  If a company is trying to reduce wages below what other companies are paying, they’ll lose employees.

So, if the extremes matter here, and we have a minimum wage, maybe it isn’t so unrealistic to cap the maximum salary of any employee at 100x the average of the company.  Heck, maybe even 200x is a good first step given the 475x seen above.  Management then has a choice, if they want to make more money and they’re at the cap, they need to increase everyone’s wages.  Unfortunately, I doubt it would really work out that way, as they’d find other ways of getting more money, like in stock, or paying living expenses, etc.  But, at least this move would send a powerful message that society sees this as unacceptable.