Stargazing on Haleakala last week was at once breathtaking and philosophical. This brings back all of that.
All in one breath?
Sometimes you can just taste it on the tip of your tongue. Not quite salty, not quite sweet. But it has a taste, doesn’t it. It kind of scrunches your nose. Like you just smelled some of your own ghastly gas (a term I hope to coin and launch into virulism - a less self-explanatory term, it’s a sort of viral virulence, and another term that I hope to coin).
This smell, of course, is the stench of marketingspeak (I’m 3/3 and on a roll).
A quote from Mercedes-Benz Canada’s most recent press release regarding the company’s most plentiful accomplishments in the past year:
“When we reflect on the past year, we have a lot to celebrate, including continued significant investment in our national infrastructure and another year of strong momentum that has allowed us to surpass previously established sales milestones to become the leader in the Canadian luxury passenger car market,” said Tim A. Reuss, President and CEO of Mercedes-Benz Canada.
Are we supposed to believe that Tim Middle Letter Reuss said that all in one breath? Or that it wasn’t written entirely by a team of hacks (note the double entendre here), placed in front of Timmy’s squack box while he’s in the bathroom between board meetings, and was then “quoted” by said hacks in the above press release?
And that, students, is why you don’t use run-on sentences.
One of the more creative skateparks I’ve seen in a while.
(Source: whereisthecoool)
From TED’s Q&A with Rory Sutherland: Positional Externality
Are you familiar with Robert Frank, The Darwin Economy?
No. He does a very good thought experiment, which is that you ask yourself, in honesty: “Would you rather live in a society where everybody has a six-bedroom house, but you have a four-bedroom house, or would you rather live in a society where you have a three-bedroom house, and everybody else has a two-bedroom house?”
And those things are very complicated. Cars are both really. Most people who buy an expensive car do, it’s fair to say, derive probably more pleasure from the intrinsic engineering excellence of the thing than they do from making their neighbor feel a bit shit – although it’s complicated.
To what extent is foreign travel positional? You can also go even further and say, well actually to some extent of course, boasting about your lack of need for positional goods is itself a form of positional status-seeking. I mean it’s exactly like self-handicapping in animals where you say basically, “I’m so secure in my status and so successful in other fields, I don’t need a gold Rolex to actually establish my own position.”
(Source: blog.ted.com)
Are Porsche owners and drivers smarter than normal people? This video seems to say “apparently, yes”.
(Source: sharonov)
Play this game: Cover up the Audi badge on your screen whenever is comes up, then decide whether the new Audi A6 looks better than a Kia Forte Koup. Not so easy now, is it?
bradfordp: Audi A6 exterior lighting (for Blaaargh)
blaaargh: This is a $60,000 car and the light with the best quality comes from its turn signals. Absolutely pitch-perfect otherwise.
