The idea of having shared bus-bike lanes has been raised in a number of cities, including Montreal. Not surprisingly, such lanes have tended to be unsatisfactory for both parties involved. People in busses do not like driving slowly behind cyclists. Cyclists do not like busses looming behind them. What has not been tried, however (atContinue reading “Bus/Bike Lanes: Can I Interest You in a Time-Share?”
Top Goalies Should Play More Games, But Fewer Complete Games (And Their Backups Should Be Better at Playing the Puck Than They Are) NHL coaches treat their goalies like baseball pitchers from the 1800s: so long as they do not mess up, they get to play a complete game. Yet these same coaches also sit theirContinue reading “Goalies and Garbage Time”
With the new year starting, it is now forty years since 1979. Forty of course is a biblical number, which is fitting because 1979 was a year in which religious belief became decisively political. Some of these events are still well remembered – Iran’s Islamic Revolution, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan on Christmas Eve, theContinue reading “Too Much Heaven: A Brief Look Back at 1979”
In recent years there has been an evolution in the way NHL coaches pull their goalies. Goalies are now being pulled much earlier in games than they used to be. There has been no revolutionary change, however. Goalies are still being pulled at the very end of games. Once pulled, they tend to stay pulledContinue reading “2 Radical Goalie-Pulling Strategies”
A version of this article was originally published on Rosa & Roubini Associates When Argentina’s president Mauricio Macri was elected at the end of 2015, investors rejoiced to see the end of the two Kircheners, Nestor (president from 2003-2007) and Cristina (president from 2007-2015). Argentina’s stock market boom, which began in 2013 but faltered justContinue reading “Argentina in 2019”
By far the biggest advantage that a large truck has over a small truck is that a large truck has lower labour costs, per unit of cargo transported. Self-driving technologies that reduce or eliminate labour costs may therefore lead to an increased use of smaller trucks. This could be particularly likely to occur in areasContinue reading “RoRoRo Your Car”
Roads and railways are great, but they are not portable, scalable, or particularly well suited to ideally handling rugged terrain. You cannot easily disassemble a road or railway in order to move it from location to another. You cannot easily drive trucks or trains up and down steep hills, or across icy or snowy orContinue reading “Superhighway in a Box”
In democratic countries, political analysts often try to sniff out any regional divisions that exist within a given country by looking at the voting patterns of that country’s electorate. In Italy’s recent election, for instance, it has been thought to be significant that Italians living in northern Italy tended to vote centre/right (including for theContinue reading “The Birthplaces of China’s Leadership”
Many Conservatives disparage electric cars and bike lanes, while many Liberals fetishize electric cars and bike lanes. The correct approach lies between: some bike lanes and some electric cars are good. Others are not. For bike lanes, geography can be decisive. Cities like Amsterdam—which is almost entirely flat, and which has no months in whichContinue reading “An Electric Car-Bike Lane Plan, for Cities like Toronto”
It takes a lot of time to unload a large truck and sort and store its contents. This means that trucks tend to make deliveries during the daytime, when the cost of paying people to unload trucks is relatively low. If, however, the process of unloading trucks and handling their contents becomes automated, overnight deliveriesContinue reading “Trolleytrucks + Autonomous Cargo Handling = Clean, Cheap Transportation”
Future Economics