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The Not There Yet podcast is a ongoing series of short essays covering a wide range of subjects from the perspective of the third decade of the 21st century. They are intended to be thought provoking, challenging, skeptical and hopefully funny once in a while. They are sometimes conventional in nature and others are a little more experimental. They cover science, history, sports, technology, philosophy or just about whatever subject comes to mind. Sometimes they look forward, other times the ...
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Getting back on a plane may look more like the past than the future. I originally wrote The Return of the Golden Age of Air Travel in April of this year and published it on May 1st. It was a visceral response to the early days of COVID-19. As the summer wore on, I felt that maybe the piece was a reflection of a relatively short period which was, fo…
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Some thoughts on a failed Olympic bid and what it tells us about the shocking randomness of how we build our cities. Although it has been many years since I last wrote computer code ‘to save my life’ I still vividly remember the five basic phases of the Cost of Change Curve associated with software development projects. While the fine details are n…
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A remarkable life and the enduring mystery of her tragic death. The late arrival of the inbound flight she had piloted from Hatfield, in Hertfordshire, prevented Amy Johnson from departing Prestwick, Scotland any earlier than 4.00 pm on that afternoon in early January of 1941. Darkness was already beginning to fall. The most direct route from Prest…
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Dad did his fair share of dreaming big. Particularly when it came to his kids. On a whim in the summer of 1976—no doubt in part because he wanted to drive his shiny silver Alfa Romeo on the twisty and dangerous road through the mountains—my father suggested I have a stab at the Model Aeronautics Association of Canada National Championships held tha…
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The blessing and the curse of capturing lightning in a bottle. The news landed with an apocalyptic shudder on an otherwise beautiful Saturday morning. Just 23 days after the Raptors handily dispatched the Golden State Warriors in six games, the enigmatic Kawhi Leonard announced he had signed a four year, $142 million deal with the Los Angeles Clipp…
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Some unsolicited—and probably unwelcome—advice on where Twitter should go from here. “I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.” Mark Twain’s life did not overlap Twitter’s by nearly a century, but he still managed to provide the single best commentary of what Twitter is, and should continue to be. Brevity is Twitte…
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It’s a three-fer: biopic drama, documentary and the-making-of all rolled into one. Three cars were most likely to adorn an adolescent boy’s room in the early 1980s. The first was the brutish Porsche Turbo Carrera with its outlandish fender flairs and whale tail. The second was the Lamborghini Countach which, in its original and purest form, was a s…
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His approach to the game is an example we need in these troubled times. I was furious. Not only had Masai Ujiri fired Coach of the Year Dwane Casey in May, now he had traded away DeMar DeRozan for some guy from the San Antonio Spurs whose name I didn’t even recognize. Along with some other guy whose name I didn’t recognize either. My fury was based…
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An old idea for which the best years may still lay ahead. Jack Northrop dreamt of aircraft where everything not absolutely essential for flight was eliminated. Leonardo da Vinci’s theoretical flying machines from the 15th century, Sir George Cayley’s Governable Parachute of 1852, the Wright Brothers’ Flyer of 1903 and virtually ever other flying ma…
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A labour of love — and hate — 23 years in the making. “The baby is on the roof with an umbrella and he looks like he is about to jump.” My mother tells this story — undoubtedly embellished over the years — about a chillingly calm call she took from a neighbour to warn of the seemingly imminent, tragic death of her younger son. I don’t remember the …
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Thankfully, things didn’t turn out the way many expected. What caught my attention, and that of a few others, was a small article about an amateur golf phenom out of Cypress, California with the improbable name of Tiger Woods. He had just quit the economics program at Stanford University and was turning pro at just 20 years of age. I think I recall…
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The future of newspapers may lie in their past. I have not bought a hometown newspaper for a decade. I haven’t read a whole one in years. I do occasionally read the article which just happens to be facing up on The Globe and Mail abandoned at Starbucks while I’m waiting for my four shot American Misto. I rarely touch the paper itself. That’s not be…
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The MacRobertson Air Race of 1934 marked the beginning of modern air travel and the beginning of the end of the Golden Age of Aviation. It was a time when daring—or simply dangerous—aviation events were concocted for the slightest of excuses. In the case of the 1934 MacRobertson Air Race it was nominally to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the ci…
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It wasn't supposed to end this way. "Eye-witnesses to the crash told how F-for-Freddie's rubber dinghy dropped out, inflated automatically and landed, as neatly and naturally as though something had gone wrong over the North Sea" so the local newspapers reported. Except it wasn't over the North Sea. It was in the middle of a cattle pasture and not …
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They didn't ask me but here's what I think anyway. I had to reread the headline at least a couple of times: Podcast Platform Himalaya Raises $100 Million, Launches Apps With Tipping Function $100 million? What on earth is Himalaya going to do with all that money? Besides, of course, the oddly headline-worthy 'tipping function'? Then it occurred to …
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We need the willing suspension of disbelief to sell shoes? "How is corporate storytelling different from other kinds of storytelling?" I was stumped by the question. I have to thank the interviewer who found the bullet point in my LinkedIn profile and called me out on it. I hope his audio editor eventually eliminates 90% of the pause that followed …
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The path not taken 60 years ago has a nation still wondering what might have been. On February 19th, 1959 Wladyslaw "Spud" Potocki was test flying the sparkling white Avro Arrow RL-201 in the fair but chilly skies near Malton, Ontario. On that particular flight the World War II veteran fighter pilot was testing the Arrow's roll rates at Mach 1.7. W…
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Why you should probably make your child play a musical instrument. The autobiography you won't read is the one I won't write because nothing short of Mitty-esque imaginings could make it interesting. I am vain enough, however, to know what the title of that pathetically thin volume would be: Fat Kid with a Cello. In the fall of 1966, when I was jus…
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I really hope this isn’t the one thing for which Canada is known. When travelling, and the answer "Calgary" to the question "so where do you call home?" draws the fairly common blank stare, there are two things which can usually be relied upon to locate my home town on Planet Earth. My first recourse is usually "ever heard of the Calgary Stampede?"…
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Inspired by its feature role in First Man, a closer look at the first aircraft to fly into space. In the annotated screenplay for First Man, author Josh Singer was asked “why start with the X-15?” for the gripping opening scene in the movie. His answer was simple: “we fell in love with the aircraft. The fastest and highest flying…ever built…[it] fl…
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Thoughts of my father on the occasion of his passing. Some say you spend your entire life preparing for the inevitable moment when you have to speak at your father’s memorial service. Today is that day and now is that time. Given that lifetime of preparation, I hope you’ll indulge me?—?grant me the luxury of a little of your time?—?as I take you on…
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Notes from a life well underway but nowhere near over. I had breakfast with a friend of mine not too long ago and our conversation turned to, as it often does with those hovering around the 60 year mark, to the subject of retirement. That started with a passing comment about my father who had recently entered his 90th year, as he fondly and often t…
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Building an off-world colony a few feet above the street. The science fiction staple of abandoning a less desirable place for another, more desirable one has been around almost since the beginning of science fiction itself. After all, who can deny the appeal of a fresh start in a brighter, better place? It’s often a cautionary tale, the result of n…
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Observations from the arrival of the Information Age. I had a part time job at the ComputerLand store on West Broadway in Vancouver, British Columbia in the early 1980s. Mostly it was to teach an introductory programming course in the BASIC computer language on Saturday mornings. Ironically, it was one of the few things for which you bought a compu…
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It’s surprising what connects you to home. “Why don’t you just go there and see for yourself?” my boss asked me, back in the Spring of 1998. I was working for an international petroleum well service company at the time. “What…go there?” I asked, first thinking it sounded like an incredible adventure. Then, I was filled almost instantly with an empt…
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The airship hangars at Tillamook trigger a cascade of memories. My family first visited the Oregon Coast in the early 1970s. My mother picked Rockaway, seemingly at random, from the motor club guide and we stayed at the Silver Sands, an old-fashioned drive-up motel on the beach. All five of us squeezed into a single suite, the most memorable thing …
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While there is still time, take your kids on a long road trip. Memories are like roadside scenery glimpsed from a car hurtling down the freeway at 78 miles-an-hour. The driver sees the least, preoccupied by the task at hand. The passenger in the front seat sees a little more but not enough given she spends time looking at the driver, searching for …
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The quirky charm of a British homebuilding show. It seems to happen every time. The affable Kevin McCloud, host of British television’s Grand Designs, describes the house project he will cover in the upcoming episode, and fairly predictably I find myself thinking: They have got to be out of their minds. Whether it’s the extreme locale the owners ha…
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It is time we realized there’s a little bit of each in all of us and in all that we do. I have a smoky old eighties sports car which I drive, usually too fast, for a few weeks during the shoulder seasons. Any other time of year I park it lavishly, luxuriously in a heated and cooled garage. Yet, I also lust after a brand new Tesla Model S and the so…
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An ancient idea that is more relevant than ever. The metaphorical rosetta stone is better known than the real Rosetta Stone. In any explanation of how one critical document deciphers and unlocks the meaning of all others, that document instantly becomes the rosetta stone of particle physics or computer code or kaizen or astronomy or golf. With the …
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Although I didn’t know it until now, how one great month in my early twenties pretty much ruined my career. For one brief, shining moment when I was in my early twenties, the sun and stars and all the planets aligned and I was able to bill $5,000 in one month. In 2017, that’s the equivalent of over $15,000 or, if you prefer, $180,000 a year. Throug…
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Could machine intelligence enable our darker impulses? The judge, even in traffic court, sits on a raised platform that ensures that you look up at him and he looks down on you. It’s majestic and intimidating. This was my impression as I entered the courtroom to fight a speeding ticket I had received a few weeks previously. It’s not that I didn’t t…
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A 75 year old true story of courage, atonement and forgiveness. Nobuo Fujita was determined to bring his family’s katana with him 5,000 miles across the Pacific. The samurai sword had been passed from one generation to the next for over 400 years and accompanied Fujita on every important journey of his life. If samurai tradition was to be respected…
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The simple joy of slope soaring. We had just about given up on a return to Rocky Knoll. Since our arrival on the Oregon Coast the wind had been blowing steadily from the southwest, which does not favour the slope which is about 10 minutes south of Yachats. But then, we were walking into the Green Salmon and looked up at their little wind turbine an…
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The burden of a name that has come to mean so much. The word derives from the Spanish mesteño, which is defined as “wild; untamed; ownerless”. By letting the tongue dwell on the roof of the mouth you get to mestengo, a “stray beast”. From there it’s a small step to the word and an idea that has entered into our modern mythology. Mustang. Mustangs a…
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The answer to a casual question at lunch, 35 years ago, taught me everything I needed to know about choosing a career. I knew my father’s cardiologist for a dozen years before my father needed him. In the early 1980s the medical community was just starting to build applications for patient record keeping using the new personal computers coming on t…
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An unsolicited prediction of what The Big A will do next. Well, even if they don’t, then they really should. Despite what you might think, not one second of Apple’s podcasts are actually hosted by Apple. “But how can that be”, you may ask, “when they ‘host’ hundreds of thousands of them?” It’s simple. When you download a podcast ‘from Apple’ what y…
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I didn't realize what had been stolen from me. I was stunned to hear, a couple of days ago, that Chris Froome had just won his third Tour de France riding for Team Sky, which has won four of the last five. Stunned not by the achievements so much — although they are pretty impressive — but rather the fact that another Tour had come and gone and I ha…
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There will never be as much as we want to go around. Take any population, large or small, and imagine creating a spreadsheet with one row for each woman, man and child. Now, imagine the first column in that spreadsheet for a given row contains the amount of healthcare spending that person?—?or others, on their behalf?—?will want over a given period…
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Eliminating the use of fossil fuels depends on kicking our addiction to just tooling around. The absolute single best day—no, the single best moment—of my entire year is sitting in the parking lot waiting for the Starbucks® to open on the Friday before Labour Day. With a full tank of gas, a smooth open road ahead, decent weather and nothing but fre…
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Musings on Residential Solar As I consider residential solar...I’m wondering—maybe for the first time in my life—if my early adopter shields should be up and whether I should let others pave the solar highway. There is a significant difference in this case: in my earlier, early adopter escapades I could at least be shown up as a rube in the privacy…
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Taking the bête out of urban cycling’s bête noire. In a good month, I cycle 500 kilometres on city bike paths and roads. For that reason alone, you would think I would be thrilled the City has moved forward with an aggressive program of protected, green bike lanes adjacent to the curb. However, I have mixed feelings. Before them, I took the approac…
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The star-crossed history of the most beautiful aircraft ever. The prospects for the 1939 Coupe Deutsch de la Meurthe air race did not look good. Suzanne Deutsch de la Meurthe, the widow of the “Oil King of France” Henri, had revived the competition in 1931 in memory of her late husband... * * * Listen, above, or read the essay instead.…
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What can you learn about life from a car race and a basketball game? Turns out quite a bit. After 23 hours and 57 minutes of the 2016 24 Hours of Le Mans, Toyota Gazoo Racing had reason to feel good about their chances of winning the legendary car race. They had been a contender throughout and led it, decisively, for the final four hours. Then, wit…
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Imagine for a moment you get to the airport, boarding pass in hand and you line up at the gate ready to board your flight. You do the March of the Penguins down the centre aisle, find your row, take your seat, buckle up and don’t pay attention to the safety announcements. As usual. But at the end of all of that, the flight attendant comes on the PA…
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Why Calgary (or your home town) will not be the next Silicon Valley. In the Eighties I had an inflection point in my career—clear only in retrospect—where I had a choice. I could have set out for Silicon Valley not all that long after it started to be called that. I had family in the area who I like to believe would have... * * * Listen, above, or …
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Who would think it wasn't going to last forever? The mines of Cornwall, England operated for over 4000 years. Then, after these four millenia of continuous human endeavour, the entire industry became extinct in little more than a single generation. When the end came, it was unexpected, swift and brutal... * * * Listen, above, or read the essay inst…
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One of my earliest memories?—?I must have been five or six at the time?—?was when my father decided it was time to pass along his lifelong love of all things that fly, and bought us a Guillow’s Javelin model airplane kit. My brother and I were absolutely not capable of assembling the delicate balsawood frame, not to mention attaching the diaphanous…
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A couple of years ago I walked into the Tesla store in Washington Square Mall in Portland, Oregon and I was instantly and abjectly in love with the Model S. It sat shining?—?almost glowing?—?in the modern, minimalist showroom and attended by staff straight out of the Apple Store who were completely charming. Apart from being about $115K short of th…
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