WHEN Poland and Lithuania joined the European Union in 2004, many were concerned that the Russia exclave of 950,000 inhabitants would be cut off, once surrounded by EU members. (Just under half live in the city of Kaliningrad—east Prussia’s Königsberg until Stalin annexed it 60 years ago.) This changed with Poland’s law on “small-border-traffic”, signed by Russia in December 2011.
Almost two years on, the response to the small-border-traffic law has been very positive.Locals on both sides of the border can apply for a card that allows them to cross the border repeatedly, without the hassle of getting a visa. (Poland has a similar deal with Ukraine). The law encompasses all of Russia’s Kaliningrad region, and includes Olsztyn, Elbl?g and Gda?sk on the Polish side. Other Russians still need a visa to enter Poland, and vice versa.
Card in hand, Kaliningrad’s inhabitants are flocking to Poland, drawn by cheaper groceries, but also DIY shops and Ikea, a Swedish furniture store. Some say they visit a few times a month. In July, the Polish consulate in Kaliningrad issued the hundred thousandth card. Poland is considering opening two new border crossings to cope with demand. Local Poles are also using the card to travel to Kaliningrad, though in smaller numbers.
These trips to Poland are satirised in a recent song by Parovoz, a music group from Kaliningrad, with the chorus “Zdrastvuy Biedronka, zrastvuy Lidl” (hello Biedronka, hello Lidl – two discount supermarkets popular in Poland). Timur Titarenko, the band leader, says he got the idea for the song while queuing at the border on his way to spend a day in Poland. The song has been spreading online; on YouTube, a version with Polish subtitles has had over 200,000 views in two weeks.
Taxpayer Subsidies Helped Tesla Motors, So Why Does Elon Musk Slam Them?
It’s rush hour in Silicon Valley, and the techies on Highway 101 are shooting me laser-beam stares of envy. Beneath the floorboard of my Tesla Model S, a liquid-cooled pack of 7,000 laptop batteries propels me down the carpool lane at a hushed 65 miles per hour. Then traffic grinds to a halt, and I’m stuck trying to merge onto an exit ramp as Benzes and BMWs whip past. It’s the excuse I’m waiting for: I punch the throttle, and the Model S rockets back up to speed so fast that I worry about flying off the road—a silly fear, it turns out, because the car corners like a barn swallow. “And there you go,” says Tina, my beaming Tesla sales rep. “Takeoff!”
Every bit as practical as a Volvo (rear-facing trundle seat!) and sexier than an Aston Martin, the Model S isn’t just the world’s greatest electric car—it’s arguably the world’s greatest car, period. The curmudgeons at Consumer Reports call the seven-seater the best vehicle they’ve ever tested, and that’s after docking it considerable points for only—only!—being able to travel 265 miles on a charge. The first mass-market electric car designed from scratch, it sports huge trunks in the rear and under the hood, an incredibly low center of gravity, and the ability to hit 60 mph in 4.2 seconds. Plus you can recharge it for the price of a burrito. Named car of the year by Motor Trend, the Model S has recharged Tesla as well. In May, the company announced that it had repaid, nine years early, a $465 million loan it had received from the Department of Energy.
Tesla posted its first quarterly profit the same month, and by mid-July the share price of the decade-old Palo Alto-based carmaker had more than doubled. The buzz in the Valley is that Tesla has in the Model S something with the disruptive potential of the iPhone—and in its CEO, Elon Musk, the next Steve Jobs. “Individuals come along very rarely that are both as creative and driven as that,” says Jim Motavalli, who writes for the New York Times’ Wheels blog. “Musk is not going to settle for a product that is good enough for the marketplace. He wants something that is insanely great.”
It was a Saab, a Red Saab
Dusk. The windows must be down. Saturday night. 72F / 22C. A warm breeze. Fresh air. A quick left, then the middle lane. Accelerate. Stop light. Sprint. Left lane. Wait for traffic, turn left. A quick right, more traffic.
Then, a red car. An unusual shape. Windows open as well.
Left hand knifing in and out of the driver’s window. Something in the driver’s hand.
Dangling.
Fast motions. We share the same lane. Accelerate. Paddles.
The breeze delights.
Crossing State street – slowly, lots of people walking and biking.
Nancy: “I think we are sharing his joint”.
The red Saab drifts in and out of the center lane. The left hand continues to dangle, the joint slicing the breeze.
Then, we part company, the joint a quick left, destination unknown, while we continue on our tried and true path to dinner.
Windows down. A terrific October breeze.
A red Saab, an unusual Saabaru, the 9-2x.
Another edition of my “auto anthropology” observations.
Cars? Asymcar.
Super highway: A14 to become Britain’s first internet-connected road Technology on busy road connecting Birmingham and Felixstowe could pave way for self-driving cars
One of the UK’s most congested highways, connecting the busy container port at Felixstowe to Birmingham, is to become Britain’s first internet-connected road in a pilot project that could pave the way for everything from tolls to self-driving cars.
A network of sensors will be placed along a 50-mile stretch of the A14 in a collaboration between BT, the Department for Transport and the Cambridge start-up Neul, creating a smart road which can monitor traffic by sending signals to and from mobile phones in moving vehicles.
The technology, which sends signals over the white spaces between television channels instead of mobile phone networks, could even pave the way for government systems to automatically control car speeds.
The telecoms watchdog Ofcom, which on Wednesday approved the project as part of its new blueprint for how Britain will use spectrum, is already forecasting what high technology traffic systems will look like.
“Sensors in cars and on the roads monitor the build-up of congestions and wirelessly send this information to a central traffic control system, which automatically imposes variable speed limits that smooth the flow of traffic,” Ofcom said. “This system could also communicate directly with cars, directing them along diverted routes to avoid the congestion and even managing their speed.”
Real time media map of the 50 states
Last March, Bitly teamed up with Forbes to produce a data visualization which looks at how 15 media properties are being disproportionately consumed online on a state-by-state basis over the month of April. We had various preconceived notions of which state’s residents are more likely to consume news sites from certain newspapers, televised news, news magazines and online-only news properties.
Real Time Media Map of the 50 US States
Last March, Bitly teamed up with Forbes to produce a data visualization which looks at how 15 media properties are being disproportionately consumed online on a state-by-state basis over the month of April. We had various preconceived notions of which state’s residents are more likely to consume news sites from certain newspapers, televised news, news magazines and online-only news properties.
“One of the main reasons for that, I think, is that while some countries are interested in rights, in Britain we are more focused on wrongs.”
And yet nobody, at least in Britain, seems to care. In the UK there has been an extraordinary disconnect between the scale and seriousness of what Snowden has revealed, and the scale and seriousness of the response. One of the main reasons for that, I think, is that while some countries are interested in rights, in Britain we are more focused on wrongs.
In Europe and the US, the lines between the citizen and the state are based on an abstract conception of the individual’s rights, which is then framed in terms of what the state needs to do.
That’s not the case in Britain: although we do have rights, they were arrived at by specific malfeasances and disasters on the part of the state.
Every right that limits the behaviour of the police, from the need for search warrants to the (now heavily qualified) right to silence to habeas corpus itself, comes from the fact that the authorities abused their powers.
This helps to explain why Snowden’s revelations, perceived as explosive in American and Europe by both the political right and left, have been greeted here with a weirdly echoing non-response. In the rights-based tradition, the flagrant abuse of individual privacy is self-evidently a bad thing, a (literally) warrantless extension of the power of the state.
Here in the UK, because we’ve been given no specific instances of specific wrongs having been committed, the story has found it hard to gain traction. Even if there were such instances – just as there were 2,776 rule violations by the NSA last year alone – we wouldn’t know anything about them, because the system of judicial inspections at GCHQ is secret.
Bank bailout legacy: five years later
Sheila Bair, Christy Romero, Neil Barofsky, Guy LeBas, Anat Admati:
This series looks back on the Troubled Asset Relief Program (Tarp) – the government intervention that sought to calm the financial crisis and restart the economy in 2008.
Sheila Bair: chair of the Systemic Risk Council and former FDIC chair
“I don’t want anyone who’s big to have a giant “put” on taxpayers. It’s problematic for big financial firms think that they can profit by taking a lot of risks, and if they lose money they can put it on taxpayers. There’s no more damaging and destabilizing message the government can send than this idea that if you’re big, the government will get you out of trouble.”
The innovator who led Toyota insisted that people were as important as the production system.
Eiji Toyoda was the man who taught the world’s production workers Japanese. If you know kaizen means continuous improvement, and use kanban inventory tags to eliminate muda, or waste, then Toyoda, who died recently, was your sensei.
The Toyota Production System he championed as head of the carmaker in the 1970s and 1980s, traces its roots to a fail-safe device devised by Toyoda’s uncle to cope with thread breaks on mechanical looms. Multinationals have since turned its efficiency methods – “lean” production, just-in-time supply chains and outsourcing – into a habit that is woven through the fabric of global production. However, in future, Toyoda’s insights into the power of human initiative will be more relevant.
Massive Growth Of Electric Cars In US, + Who Drives Electric Cars
The infographic, reposted below, highlights several interesting facts, which I’ll real quickly note here in text for those of you who prefer straight text:
100% electric and plug-in hybrid electric cars grew tremendously in the US in 2011, and then again in 2012. And they are going to far eclipse 2012 sales in 2013. 2010 sales = 345; 2011 sales = 17,735; 2012 sales = 52,835; 2013 = an even much higher number.
Over 30% of 2013 US electric car and plug-in hybrid sales have occurred in San Francisco and Los Angeles.