An Electric Plane that works?
DHL, the delivery service, has ordered twelve electric planes. They have a range of 800 kilometres, or 500 miles, enough to fly San Francisco to Los Angeles, Montreal to Toronto, London to Paris or a guilt-free green flight from Stockholm to Copenhagen for Greta Thunberg,
The plane is expected to take its maiden flight later this year and go into service in 2024. According to Eviation of Seattle the plane, named Alice, can be configured as a cargo aircraft, as the windowless model above, carrying 1,200 kilograms of cargo or nine passengers in the version with windows.
Alice cruises at 220 knots — 250 miles an hour— and takes about one hour to charge for every two hours of flight time. No Transatlantic electric planes…yet.
Is California bigger than France?
No. The overlay below is not that easy to figure out, but France —212,000 square miles— is 25% larger than California - 163,000 square miles.
Is California richer than France?
Yes. California has 40-million people France has 67-million but when it comes to the economy there is no contest. If California were a country it would be the fifth biggest economy in the world. France clocks in at number eight. Their economies are similar in many ways: both have giant film industries; anyone seen Call My Agent on Netflix?
Both France and California are big in aerospace and both are major agricultural producers, including wine, of course.
World economy rankings with California as a country
In the chart below T is for Trillion.
Are the Olympics bigger than they used to be?
Yes. Karate, surfing, skateboarding are new. So is climbing walls. Watching this past week you marvel at things that seem a hangover from ancient Greece: the shot-put and the javelin. Boxing is still around, though there was none on TV. Muhammad Ali, as Cassius Clay, won the light heavyweight gold medal in boxing in 1960.
Here is the Economist chart on the growth of events at the Olympics.
Canada does vaccine catch-up
Below is the number of adults who have received two doses of vaccine as of August 2.
1- United Arab Emirates 70.7%
2- Chile 64.5
3- Uruguay 64.4
4- Bahrain and Israel (tied) 62.2
5- Qatar 60.9
6- Mongolia 60.6
7- Canada 59.5
The chart I used only went to the top ten and did not list stats for the United States. The New York Times reports as of August 7 50% of US citizens were double vaxxed.
A stock I never bought
About a dozen years ago I ghost wrote a book on Belize for Bob Dhillon. Bob is developing an island there but his main business is MainStreet Equity. It is listed as MEQ in Toronto, and when I first met him MEQ was trading around $3. I was then hosting CBC’s Business News program. In conversations with Bob and his directors I knew things that would be classed as insider information. If I bought the stock I could be accused of using that information. The headline: CBC Man in Insider Trading Scandal, was not something I wanted to read. On Friday the stock closed at $113. You win some, you lose some.
Mainstreet owns 15,000 `doors’ such as the units in the Calgary apartment building above. The apartments are aimed at middle income renters.
A Calgary analyst, Jimmy Shan of Slate Securities, said this about the company: “No life altering technology was invented, no rare natural resource was discovered and no medical breakthrough was achieved. Instead, MEQ achieved this return the boring way - by investing in real estate, specifically "workforce" apartments.”
Get full details of MEQ on their website >
Essay of the Week
I am a bridge addict and during the long Covid lockdown I, and others, were able to play compeititive bridge online, gaining Masterpoints, which would usually involve travel to far off cities. Three years ago I wrote the following of a great bridge player.
Eric Murray was the greatest Canadian bridge player of the 20th century, according to his bridge partner, many people who played against him and the Canadian Bridge Federation, which describes him as "..the greatest Canadian bridge player ever."
Mr. Murray, who died in 2018 at the age of 89, dominated bridge tournaments in Canada for four decades while working as a successful lawyer in downtown Toronto. He and his partner Sami Kehela won 14 North American championships. The two men had different styles at the bridge table.
"Sami was a chess player, and I was a poker player. It was an interesting combination," said Mr. Murray in an interview with the American Contract Bridge League (ACBL) the governing body of bridge in North America.
Mr. Kehela, who is 83 and retired from the bridge table, was born in Iraq and lived in London, England, where he played bridge at the top level with the likes of Omar Sharif, the movie actor was a bridge star, and Terrence Reese, the best British player of his day. Mr. Kehela described Mr. Murray `as first among equals' and agreed that their styles clashed.
"He was difficult to play with because he was sort of adventurous at the bridge table. His strategy was to make life difficult for the opponents. In fact, he used to muck them around in the bidding and so on. I, on the other hand, was the complete opposite. I tried to avoid errors, so we complimented each other," said Mr. Kehela.
Though they played together for 30 years, they seldom met outside the bridge world. They even travelled to tournaments on separate planes.
"I wouldn't say we were friends. We weren't enemies either but we seldom socialized," said Mr. Kehela. "I think that's one of the reasons our partnership lasted so long because we were both difficult to get along with. If we had spent more time together away from the table, I think it would have made our Bridge relationship more difficult."
One thing the two men had in common was cigars. They both smoked at the table until it was forbidden. When asked if he smoked cigarettes, Mr. Murray replied, "No, it's a filthy habit." He smoked cigars for 60 years.
Bridge is one of the most popular card games in the world. Four people play, with two partners sitting opposite each other. If you have ever played hearts you have an elementary understanding of the game: bridge is hearts on steroids.
"It is the most interesting and challenging card game that has ever been invented," said Ray Lee, the owner and publisher of Masterpoint Press, which publishes books on bridge. "It is on a par with chess and GO for complexity."
There is bridge played by friends, sometimes called Kitchen Bridge, and there is competitive bridge, called duplicate. That is what Eric Murray and Sami Kehela played at the International level representing Canada including at the Bermuda Bowl, which is the World Series of bridge. In duplicate each team plays the same hand as other opponents, so making an extra trick or making your opponents life a misery is key. Misery was Eric Murray's forte.
On Friday, April 29 in St. Vincent, Italy, the Canadian team was up against the brilliant Italian player, Giorgio Belladonna. Mr. Murray used what he called psyche bids to mess up his opponents’ game. They should have made a top score but didn't.
Here is the hand where Eric Murray psyched the Italian master:
"Instead of reaching seven no trump (and earning the highest score possible), they were playing it in three no-trump making seven (earning a penalty for not earning the highest possible score) because of my psyche bid. Sami Kehela leaned over to Belladonna and said `what's the matter, Giorgio, your nose not working so well today?'" recounted Mr. Murray many years later.
It was a put-down one-liner, mocking the Italian for not smelling the ruse by Eric Murray. The animosity was based on one of the greatest rivalries in the international bridge world. At the table the two Canadians would chain smoke cigars to annoy Belladonna.
Eric Murray and his partner came second in the Bermuda Bowl, the world championship, three times. They were up against the Italians, the most successful bridge team of the 20th century, known as the Italian Blue Team.
"The Italians were simply the best bridge players in the world for a couple of decades," said Tom Healy, a retired banker who played international bridge for Ireland before emigrating to Canada. "It was Murray and Kehela's bad luck to be playing in the era when the Italians were so dominant."
Mr. Murray juggled his bridge life with a successful career as a lawyer, where his business card read Eric Murray QC. Having such an active life outside bridge is unusual for a top player. Most of them are professionals, including his partner Sami Kehela, who made a living writing bridge columns, teaching, and conducting bridge cruises. Professional bridge players can also earn a lot of money playing in private games for high stakes.
"He was a very good lawyer and had a very good brain, and bridge came naturally to him," said Mr. Kehela. "Most successful bridge players are only bridge players, so they spend more time and effort in reaching the heights. Eric did that even though he had a second life, which was his legal career."
He was as passionate about the law as he was about bridge. One of his greatest victories was when he sued the birth control company Ortho Pharmaceuticals. A woman suffered a stroke, one of the possible side effects of the drug. Mr. Murray took the case. "The defendant was negligent in failing to warn of the risks of oral contraceptive use," wrote Justice R.E. Holland of the Ontario Superior Court in April of 1984.
"I knew Eric as a bridge player, though I wasn't I his league, and as a lawyer," said John Laskin, a judge with the Ontario Court of Appeal. "I always admired his passion for his clients, many of whom were underdogs."
One of his former colleagues at his firm, Genest Murray, said Mr. Murray refused to act for financial institutions, banks and insurance companies. “But he was happy to act against them. The other partners were not happy about him turning down big files.” He was a founding partner of Genest Murray, and his wife Helen Murray, also a Q.C., was also a lawyer there. Mrs. Murray ended her legal career as an adjudicator for the Law Society of Ontario.
There was one unusual case in which Mr. Murray was not the lawyer, but an expert witness, as the defence called upon his mastery of the game. In 1966 the Toronto police raided the North York Bridge and Social Club hoping to find an illegal poker game. Instead, the inhabitants were playing bridge. The owner was charged with running a game of chance.
Eric Murray testified bridge was skill, not chance. The lower court ruled bridge was a game of chance because the cards were dealt randomly. The case went all the way to the Supreme Court which upheld the verdict.
After the judgement, Mr. Murray commented: "If I played bridge like those judges I would agree it was a game of chance."
Eric Murray was born in Hamilton in 1928 and started playing bridge in his final year of high school. At McMaster University he continued to play, but at a competitive level, and ran the university’s bridge club. He teamed up with a man named Harry Bork, who Mr. Murray later described as "the best player in Hamilton." The secret of bridge success is for a weaker player to find a strong partner. Eric Murray found Agnes Gordon, a Canadian who lived in Buffalo New York.
"We joined up to play the National Mixed Pairs (in 1963), and we won it with the highest score that has ever been recorded in ACBL history," recalled Mr. Murray. Except for 1984, Mr. Murray represented Canada in every World Team (Bridge) Olympiad from 1960 to 1988.
His next great partner was Doug Drury, after whom the Drury Convention is named. Conventions are bidding systems in bridge, and new ones are named after the person who first came up with them. When Doug Drury moved to the United States, Mr. Murray teamed up with Sami Kehela. The two became the most formidable bridge partnership in Canada.
At bridge clubs across Canada people play every week, hoping to win Masterpoints; at regional and national tournaments there are silver and gold points. The objective is to become a Life Master, which is a minimum of 500 points and enough of the higher silvers and golds. Eric Murray was a Grand Life Master with somewhere around 10,000 points.
"There has been inflation in masterpoints. They are easier to get, and you can earn them in online games," said Mr. Lee. "When Eric and Sami were playing it was one point here, one point there and more at tournaments. His total really meant something."
Eric Murray was once on the board of directors of the ACBL and is in its Hall of Fame among numerous other awards. Early in his playing career, he helped organize competitive bridge in Canada. He had another hobby, apart from bridge: stamp collecting.
Eric Rutherford Murray was born April 31, 1928 in Hamilton, Ontario. He died on May 19, 2018, in Barrie, Ontario. He is survived by his three sons James, John, and Fraser. His wife Helen, also a lawyer, predeceased him. His older brother William, died in 1944 on a mission to Hamburg with the RCAF.
NOTE to Readers
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