Small Problems With Sports

Right now, we have the World Junior Hockey Championships being held in Toronto and Montreal. I understand that in Europe, it's known as the Under 20 (or U20) championship, in keeping with the naming system used in soccer and other sports.

But here in Canada we prefer to name our age ranges. And that brings up an issue I would have blogged about when I was a child, if someone had been willing to type it out, and invent blogging for me: Our sports age classes have embarrassing names.

We seem to have an obsession with making kids feel small. I played soccer, not hockey, but the problem seems to be the same. I started off in "squirt" which is the youngest level. Fair enough, though that does seem like an unnecessarily insulting name. Then I moved up to "atom." Obviously, that brings up the question of what the squirt could possibly be made of, if it's smaller than an atom, but I'll leave that to Neil Degrasse Tyson.

The point is, someone was clearly going out of their way to emphasize the concept of smallness if they named the class after the smallest thing most people have ever heard of, and that's the class the kids have to work their way up to.  I would have had to keep playing for most of my childhood before I even got to a level of sport that didn't have a silly sounding name.

Had I stayed in the sport, I could have gone on to levels like "peewee" and "bantam". Peewee is clearly meant to be demeaning. Bantam is more esoteric, but it's not just a small bird, it's a small chicken. There's even a hockey class named for an insulting word for small people, thus insulting people who aren't even involved in the sport.

I know, this probably all started when people created "senior" and "junior" classes to divide adults and teens. Then as younger kids wanted to play organized sports, the organizers realized that they'd painted themselves into a corner and had to come up with ever smaller things to name divisions after. But they didn't have to come up with such demeaning names. Why not name them after different sized animals? Instead they had to succumb to sports' tendency look down on inexperienced newcomers. The Europeans and their boring age range names have a point.

Shocking Doctrine

Prime minister Stephen Harper angered many during an interview when he again refused the idea of an inquiry into the huge number of missing and murdered aboriginal women. His and the Conservative party's avoidance of the issue has been particularly perplexing.

We're all used to the idea of politicians of all political stripes making big, public gestures, but avoiding anything of substance of it could be costly or difficult. So I would not be at all surprised to see a politician in this situation call a commission, let it work away for a few years, then ignore its recommendations.

That's why it's so perplexing that the Conservatives are so dead-set against the inquiry. The monetary cost would be small on the national scale. And it's not like it would go against any of their political priorities. On the contrary, they could make a good argument that the inquiry is an extension of their law-and-order agenda. But not only will they not make the public act, they won't even turn out down in a dignified way, unceremoniously saying that it wasn't a priority.

Naomi Klein recently wrote an article about the problem, linking it to the Conservative's energy policy. She points out that the First Nations have provided the only effective opposition to the government's pro-oil-industry platform, and she sees this as payback from a government that sees itself working against indigenous groups.

But I find that hard to believe. I don't like Prime Minister Harper. And I don't mean that I'm a I-disagree-with-him-but-I-respect-him way. He's condescending. He's a bully. He's quick to abandon people and principles. But even I don't think he'd take revenge on a whole race of people like that.

Despite that, the accusation is still going to be a problem for Harper. Like I said, the Conservatives' stalling on this is, above all, perplexing. When actions are so inexplicable, any explanation - even one so difficult to believe - is going to gain traction. The government is going to have to come up with their own plausible explanation for their inaction if they don't want Canadians to adopt Klein's conclusion.

The Invisible Backbone

As I mentioned previously, it's inaccurate to depict the decision not to release The Interview as being entirely about Sony. All major cinema chains turned down the movie first. And rumor has it that cable channels and download services wouldn't touch it either. But on the other hand, most individuals in the entertainment industry disagreed strongly with the decision.  And now that it is getting limited release, it's mostly at independent theaters that are run by individuals. That brings up a difficult question: how is it that our corporations all reached a different decision than individuals?

Companies are often referred to as, "fictitious people." That's a description that is often ridiculed, but I've always thought that it does describe the concept pretty well. Don't get me wrong, I don't think of companies as morally equivalent to human beings. But they are complex entities that have their own personality, characteristics and reactions. Those actions may just be the result of the actions of lots of people, but they end up having their own personality, one that often is quite different from that of the constituent people.

A few years ago the documentary The Corporation took this concept further, having a psychologist examine corporations and conclude that if they are people, they are psychopaths, since they don't show any empathy for the other members of society. I'd have to agree with that assessment, but I wouldn't take it as rejection of capitalism. After all, there are a lot of psychopaths in society who don't cause anyone any problems. But then, they have to obey laws. And to me, that's the conclusion to take from the psycho-corporations concept: it doesn't rule-out capitalism, just unrestrained capitalism.

But that seems strange when we look at the actions of corporations dealing with The Interview. I'm left thinking that these companies may be psychopaths, but they're also kind of cowardly. That's different from what we see in humans.  So I wonder how that happened.

Things the Teenage Me Would Never Have Believed About Life In The Future, #19

There's a TV channel that just shows a burning fireplace.  It started as a holiday special during low-ratings slots like Christmas morning.  It also started off semi-humourously.  But people decided they liked it, so lots of people watch it now.

Betting On The Stacks

Doing Christmas shopping in Chapters, I learned a lot. For one thing, I can't believe how much manga and graphic novels have grown.  I remember being amazed that it had its own shelf, and now it has its own section.

But I also found these piles of books. You sometimes see the latest much-anticipated book arranged like this. I figure the height of the stack gives us an indication of how the book is selling. And they complexity of the design shows how much free time the site employees have.

I remember how there were huge arrangements of the Steve Jobs biography for a while, which I figure means that they ordered far too many in the hype following his death. So what do we know based on these piles?

Justin Trudeau should be worried that his book sales are well behind those of conservative icon Conrad Black.

The Leafs' book isn't doing too well. It's way behind the Gordie Howe book. Though it is beating the latest Young-Adult fantasy on the other side of it.

And the leading author? No, not Stephen King, it's Amy Poehler.

Maximum Ice

That's it! I've had enough of icing the kicker!  If you don't follow football, it's the practice of calling a timeout as the other team is about to kick a field goal; the purpose being to make the kicker think about it for an extra minute, and psych himself out or something. It's not likely to work of course; but for a last second play, the team has nothing to lose in trying it.

It's always annoyed me for adding an unnecessary delay to the climax of the game. It would be like having a quick commercial break before the kick. Possibly society that has gotten used to reality shows padding out the big reveal with edited-in pauses, but most people watching sports are trying to avoid that sort of thing.

It's also hard to believe it will have any effect. Kickers are used to performing under pressure. And kickers spend most of their time on the sidelines thinkin; I'm sure an extra minute to think about it won't make a difference. (Though the awkward practice kicks they do to kill the time might. ) Remember that this is a sport where a team of forty people occasionally depend on one person to succeed or fail based on one person's actions, and that person is easily the smallest of them.

I thought we'd reached the nadir of icing the kicker a few years ago when Joe Gibbs got confused and called a timeout twice, incurring a delay of game penalty. I didn't think it could any worse than a hall-of-game coach so crazed with the need to play mind games that he would end up hurting his own team. But then in today's Miami Beach Bowl, the coach of Brigham Young actually called a timeout to ice the kicker on an extra point. And this was with 45 seconds left. He essentially thought that it was more important to ice the kicker than run a good two-minute drill to get into range for what would have been a winning field goal. So please, let's ban timeouts on kicks.

Interview With The Empire

A few years back, David Letterman was the target of the threats from Islamic extremists over a joke he made. I figured that for a comedian, if you have to die before your time, that's the best way to go: murdered by the target of one of your jokes. That's something you'd always have over everyone else. George Carlin, Lenny Bruce, Richard Pryor: none of them can claim that. Also, you'd have a kind of existential revenge over your killer: no one will ever be able to remember either of you without remembering the joke at his expense.

That is, assuming it’s a good joke. Unfortunately, in Letterman’s case, it was a laboured attempt to revive a previous gag into a running joke. It made little sense out of context, and wasn’t that funny in context. I would hope the incident was a wake-up call to all comics: put everything into each joke, because it could be your last.

Which brings me to The Interview. Obviously I haven’t seen it, but it doesn’t look like something you’d want to go down in history as the movie that started World War III. I’m not sure what you would want an act-of-war movie to be like; probably something that makes a profound statement. Even if it has to be within the genre of stoner/gross-out comedies, you’d want to go down in history for insulting the enemy leader with an American Pie-style unprecedented moment of raunch.

But now it appears that none of this matters. If they don’t release The Interview, we can just imagine it to be whatever kind of movie we want it to be. As for the question of whether it was a good move to drop the release, I find that most news stories, and all internet discussion, has missed a rather important point: Sony made the decision to cancel the release after several major American theatre chains said they wouldn’t show the film. I’m not saying that absolves Sony of the choice, but it does illustrate that this is not the decision of one isolated corporation. Several companies - when faced with the same situation - made the same choice.

Proponents of the choice to pull the movie have generally made the shockingly mature argument that we can’t just look at it from our current comfortable position, but rather we should put ourselves in the position of the alternate world where the film was shown, and the threatened attacks happened. It’s hard to look at that devastation and justify the decision to release a silly movie.

I can understand the reasoning and, as I say, admire the non-knee-jerk sophistication of that position. But what really worries me about the cancellation is that it sets a shockingly low bar for cancelling major events based on threats. The fact is, it’s pretty much an everyday event for people on the Internet to make idle threats they couldn’t possibly follow through on. They’ve let everyone know that all it takes for a major corporation to change their plans at great expense is some hacking skills and the shamelessness to threaten lives. I think we’re going to see that happen more often in the future. If it does, we’ll have to reassess the equation of how much risk we’re willing to live with.

Lego My Intellectual Property

Here in Canada, we take pride in anyone who makes it big.  (Except Justin Bieber.)  All Canadians can rhyme off the names of Canadian celebrities.  Canadian business success stories are a bit harder to come by, but we do make a big deal if a Nortel or a Blackberry gets to the big time, and politely look the other way when they fall back down.

So from time to time, I've seen stories about the success of MegaBloks, the popular Lego alternative from Montreal.  But it's hard to feel good about a company that copied someone else's invention after the patents expired, then figured out how to make it slightly more cheaply.  They're the generic drug manufacturers of the toy world. It doesn't help that they're selling Call Of Duty sets, despite those games being recommended for ages 17 and up.

But now I find that MegaBloks isn't even the only Canadian Lego rip-off.  There's also Brictek.  How did that happen?  In addition to resource companies and short-lived technology giants, our other Canadian business cliché is plastic blocks.  But surely if you can build plastic blocks cheaply, you can build other small plastic things easily?

This is just so damn Canadian, being a distant anonymous second to the folks who got things started.  Okay, it's refreshing that we're copying the Danes, rather than the Americans.  But this year MegaBloks was bought by America's Mattel, completing this microcosm of stereotypical Canadian business.  You could at least get together with a chocolate maker and go after Kinder Eggs.

'Cause The Man Would Never Give Me An Hour

I've been asking it on a nightly basis for months now, so I'll ask it here: what the hell is Late O'Clock News? Actually, I can answer that: It's a 5-minute satirical interview program on the Comedy network every night at about ten-past-eleven (that is, the first commercial break in The Daily Show.  Well, maybe not "program;" perhaps, "segment"? I guess it doesn't count as a TV program, since it's not in the Internet Movie Database.  The closest thing that site's search function could come up with is the British classic Not The Nine O'Clock News, and the juxtaposition of those two has now made me even more angry.

It's easy to see what's going on here.  The Colbert Report - which normally follows The Daily Show at 11:30 - is ending this week, so the Comedy Network had to find something to replace it, and they chose Jimmy Kimmel Live.  But that show starts at 11:35, so they'd have to find something to fill an extra five minutes.  Someone said, let's produce an extra, five-minute show that emulates the weakest part of The Daily Show - deadpan interviewers trying to make their subjects look silly without using the show's political humour.

Of course, they could have placed it at the end of The Daily Show, but then people would probably change channels to some other show that starts at 11:30, rather than sit through five-minutes of awkward interview before Kimmel starts.  So now we're stuck with an extra-long commercial break.  A half-time show in the middle of a half-hour show.  I guess their idea was to make something that would appeal to The Daily Show's viewers, but like I said, it only resembles the show's slowest moments.  They would have been better off emulating the show's political satire.  Say, have a guy do Rick Mercer-style rants.  They could be about Canadian politics, and then it would count towards their Can-Con.  I don't know if Late O'Clock host Paul Lemieux would be up to that, but given that he used to work for MTV, I'll assume not.  Or they could just hire Rick Mercer himself, since I'm sure Bell/CTV can afford to spend more on five-minutes than the CBC can on a half-hour.

Cloudy With A Chance Of Boxsters

This week in poorly-targeted app ads:

What gave them the idea that people using the Weather Network app would be in the market for the most expensive of Porsches?  Do they really think that someone too cheap to pay a dollar for an ad-free weather app is going to buy a $100,000 car?

I'm Dreaming Of A Wide Christmas

I'm one of those people who hates the coming of Christmas music. No, I don't have anything against Christmas or its music; it's the ubiquitousness of it. Yes, I know, I've mentioned this before. Having it going constantly, everywhere, for a month is a bit much.

But today I realized there is a potential positive: in trying to fill the airwaves with songs on a single topic, music programmers have to reach outside of their normal confines of time and genre. Just in the past few minutes waiting in a drug store, I've heard fifties, soul, and the Beach Boys.

A lot of people would consider that to be another negative, but I consider it a positive. I'd actually like a radio station that would play anything. Maybe it was being raised on the necessarily eclectic tastes of one music video channel that tried to be all things to all people.

So that's a good thing about Christmas, forcing us to break out of our normally strict music formats.  And it's all thanks to the limited number of Christmas songs.  So all you ignored genres, this is your ticket to greater exposure.  Polka, blues, free jazz: get recording.

Dyson's Fear

There's a classic book on making things usable called, The Design of Everyday Things by Donald A. Norman. It's a useful book for understanding how to make the devices around us easier to use.

One thing Norman rails against is arbitrarily changing standardized designs. There are a lot of things that aren't obvious, but don't cause problems because there are accepted layouts. You don't need instruction on how to drive a new car, because the controls are standard. This in spite of the fact that the standard steering wheel and pedals is not exactly obvious in its use.

Because of this principle, Norman doesn’t like faucets that have the one control that you turn to change the temperature and pull or push to control the amount of water. He figures the standard of two controls with the hot on the left is well known world-wide and should be maintained. I have to disagree with him here; the one-control kind is easier to use, since the two qualities of the water (temperature and volume) can easily be adjusted independently of one another. And that type of control has become popular enough that it is now a well-known standard of its own.

But there’s something we can all agree on: The new Dyson Tap design sucks. It is a sensor-driven, no-touch tap like many in today’s public washrooms, but being a Dyson product, it has to involve moving air. Sure enough, it has a built-in hand drier, so you can do all your hand-washing business without moving.

The trouble is, it’s far from obvious how it should be used. It looks like handlebars, so I assumed you have to do something with the bits sticking out the side. But no, you just hold your hands under them. More or less - the sensors seemed to be misaligned on the one I used. There are instructions etched on the tap itself, but the vague pictures of hands and arrows didn’t explain much.

I could have taken a picture of it, but you can just look that up at the link. Instead, I’ll include a picture of the instructions they had to print out to explain the new taps.

But there's one more problem.  I couldn't find the soap.  There were no soap containers in the washroom where I found these taps, and soap is not mentioned at the Dyson site, or any of the news stories I found about the tap.  So credit to Britain's Daily Mail, the only people who noticed the lack of soap.  This makes me wonder if people have really been washing their hands all these years.  Forgive me if I don't shake your hand.

And It Was All Yellow

I tried to Tweet this earlier, but it didn't work, so I'll just mention it here.  I was having trouble expressing it in 140 characters anyway.

Say you're approaching a traffic light, and it turns yellow. It's at just that time when you're not sure whether you should go through or not.  You make the snap decision to go for it, and get across the intersection just as it's turning red.  You're embarrassed, because it was closer than you'd imagined it, and you're glad your driving instructor isn't here to see it.

I've discovered that it's an unvarying truth: in this circumstance of pushing my luck at the lights, the person behind me will go through the intersection too.  I know I'm not that careful a driver, But these people are apparently even riskier than me.  Who are these people and why are they following me around?

Dave In Cincinnati

You young'uns won't know this, but when the Fox Network first started up in the eighties, it used the name FBC, or Fox Broadcasting Corporation. Not many people remember this because it was before American Idol, X-Files, Married With Children or The Simpsons. (Yes, even I have difficulty believing there was a time before The Simpsons.) This was when their only show was Joan Rivers's short-lived late night talk show. It's easy to understand why: all the other networks went by initials, even the few cable channels used initials (HBO, ESPN).

Of course, now times have changed, cable channels mostly have names. Radio stations have increasingly ridiculous names that they use in place of their call-letters that they only mention when they legally have to. I feel sorry for the stations that went to the trouble of coming up with a clever call-letter name like CHUM or CHYM. The hundred bucks they paid to a PR firm in the seventies must seem like a waste now. If they had PR firms in the seventies.

But the reason I'm thinking about the good old days of meaningless initials in broadcasting is the onslaught of silly names given to on-demand TV services trying to compete with Netflix. We're getting ads for "Crave," which is Bell/CTV's entry in the market. Because who wouldn't want to download programming using something named after a cat food. But even worse is their competitor "shomi" (sounds like "show me," geddit?)

Once again, living in the future is great and all, I just wish everything didn't have such dumb names. The need for unique domain names on the Internet forced some odd names, but at least they were mostly just non-sequiturs (Amazon) or bad spellings (tumblr.) But now things are getting silly names in juvenile competition. Somebody should edit old science fiction to add this detail: "Sha-zzzing me up, Scotty!"

My Word

It's that time of year again.  Time for dictionaries to get free publicity by declaring a word of the year, or a selection of words that will be added to their books.  I was going to rant about these choices, but it seems I've done that before.  More than once.  But the fact is, sometimes these words aren't really deserving of their accolades; I'm still waiting to hear anyone use the word "infosnacking" after it was declared 2005 word of the year by Webster's New World College Dictionary.

So I have a proposition.  This is for any dictionaries or linguistic societies out there that have put off finding a word of the year for 2014, and are now scrambling to find a new word they can use to get those cheap mentions from the world's news providers. A few weeks ago, I used the word "Googlespace" to describe the proportion of relevant results a word or phrase gets.  For instance, if I Google "jaguar", most of the results are for the car company, rather than the cat or the football team.  So the company occupies more "Googlespace" than the other uses of the word.
You'll note that I used the word without explanation, as though I'm assuming that my hip, fashionable readers on the bleeding-edge of technology would already know what it means, so you can reasonably claim that the word is already used and about to hit the mainstream.

I assure you that my royalty demands will be reasonable.  But if you don't want to use my word, you can always make up a word for a manufactured news item used to get free publicity.

Doc, I'm Coming Down With A Gerund

I previously mentioned the oddness of special waiting room copies of magazines. Well I found another today, this time it's a bit more understandable.

But I have to feel like there could be ulterior motives here.  Isn't that a great way to keep your practice busy, encourage patients to read about things that could be wrong with them? What's next, the special waiting room copy of hypochondriacs illustrated?

Also, you'll notice that gluten is now such a big deal, it's become a verb. At least This magazine is talking about people with actual allergies, rather than those who are just jumping on the bandwagon. I read through the article, and they kept talking about people getting glutened, without explanation, as though it were a widely understood word. Apparently it means “to be served food containing gluten, in spite of your best efforts to avoid it.”

I also learned a couple more things:

• Fewer people in the US have allergies than Canada: 2.5 million Canadians to 15 million Americans. The magazine claimed that was about the same proportion of the population, in which case they might want to look up the respective populations. It’s about 7% of Canadians and 4.7% of Americans.
• Children who grow up on farms have long been known to have fewer allergies than their urban counterparts. And new research shows that this is particularly true for dairy farms. Kids growing up on dairy farms have one-tenth the chances of developing allergies as kids in other rural areas. So if you want your child to avoid allergies, by a cow.

The Virtual Suspects

This month's Call Of Duty game is out. And the ads have all the usual war game ad tropes:

• Lots of cut-scene footage, but no shots of actual game play.
• Music that the target audience wouldn't normally listen to.
• People doing macho but strategically-unwise things that would get them killed in a real game.

But then out of all these clichés appears Kevin Spacey, crawling out of the Uncanny Valley by sheer force of will. He - or at least an avatar of him - seems to be playing the same character he plays in House Of Cards.

If you think about it, there's also the question of why he looks like Kevin Spacey. If you're going to have computer-generated actors, you could make them look like whatever you want. But of course, it's the same reason he's playing the same character: recognition. That's kind of sad that we have this ability to depict almost anything we want on screen, but all we're doing with it is having a talented actor play a recycled version of himself. Perhaps in the future actors will choose an appearance that they will take with them through all their roles.

But aside from showing how technology changes, this is also a demonstration of the changing fortunes of actors. Careers not only go up and down, but also slide from one style to another. Imagine this conversation taking place just a few years ago:

"We've done it! We have the technology to place photorealistic actors into a game, and it'll be ready for the next Call Of Duty. Who shall we use?"
"Kevin Spacey!"

But looking back through his career, I think there could have been several opportunities to have him reprise a role for a game. After all, The Sims came out the year after American Beauty.  There seems to be plenty of cross-promotion potential there.

Unnecessary Creepiness

Something to think about after today's Grey Cup:  Let's say you're on a football team.  And let's say that a player on your team just made an outstanding play to score the winning touchdown, but it was called back because another player was flagged.  Then you're walking along the sidelines - trying to find the orange Gatorade or something - and you see one of those two players.  What would you do?

You might be angry, but we'll assume your team has a real sense of togetherness so you want to be supportive.  You might say a kind word.  You might urge them on to make up for it on the next play.  You might silently pat them on the back.  I think that would be okay; from what I see of football culture, a pat on the rear wouldn't be appropriate at that time.

But truth be told, I think most of us would just try to avoid eye contact.  That's partly because we believe letting them be is the best thing at that point, and mostly because we don't know what to say.  But there's one thing I'm sure we would not do: Sit down next to the player, and just stare at him.

But that's what the view ends up doing, essentially.  The TV coverage always loves to zero in on the player who's just had the heartbreak.  Even though that's the last thing any of us would choose to do at that point.  Yes, it's not quite the same thing since we're not really there, but it still feels awkward.  I'm on the other side of the camera and thousands of miles away, and I still don't feel right concentrating on the guys who just want to hide at this point.  I'd rather see the joy of the winning team, even though I was cheering against them.

Seen One, Seen A Mall

Today was Black Friday.  No, I didn't buy anything.  It wasn't a matter of principle, I just didn't need anything, and the advertised prices at Canadian Black Friday sales just didn't seem trample-worthy to me.  Apparently the concept is spreading to other countries too.  The British started getting into fights over limited quantities in stores today too.  That didn't seem to happen here: I saw a sensationalist news items about consumers camped-out in line waiting for stores to open, but it ended with them all walking calmly into the store without incident.  It was the most Canadian thing I've seen in a long time.

As you can see, I did take note of the news today in a fiendish desire to see the annual customer stampede stories.  But ultimately they were disappointing. Sure, we got to see people yelling at each other, fighting for flashy cardboard rectangles.  But it didn't satisfy even my guilty pleasure of marvelling at crazy behaviour.  It's just the same thing over and over, in each city, year after year.  I'm sure that in previous years, I learned that lesson about how disappointing it is. But I forgot over the intervening year.  Ironically, that's probably why the shoppers keep fighting for bargains every year.

Google Divided By 2

Officials of the European Union has suggested that Google should be broken up for competition reasons.

Personally, I don't see the reason for it. I am okay with the idea of government limiting business, but that's if there's cause for it. With Google, that cause isn't there.

I was in favour of the U.S. Justice department's attempt to break up Microsoft in the nineties; in that case, they were clearly using their monopoly to eliminate competitors.

Google has made some clumsy attempts to use their position in one area to gain an advantage in another. The Google search feature on Android phones is a good example. But I think they're a few reasons this is different from Microsoft's situation.

For one thing, it's doubtful that Android has really helped Google's search business. After all, Microsoft's near-monopoly in PC operating systems hasn't helped Bing dent Google's hold on the market. Google would probably still lead in mobile search even without Android. After all, it's not hard to switch.

And that's another thing that's changed: it's easy to switch. I remember during the Microsoft case, some pro-business pundit ridiculing the idea that bundling Internet Explorer with Windows would cut use of Netscape. She characterized the government as treating the public as children, too stupid to download the competing browser if they wanted it. I disagreed with that; for one thing, in those days downloading software was a multi-hour proposition. Free vs. two-hour download was hardly even footing.

But today, switching software is easy and fast. People are a lot more comfortable with technology, and it's hard to herd people into decisions, no matter how much of their electronics you control. I'm not saying it's impossible - there may come a time when it makes sense for one of the super-powerful tech companies to be broken up. But that's far less likely now, and the day just hasn't arrived for Google.

Once again, European lawmakers are choosing their battles awfully: add with the "right to be forgotten" ruling, they're going to great lengths to solve problems we don't have. Is sad given the huge number of tech problems we do have, and could use help from a powerful trans-national body to solve:

• Privacy (from both government and business)
• Identity theft
• Bullying and threats
• Spam & phishing
• Spyware

Any Given Friday

Black Friday is coming up.  Is it just me, or has this year's edition reached a new level of cultural impact.  It's like in the past, it was just some silly thing that other people do, which you can laugh at from afar.  But now it's harder to ignore.  All businesses are getting involved, it's starting to overflow into Thanksgiving day itself, and it's becoming the universal start of the Christmas shopping season. 

Of course, here in Canada it's just an ordinary Friday.  But the effects are starting to overflow here too, since Canadian retailers are forced to have sales to stop people from heading over the boarder for bargains.  It's a pity we didn't coordinate things so that we would have our own Black Tuesday on the day after Canadian Thanksgiving.  But instead, the sales join afternoon football as a benefit we get to enjoy as a spillover from American Thanksgiving.

And that brings up the weird thing about Black Friday: how arbitrary it is.  There's no reason why people should all want to go shopping on the same day, other than the foibles of the calendar giving most Americans a Friday off with nothing to do about a month before Christmas.  But that arbitrary swelling of the number of shoppers kicks competition into overdrive, and we reap the benefits of concentrated Capitalism as prices drop.

My point is, there's no reason we couldn't do this any other time of year.  If we could all make an agreement that we're all concentrate our shopping on the same day.  Say, pick the last Friday in each month; it would be a make-or-break day for retailers, who would have to compete by having big sales.  Okay, it would be inconvenient to camp out in front of stores in the early morning and then fight your way into the store every month instead of just once a year.  But the point is: low prices.

Smoke 'Em Whether Or Not You Got 'Em

There should be some sort of non-smoking equivalent of smoking. That is, we should have an excuse to go outside too. Often, during a break in any sort of job or event, I find myself waiting for the smokers to do their thing.  I do my best to waste time until they get back, say by using the bathroom or getting a drink.  But it never quite fills the time.

You have to admit that if you look past the whole decreased-life-expectancy thing, smoking has its uses. It's an excuse to take a break; it's an excuse to go outside. But it also has less obvious benefits. I noticed when working in an office that the strongest personal connections between people in different departments were between smokers. After all, they'd spent plenty of time together.  When groups had to work together, they often communicated using those smoking-based relationships rather than the ones set out in the corporate hierarchy.

So we should create a similar vice. One that's not bad for our health of course. But it has to be something that requires going outside. Maybe burning incense? Some sort of skin treatment requiring a portable sauna?

I don't know why smokers would give all this up by using e-cigarettes. But if smokers are going to be encroaching on non-smokers' turf, it's only fair that it goes both ways.

Shouldn't It Be "Sticking Plaster 30"?

We've had another Band-Aid, this time to help countries fighting Ebola. So cue the complaining! People have criticized the optics of rich white celebrities coming to the aid of poor Africans.  And they've complained that the song paints a negative picture of Africa.

This is part of a bigger problem in modern society, that we want charity without the connotations of charity. That is, please give money to help these people, but don't acknowledge that they are needy. I think this attitude comes from a perfect storm of ideology: The very liberal would resist describing any group in absolute negative terms (particularly compared to the West) while the very conservative see neediness as inherently bad. Surely we can get beyond that and acknowledge that circumstance sometimes put good people in need of help from others.

The fact is that Band-Aid is a symbol of a screwed-up society. We live in a world where one group of people have way more money than everyone else, and that group of people tend to follow the instructions of their entertainers. Realizing this, the entertainers ask the people to give money to poorer people. That's essentially what happens, and it is ridiculous. But I think we can agree that the entertainers asking people to give to the less fortunate is the one sensible part of it. The stupid parts of it are the concentration of wealth in the West, and the exaggerated place celebrities have as trend-setters. Getting angry at the celebrities themselves for making the best of a crazy situation doesn't make sense.

Minimalism

There's a proposal in Switzerland to have a minimum income for all citizens. That is, a cheque from the government for all adults, no means test, no questions asked.

On the surface, it seems like a crazy idea based purely on quixotic ideology and no sense of reality. But it's actually being taken seriously by a lot of people, even some on the right side of the political spectrum.

The Swiss proposal calls for $2,800 a month. Working it out how affordable it would be in Canada is complex because of our two levels of government, but here's my quick calculations:  Adjusting for price differences (Switzerland is expensive) it would cost $173 billion in Ontario.  Ontario's budget is $127 billion, and Canada's budget is $279 billion, with Ontario making up 38% of Canada's population.

This may seem like a lot of money. But here's where it gets interesting, and less lefty. The basic income would replace a huge number of other expenditures: welfare, employment insurance, pensions. And that's before we even get to some more unexpected things, say the arts. If a person has a backup income, there's no need to get a further government payment to pursue an arts career.
On top of all this there's the bureaucratic efficiency. I'm loathe to mention that, because a promise of saving money through efficient bureaucracy is usually the crutch of desperate politicians with no real ideas. But if you've just replaced much of the government with a big machine that prints cheques, then you probably can expect some savings.

So there's a strange appeal to some on the right. If your libertarianism is motivated more by ideology than as a premise for lowering your taxes, then this will have an appeal. Even icon of conservative economics Friedrich Hayek liked the idea. In the end it does give people freedom and choice, while reducing the bureaucracy. Essentially it's reducing the size of government, without reducing its fiscal size. It's libertarianism a Keynesian could love.

Just to be clear, I'm still not sold on this idea. We don't know what effect this is going to have on work incentives. There's also the fact that we're applying a "just enough to get by" income on some people who deserve more, like people who would work, but have physical or mental reasons they can't. And then there's the fact that this set-up makes the "Robin Hood" nature of the welfare state is particularly apparent, which will rub many the wrong way.

But I still think it's interesting to consider, because you can think of it as an ideological compromise between the individual agency of conservatism and libertarianism, and the safety net of liberalism and socialism. Really, it's no surprise the idea has found traction in Switzerland, since it seems to be one of the few countries that holds both sides as integral national values.

Do Carpenters Dream Of Wooden Sheep?

I just saw an ad for a portable table saw called the Bladerunner. I'm assuming they want to attract fans of the movie (they certainly couldn't be trying to associate themselves with Oscar Pistorius.) I don't see how that makes marketing sense; surely geeky people would use a 3D printer to make new parts, rather than old-fashioned ideas like cutting things.

However, despite the movie reference in the name, they went with a Caesar motif for the slogan, "I came, I saw." That would be applicable if it were called the "Cae-Saw" or something. But "Blade Runner" would imply a whole different set of puns:

• Wake up, time to saw!
• I've cut things you people wouldn't believe.
• She won't sharpen, but then again who does?
• You're looking through a DeWalt catalogue. You come across a full-page photo of a band saw
• "More wooden than wooden" is our motto

Or you could just do a Black & Deckard joke.

Shuffling Through The Snow

What did Buffalo ever do to deserve this? Not the animal, they didn't do anything.  I mean the city.  We just had a snowstorm, and while it was bad here in southern Ontario, it was easily survivable. But somehow Buffalo got three feet of snow, paralysing the city. This just keeps happening: storms that are merely inconvenient here - at the same latitude in Canada - save their worst for the Queen City. (That's Buffalo's nickname; people know that, right?)

I'm sure Americans hear about the snow in Buffalo and assume it's a result of its position in the North, but clearly it's more than that.  The only explanation I can come up with - and keep in mind I know little about weather - is that it comes from the city's position at the Eastern end of Lake Erie. Thus the prevailing winds blow along the entire length of the lake, picking up moisture, then dumping it on Buffalo at the end. (And Wikipedia seems to agree.)

That begs the question: who decided to put the city there? Or rather, how did a city in such an unfortunate position get so large? Looking around the Great Lakes, there are no other major cities on windward shores.  I always assumed that was because people avoided the places with the worst weather conditions.

You got to feel bad for them. Here in Southern Ontario, the two big American cities on our doorsteps are Buffalo and Detroit. Those are two of the most deteriorated cities in the country, and it tends to give us a little smugness. That's unfortunate, since it's not like either city was really to blame for the global trends were their downfall.

In Buffalo's case, we should feel a kinship with them due to our similarities. Not only is there the weather and most of the U.S. ignoring them, they also care about hockey, and yet can't seem to put together a winning team.

Justice For My Inner Eight-Year Old

Glen A. Larson died this week.  If you're in your forties, that name may seem slightly familiar, especially if you picture it on a TV screen prefaced by "executive producer."  But once again, the media is confused as to why to memorialise him.  I've seen different stories refer to him as "creator of Magnum P.I.," "creator of Knight Rider" or "creator of Battlestar Galactica."  But none of them seemed to put those credits together with B.J. and the Bear, The Fall Guy, Buck Rogers and The Six-Million Dollar Man and remember him as the king of Eighties action shows. 

(As an aside, did you know that he put a lot of references to his Mormon faith in Battlestar Galactica?)

Combine that with the recent death of R.A. Montgomery, publisher of the Choose Your Own Adventure books, and we've had a couple of instances of short shrift given to people who had a hand in the entertainment of my childhood.  Both the Eighties and geekery are getting much more respect than they ever have before, so you'd think the media would use this to give a fond bit of nostalgia. 

Instead, I'm just going to have to add them to my ongoing series of people who deserved better obituaries than the media gave them.  Now I call on all of you Gen-X'ers out there to hum the Knight Rider theme, as you go to the web page of your choice.

You Got A Fast Car

Recently, a car put up for auction got some notice. It's a Ferrari Enzo, and the latest price is $370,000. That's quite a steal for an expensive, rare car that's no longer being made.

Of course, there's a catch: it's been in an accident, and needs some work. By "some work," I mean one wheel is missing, both the front and rear suspension are badly damaged. The engine starts, but many parts need replacing. Many body panels are damaged, and since they're made out of composite materials they'll likely need replacing. And worst of all, the carbon fibre "tub" that makes up the the core of the car has cracked, and that will cost a lot to fix. The total repair bill is estimated at $870,000.

So why would anyone pay $300,000+ for a that will need close to a million in repairs? Because that's actually a good price compared to the cost of a mint-condition model.

It brings up an interesting aspect of limited-edition supercars like the Enzo or the McLaren F1: they're nearly impossible to destroy. That's not because they're any more durable than your average car: you can easily find schadenfreude reports of them getting badly damaged when someone tries driving them at their limits. But they are difficult to write-off.

We use the terms "write-off" or "totalled" as a generic way of saying "destroyed," but what it technically means is that something is too expensive to repair. For instance, say your 1997 Taurus sustains damage that will cost $4,000 to fix. But a replacement car of similar vintage would likely cost less than a thousand. Thus, it doesn't make sense for you (or your insurance company) to pay for the repair; it would be cheaper to buy a replacement car.

But these famous-but-rare supercars are so expensive, it's nearly impossible to damage them so badly that repairs will be too expensive to undertake.  Just about any repair will cost less than the fixed car will be worth.

With that in mind, I've decided that I will put my Ferrari Enzo up for auction. Like the one in this story, it needs some work. You will have to replace the body, suspension, wheels, engine, transmission, interior and chassis. See, my Ferrari Enzo is, technically, a twisted piece of metal I found in the street the other day. But I'm sure you could rebuild it for less than the current asking price for an Enzo. Jay Leno, I await your call.

Neutrality Isn't

Net Neutrality is in the news again. (You can read my explanation on the issue here, along with my explanation of why I'm bitter and cynical about it.) It got a boost in publicity recently because President Obama came out in favour of it. Predictably, other politicians then quickly decided they were against it. Conservative icon Ted Cruz tweeted that it was just like Obamacare:

"Net Neutrality" is Obamacare for the Internet; the Internet should not operate at the speed of government.
— Senator Ted Cruz (@SenTedCruz) November 10, 2014

That lead to a lot of criticism from techies and/or liberals, well summarised in this comic from The Oatmeal. It ridicules Cruz's tweet, and encourages politicians to see this as a bipartisan issue that is in everyone's interest. And it notes that Cruz received a lot of campaign funds from communication companies that would benefit from the end of Net Neutrality.

Well I have a different perspective and it's something quite unexpected, so I'll put it in its own paragraph for emphasis:

Ted Cruz has a point.

To clarify, I should point out that I do fully believe the following:

• Net Neutrality is a good thing.
• Ted Cruz doesn't know what Net Neutrality is.
• Cruz is saying this primarily to stay in the good graces of his donors.
• Cruz compares everything he doesn't like to Obamacare ("I asked for medium-rare! This steakhouse is just like Obamacare! ")

So this is one of those cases of a clock that doesn't work being right twice a day. And can we please come up with a more modern version of that saying? 

The fact is that Net Neutrality is a lot like Obamacare. In both cases we're talking about regulating something such that there is a minimum amount of service that everyone can depend on, with the cost being that no one can get better service even if they can pay extra. In both cases, the alternative is a less-regulated system in which your level of service depends on your ability to pay, allowing people to buy better service with more money, but allowing the possibility that some will be priced out of a reasonable level of service.

Of course, Cruz is being disingenuous when he characterises Net Neutrality as though it were the government running the Internet. But that too is a similarity to Obamacare: the proposed solution is a system of regulation rather than total government control (in contrast to say, Canada's health care system.) But, in both cases, opponents are falsely portraying it as the government running everything.

As for The Oatmeal, it's wrong: this is a partisan issue. Some people may agree with its opinion that regulating internet speeds is a good idea (I do) but many others will not, thinking it's better if people/companies can pay for better service. That's what a partisan issue is: one in which the parties disagree. Just because you're really sure that you're right doesn't make your cause bipartisan.

Things My Grandfather Would Never Have Believed About Life In The Future.

I have a pair of speakers that are better than the one in your Victrola, but they're so small they fit in a person's ears.  They are still in working order, but I may have to replace them because the foam cover is ripped, and they don't sell them separately from new speakers.

All Of These Things Are Just Like The Others

You may have seen a recent article about the "Hipster Effect."  That is, a scientist has mathematically explained why hipsters look the same, even though they are trying to be individual.

The explanation is this: assume that everyone in a community wants to avoid any trend.  You also assume that, like most people, it takes a while for an individual to realize that a trend exists (that is, you don't assume there is a trend to wear red suspenders just because you saw one person wearing red suspenders; it takes a while to notice a pattern.)  When you simulate such a community, they eventually fall into a rhythm where everyone realizes there's a trend, switches to the opposite of the trend, notices that trend, switches, and so on.

It's an interesting concept: it's a lesson in how patterns can have very non-obvious causes, and a lesson in how difficult it is for an individual in a large population to avoid being part of large movements.  But I don't think it alone explains the phenomena of individualistic people looking the same.

In a world where you can easily distinguish yourself in a myriad of different ways, it's not likely you'd create a trend that way.  That is, if you're tired of everyone wearing white, wearing black isn't the only way to distinguish yourself; you could start wearing 1970's style rollerskates. Or wear an ironic neckerchief.  Or carry a clarinet around.

Okay, there is the possibility that avoiding trends itself becomes a trend. That is, you might try to avoid clothing trends by choosing your clothing based only on practicality and comfort.  If enough people do that, then comfortable, practical clothing might be seen as a trend, and adopted by people who choose their clothing based on fashion.  That's sort of what happened with Grunge era fashion.

I remember a Sociology prof observing that loners often look like other loners, though he explained it in terms of psychology: everyone has a need for both individuality and belonging, but different people have different amounts of each need.  So individualistic people don't completely reject membership in any group, they just have less of a need than most people.  So for them, the ideal solution is to join a smaller group. If you're in a subculture, you can feel individual while still maintaining a sense that you belong to something.

That seems to be a better explanation than some sort of comedy of errors in which people end up the same in an attempt to be different. That sounds like something that would be the premise of an SNL sketch or a Twilight Zone episode. 

Hall Of Name

Today was the last day of the Canadian Football League season.  People are talking about end-of-season awards, but there's one category everyone is missing: names.  This season, the CFL has had the best player names, exceeding even the NFL in that area.  So here are my nominees:

Hamilton Tiger-Cats	Bakari Grant
Montreal Alouettes	Winston Venable
Toronto Argonauts	Swayze Waters
Ottawa Redblacks	Dobson Collins
Calgary Stampeders	Bo Levi Mitchell
Edmonton Eskimos	Adarius Bowman
Saskatchewan Roughriders	Weston Dressler
B.C. Lions	Solomon Elimimian
Winnipeg Blue Bombers	Paris Cotton

Would You Buy A Used Racing Team From These People?

Two of Formula 1's eleven teams have run out of money.  Marussia appears to be finished.  And Caterham is trying to raise money through crowdfunding. 

This story has been reported in the media as a reckoning for the sport, in which they will realize that the finances are unsustainable, and it will have to be remade.  Racing suffers from the same success-begets-success problem that a lot of sports face, in which good teams have greater income, which allow them to outbid other teams for top talent.  Auto racing has it worse for a couple of big reasons: one is that money doesn't just buy talent, it buys technology.  And there's the fact that no one has any reason to love the lesser teams:  In team sports, a bad team can at least count on at least some fans from their home town to support them even when they are uncompetitive. That's why I doubt the Caterham funding plea will work; sadly, there probably aren't many people around the world that will care.

Sports is a bizarro world where Americans are socialist and Europeans are unapologetic capitalists.  So NASCAR and IndyCar have low-cost, balanced series, while Formula 1 does little to keep lesser teams alive, never mind competitive.  So not only to winning teams win the big prize money and get the biggest sponsorship dollars, they also get the bigger share of the TV money.  So it's inevitable that lesser teams will get caught in a vicious circle.  Some people have suggested that the solution is to let the unsuccessful teams go under, and just have the rich and successful teams field more cars each.  But that won't work either, since the problem will just reappear: Even if there are fewer teams with more cars, someone has to finish last, and no one will want to sponsor them.

So eventually the sport will have to completely overhaul how it works.  But that will mean a radical shift in philosophy, as they drop the pretence that the sport is some ultimate technological competition at the bleeding-edge of engineering.  Instead, they'll have to tighten the rules to make the cars virtually the same, and sell it as a competitive sport.

But they won't be doing that any time soon.  In a world with many emerging markets, there is a constant supply of rich people and corporations looking for instant credibility and status.  Essentially, that's the case with Russian-owned Marussia, (formerly) Malaysian-owned Caterham, and the next candidate for bankruptcy, Force India. So expect all these teams to be back next year, under new names and ownership.

Undecided Voters Need Their Head Examined

You may have seen a recent article about researchers predicting if a person is liberal or conservative based on their reaction to "disturbing" (i.e. gross) images.  Despite what you're likely thinking, it's not that one side was more disturbed by the images than the other; actually, people's reaction to the images (and even their description of their reaction to them) didn't predict a person's ideology.  Instead, it was a scan of brain activity while the person looked at the pictures.  The different areas of the brain that were activated could be used to predict a person's political views with 95% accuracy.

There are a lot of interesting and controversial aspects to the story, but what I find interesting is the high accuracy of the scan.  It would seem to surpass other tests to predict a person's ideology, such as: annual income or church attendance.  More interestingly, it would likely be better than the test of simply asking the person what their ideology is. 

I, like most politically aware people, are constantly amazed at how many undecided people there are.  I can understand people being torn between two similar options they've narrowed it down to.  But there are always people who go into the election seriously claiming that they have no idea which of the diverse candidates they favour.  So those people have no idea what their political ideology is, but according to this paper, a brain scan could tell them.

Like An Annoying Neighbour

Often, companies will use a common character or concept in their ads. Like Wendy's with that red-haired woman who seems to have a different circle of friends every week. I'm sure that people in the ad business have a name for it.

Anyway, usually a brand will only have one of those ad motifs at a time. Wendy's, for instance, used to have Dave Thomas, and before that they had the Where's The Beef lady. But you wouldn't try to have two ad styles going at once, unless you are trying to cover up the fact that you have an insane number of ads.

Which brings me to insurance. All the big American insurance companies run two campaigns.

• GEICO: the English gecko, "Everyone knows that."
• Progressive: Flo, that anthropomorphic box
• Allstate: the President from 24, Mayhem

So why would insurance require so many ways to advertise? I know insurance is one of those businesses that is "sold, not bought" but still, that's a suspicious amount of effort put into selling something.  Usually if people use so many cutesy gimmicks in advertising, it's either breakfast cereal, or they're trying to distract you from something.

At this point, I was going to rant about how bad the Esurance ads are.  But they are so misguided that I thought first I should google, "esurance 'half that time' 'is that a joke'".  I think the ads are serious - taking on GEICO's "15 minutes could save you 15%" ads, by promising to take half the time, but not saying how much money they save you.  But I came across another blog that has already disembowelled the ad campaign, so I won't bother.

Great Post, Now I'll Set My Computer On Fire

Of course, I realize people are stupid.  But even given that, I have trouble understanding violence following sports championships.  After the San Francisco Giants won the World Series, two people were shot, two stabbed, 40 arrested, and lots of cars and businesses vandalized.

First of all, let's review the circumstances:

• It's baseball, the least violent major sport.
• It's San Francisco, a wealthy, educated, tolerant city.
• It's their third championship in the past five years.

So if ever a victory was going to result in a big shrug from the winning city, this would be it.  And yet we still saw violence.  On top of that, it's now so expected that if barely even made the news.

The violence-following-championships has gotten so predictable that it's likely a self-fulfilling prophecy now.  If everyone knows that identity-concealing chaos is about to erupt, people will be more likely to act without civility.  A riot is more likely to start if everyone believes a riot is about to start.

Here in Canada, we don't usually riot following one of our teams winning it all.  At least, I don't think we do, it's been so long I don't remember.  But we do trash a city when we lose.  That at least makes some kind of sense, destroying things in anger rather than celebration. But it was, in a way, more embarrassing.  It's one thing to explain to the world that one of your cities burst into violence because of complex psychosocial dynamics.  But we had to explain that one of our cities exploded into violence because we really do get that frustrated over hockey.

Meet The New Champs, Same As The Old Champs

It's a sentiment you often hear when sports journalists talk about the future prospects of traditionally strong teams like the Yankees or Cowboys: (insert sport) is better when (famous, traditionally strong team) is good. Or sometimes they go as far as saying (insert league) needs a strong (famous team). But I've got to ask, is that really true?

The evidence doesn't seem to bear it out. As noted earlier, baseball has faced declining popularity, in spite of nearly twenty years of continuous success for the Yankees. The NFL is doing well despite a long spell of mediocrity for the Cowboys. Hockey's minuscule American popularity is harder to gauge, but here in Canada it's as popular as ever, despite a generation of underwhelming play by the Canadiens and two generations of terrible play by the Leafs. As for the NBA, they experienced just about the biggest boost in popularity any league has ever experienced during the Jordan era, and that was on the back of a team that had little previous success, during which traditionally strong teams like the Celtics and Lakers were unremarkable.

I think the reason for this misguided belief in the need for strong classic teams is that it comes from journalists who are trying to tell stories that put today's events in a larger perspective. Fans and players, on the other hand, live in the moment, so they don't care. A great example was the recent "big three" Miami Heat. When three top players decided to team up to win championships, they didn't have a problem with doing it playing for a team younger than them. And fans didn't need any encouragement to love them or hate them for it, even if the team they are cheering for or against is one their parents or grandparents wouldn't recognize.

Conspicuous Consumption

I live alone, can get to a number of grocery stores easily, and I don't like to plan. This means that I make a large number of small shopping trips, rather than a big weekly trip like most people. The point is that I often shop at irregular intervals, where I buy odd combinations of things I happen to be running out of.

I became conscious of this a few years ago when I got to the checkout and realised that I was buying pickles and ice cream. No, I wasn't pregnant, nor was anyone in my household, I just happened to need those two things.

That purchase seemed to tell an implied story about me, one so economical Ernest Hemingway would be proud of it.  Even if it wasn't really true. So now I often wonder about what people might assume about me purchases. For instance, at the bulk store, I often purchase spaghetti and semi-sweet chocolate. I feel I should reassure them that I won't be having them together.

All this came to mind recently when I made another potentially suspicious purchase.  I'd like to reassure everyone that I just happened to be running low on toilet paper the week before Halloween.  That's the only reason I was buying it.

How Recklessly The Pages Are Filled

I often use CNN's web page.  No, I don't look for news there.  But if I'm having problems with my internet connection, I often use it as a reliable page to load to see if it's working.  Yes, I could use Google, but I often use it, so I can never be sure if it actually downloaded, or if my computer has just reloaded it from it's own memory. 

But today when my connection was being particularly difficult, I loaded CNN, and then realized that I did have one piece of news that I wanted to see: the score of tonight's World Series game.  That's one simple piece of information that lots of people will be looking for, so surely it will be easy to find.  I search through the boxes of headlines in different topics before I find the sports box.  And here's what I find:

Does it have the score? No.  It tells me that I can get a live blog of a couple of sports events that are now over.  It gives me headlines which, when severed from their article, don't mean anything.  It tells me about the PGA president and the Rays' manager, stories that have already been out for 24 hours.  And just to rub it in, it tells me the result of a Spanish soccer match, in a way that most Americans probably wouldn't have understood.  But this is how news gets presented on the Internet in ad-funded sites: an array of fragmentary headlines draw you to click further in to find the info you want. 

I wish postings on the internet could have useful, descriptive headings.  Anyway, thanks for letting me rant, I think that's enough for this post.  Now to think of an obscure song lyric pun to use as the title.

Transparent Campaigns

I've been trying to decide who to vote for in next week's municipal election.  It's a lot more difficult, since there seem to be a lot more candidates.  Elections here have often been the incumbent and a few other candidates who don't seem ready for prime time.  But now there are a lot of candidates who seem quite serious and professional.  So I've been going through newspaper write-ups and candidate web pages trying to make up my mind.

I'm pleasantly surprised that few of them are running on the angry-letter-to-the-editor platform.  That is, most candidate make a token reference to defending the taxpayers' money, but there were no angry tirades about throwing out the bums on the gravy train.  Actually, way more people were highlighting poverty and affordable housing as important issues.

But one trend that I have noticed is that Transparency and Consultation have become extremely overused.  Every candidate makes a big deal about talking to the people, being available, and having meetings open to the public.  Obviously those are all good things, but they're also bland, unquantifiable, safe promises that anyone can make.  They are to municipal politics what a promise of a suggestion box is to student council.

It's weird that at a time when we can barely find the time to vote or read a newspaper, we demand closer interaction with our politicians than ever before.  I make an effort to keep informed about politics, but I don't really feel the need to get any more involved.  I'd be happy to vote for a candidate who's slogan is, don't worry, I'll handle it.

Bragging About Length

I figured I should eventually back up this blog, in case, you know, Google goes bankrupt or something.  So I've cut and pasted all the entries into a word processor file.  Of course, I was also curious as to how much I've written altogether.

The answer is: 354 pages, single spaced. Or in words, 193,632.  Or to put it in terms more people can understand, that's somewhere between Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.  Or, close to the length of Johnathon Franzen's The Corrections.  I should get around to reading that; maybe it won't feel so intimidating now.

Or, it's around a third of Infinite Jest or War and Peace. Or it's the Bible almost to the end of Judges.  So that's pretty good for a little over two-and-a-half years of part-time writing.  But still, don't expect my Great Canadian Novel soon, unless I go in to NaNoWriMo.

Local Vote, The Cola Wars, I Can't Take It Anymore

We saw a proliferation of newsletters and pamphlets when desktop publishing software and laser printers caused a massive drop in the cost of printing professional documents.  But what technological change made it cost-effective to make dozens of lawn signs for small-town city councillor races?  Did plastic sheets and wooden stakes suddenly become cheaper?

I grew up with the idea that lawn signs for only feature of provincial and federal elections.  (Those of you from big cities might have different experiences.)  But now it seems that all but the least-funded candidates for civic office have them, and even some of the school board trustees.

I have to wonder if they actually work in smaller races. For one thing, there's a much lower voter turn-out. That means that the herd-mentality types that might be swayed by quantities of signs make up a lower portion of the electorate.  Whoever it is that votes in municipal elections manages to withstand letters from cranky taxpayers in the newspaper and re-elect most of the same people each time, so I don't think that a sign on a vacant lot is going to sway them.

Part of the problem is that in elections with parties, we already know all the stances of the candidates, they're just trying to remind you of their presence, the way Coca-Cola keeps advertising even though everyone knows who they are.  But if federal and provincial elections are like the Cola Wars, then municipal elections are like buying small artisan creations: you don't know the brands, you're not even sure what you're buying, and you want to get to know the people behind the product.  So just seeing their name over an over doesn't tell you much.  I wouldn't by a hand-carved sea turtle from someone because I've seen their name lots of places, and I won't put them on city council either.

Changing The Status Quoth

If you follow football, you know there are only a few patterns for helmet styling.  By far the most popular is "Logo on the Side":

(All these graphics are from The Helmet Project)

Less popular is "Projecting from Front":
Or there is "Around the Back":
And rarest of all is "All Over":

That's kind of limited, given how many football teams there are across Canada and the U.S., professional, college, and occasional short-lived rival league.  So I'm glad to see the new helmets for Carleton University:

Photo by The.Rohit, who also has some adorable animal photos

That's right, they've introduced the "Over the Top" helmet, with a big mysterious raven on it.  Just think what they can do with this now.  A big mane for the Broncos, a red crest on the Cardinals.  Introducing this and other new helmet paradigms is the least we can do, given that I, as a child, assumed we'd have holographic helmets by now, looking like there are wings or horns sticking out the side.

Get Cracking

I remember the "Bored Elon Musk" parody twitter making a good point:

Taking a photo of a check with our phone? This is the solution we've come up with?
— Bored Elon Musk (@BoredElonMusk) March 1, 2014

Based on past suggestions, I'm sure this fictionalized version of Musk would suggest brain implants that let us think our money to another person. But really, he does have a point that this isn't the optimal solution.

In the past I've complained about technological solutions that don't think through the implications of their own innovations. For example, suggesting that you could replace conventional mail with with mail that is sent electronically, then printed out and delivered to the recipient. Well, there is a related flaw, one demonstrated in the picture-cheque complaint: using technology to get around an existing problem, instead of removing the thing that caused the flaw. It's like people who spend hours on the phone while driving: if you can communicate with anyone, anytime, why the need to travel so much? And if we can move money around purely electronically, and everyone has a device they can use to do all the things that used to require a bank branch, then why bother with physical cheques at all?

I thought of this today as news went around that Facebook and Apple would pay female employees to freeze their eggs so they can work for those tech companies without giving up on having children. Yes, in a world where we have the ability to make work incredibly flexible, we instead use technology to rearrange our lives so that we can stick with the old fashioned way of working.

Mysterious Pays

Earlier I criticized the move to give away U2's latest album to all iTunes users. I reasoned that it was a bad idea from the perspective of U2 or Apple. Well, not so fast.

It turns out that about 26 million people downloaded the entire album, and 80 million downloaded at least one track, or streamed some of it. That's not many compared to the total number of iTunes users (about half-a-billion) but it is a lot when you consider that up until then, only 14 million iTunes users had bought anything by U2. Keep in mind that doesn't mean the band has suddenly acquired more fans: they had only released two albums since the iTunes store opened in 2003. So one can assume that most of the downloads were old fans with no need to buy their music off iTunes unless their cassette of The Unforgettable Fire falls apart.

The amount that Apple paid for rights to the album hasn't been released. I’ve seen amounts between 5-30 million dollars. Even if it’s the lesser amount, that’s still a good payday, since artists don’t make much off of music sales anymore - for a band of their age, concerts are where the money is. Some articles are saying Apple spent $100 million on this, but that’s their total promoting this project, not the amount paid to the band or their label. But still, that’s a big expense to have taken care of.

But here's the unexpected part: U2's old albums have seen an increase in (paid) downloads. As I write this - a month later - The Joshua Tree is 39th in iTunes album downloads, one ahead of Katy Perry's last album. Achtung Baby and their singles collection have also made the top 100.

So I can’t believe I’m saying this, but it was actually a good deal for U2. They may have received some bad publicity, and been the butt of late-night monologues, but in terms of getting their music to people, and making money doing it, the scheme was much better than any ordinary album launch. So Apple can expect other established artists to ask to get in on their next promotion.

I'm Going To Comic-Con As The American Middle Class

The Week magazine recently did a story implying that the rise in cosplay is evidence of how poor the economy is. The idea is that people are turning to escapism because of how disappointing their reality is. That may seem like the sort of thing that only a myopic business journalist would think, seeing everything in economic terms. Perhaps they need to find a hobby. How about cosplay? They could dress as a Ferengi, it'll be fun. Or they could be more creative and dress as the invisible hand of the market.

But seriously, I think they actually do have a point. It was simplistic to think of it in economic terms, but the fact is that lots of people are disappointed with many aspects of their real lives. I'm reminded of a quote from one of the Trekkies movies (documentaries about Star Trek fans.) A member of a Klingon-themed rock group, when asked how long he'd continue, said, "When the real world stops being lame, I'll stop doing this." That's one of my favourite movie quotes, and I remember it whenever I feel any shame in my geekhood.

Because that Klingon has got a point: reality does suck. We don't realize it because there's a real prejudice against fantasy, and an assumption that reality is inherently good. The trouble with that assumption is that the line between reality and fantasy isn't as clear as we think. If you're a hunter-gatherer living in the Great Rift Valley of Eastern Africa, presumably reading this on a laptop left by missionaries, then fine, you're living in reality. Anyone else out there is living in a world that we've created. And there's really no reason that your created reality is any better than the one that Klingon rocker lives in. As an example, it's often noted that there's a parallel between the fantasy world of sci-fi & fantasy, and the fantasy world of sports.  When you think about it, there's no reason for dressing as a fantasy character to be less acceptable than putting on a sports jersey.

The modern world is disappointing a lot of people in a lot of ways. I don't want to sound like a pessimist claiming that everything is terrible all the time. I think you can attribute a lot of that disappointment to the changes society is going through. Some of that is economic: we've been promised a lot of things we haven't received, whether it's a stress-free technology job or a decent living from a manufacturing job. But there's plenty of non-economic dissatisfaction too. At your local convention, you'll probably see a woman cosplaying to escape a world where she's been objectified and disrespected, and a man cosplaying to escape a world in which entitlements and expectations that have changed to become unfamiliar to him.

So it's not surprising that many people use popular fantasy to escape from an unpleasant reality.  And once you abandon the assumption that our society is somehow inherently good, it's not even troubling.