Blocking Foul

I defy you to find a better symbol of suburbia than a minivan parked on a double driveway blocking the sidewalk.

Influence Peddling

Time magazine has a list of the 100 most influential people as this week's cover story. Whenever a newsmagazine has a list like that, you're naturally going to be skeptical of how accurate it is. But in this case, you never have to weigh that possibility, since you'll see the big picture of Beyonce before you'll see the headline. So you'll know from the start that this is one of them celebrities we like most lists, rather than a serious attempt to find the most influential people.

But that made me think: just who are the 100 most influential people? There are celebrities that could be on the list. I don't really see Beyonce as one of them.
Politics is tricky too. The partial list on the cover includes President Obama and Rand Paul (one from each party, how convenient.) While I'd easily choose Obama or of those two, I really don't see him as influential. Even when he was more popular, I don't know that he was influential in the sense of changing anyone's opinion. As with Beyonce, the lesson is that popularity is not the same as influence. Indeed, a lot of people achieve popularity specifically because they don't ask us to be any different.

As for Paul, I'd ask the same thing. He and the Tea Party movement are hugely influential within the Republican Party, though it's often unclear how much control its political leaders are, and how much they ate at the mercy of the movement's grassroots. Really, his namesake Ayn Rand should be on the list, even if she is dead.

They also included soccer star Cristiano Ronaldo. That will help them sell some European editions, and look real international and modern. But how influential are athletes? There are examples of athletes who have had a big influence on society; Jackie Robinson and Billie Jean King are a couple of examples. You could also include Michael Jordan and Babe Ruth as athletes who grew their sport and changed the way it was played. But most of today's athletes are made bland by their obsession with their sports. They only influence they have is in endorsing products, and in that case, the influence is really wielded by whoever has the money to pay for that endorsement. So I would imagine the biggest influence Ronaldo has on the world is starting a new dance craze with those weird hand moves he did after scoring today.

So the Time list is the cheapest of journalism: one step down from "read an interview with these people because they're famous," it's "read an article mentioning these people because they're famous." It would be interesting to see an actual, honest attempt to list the most influential people, people who can actually shape fashions, opinions, art and philosophy.  What famous people would actually make it?  What people we've never heard of would be on the list?  I don't mean to imply conspiracy theories, I mean there are a lot of powerful people who are not famous: business leaders, lobbyists, or economists.  I don't have an answer, but it's your research assignment for the day.

Do The At-Least-Slightly-Civilized Thing

There are times when it seems like our society may not be able to overcome the problems currently facing us. And then there are times when we're reminded that we haven't even solved the problems that used to be facing us. The past week was one of those times. First, anti-government hero Cliven Bundy turned out to have discussed slavery in a positive light. Then, LA Clippers owner Donald Sterling was recorded telling his girlfriend not to bring black people to the game.

No, I'm not naive enough to think that racism is over. But we've gotten used to the idea that today's racism is subtle. It's not a white boss refusing to hire a black person because the boss has a conscious belief that blacks are inferior. It's a white boss systematically passing over black applicants because they don't fit his mental picture of an ideal employee. But now Bundy and Sterling have been caught expressing rather overt distaste for African Americans.

To better explain, consider a scene from Do The Right Thing where one character mentions Magic Johnson as his favourite athlete, and Prince as his favourite musician, yet looks down on his African-American neighbours. That's what I expect from racism today: A person who's world view doesn't include the inferiority or subjugation of blacks, but has a persistent negative view of them in his everyday life. Coincidentally, Johnson is the black person that Sterling allegedly didn't want his girlfriend photographed with. So, Sterling apparently doesn't want to associate with any African-Americans, even if they're famous and successful. Or, to put it another way, this guy is more racist than the character that Spike Lee made up to represent White America's racism.  That's pretty damn racist.

On the one hand, you have to wonder how much these incidents represent the modern problems of racism. As author Teju Cole tweeted, these people are just distracting society from having a more mature discussion on race.

Normally I'd agree, but I'm starting to wonder. These two don't talk in the carefully-evasive language you would expect from someone who knows his views aren't accepted in society.  It makes me worry that they are used to being in situations where their views are shared.  That would indicate that this is just the tip of the iceberg.

If there is an undercurrent of overt racism in the U.S., it may start to feel empowered now that they have an idea that they may be more numerous, and start to get angry at how their new figureheads are treated.  We'll have to see in the coming months.

This Blog Still Costs $0 A Week

I'm getting sick of car ads fiddling with payments to make them seem cheaper. I can still remember when car ads would actually tell you the price of the car. Today they assume you're financing or leasing and just tell you the monthly price. The total cost is buried in the fine print.

But at least it used to be that we agreed on a month as the standard term.  You could compare monthly payments from one car to another, as long as you took notice of the length of the deal. Then a few years ago someone decided to make it biweekly. It might be that in our over-calculated world, months and their 28-31 day spans are just too irregular. But it's probably to make the payments seem cheaper. That's surely the reason, since some dealers are now talking in terms of weekly payments.

But now Volkswagen is running ads in which one of their walking-stereotype engineers tells you that you can have one of their cars for only six dollars a day, Emphasizing that it's just the cost of lunch. Is this trend ever going to end? Why not say a quarter per hour? Or about a cent every other second?  Actually, that sounds like a lot.

In The Future, Data Will Be Lost For Fifteen Minutes

This news came out yesterday that they’ve recovered a bunch of graphics files from Andy Warhol’s old computer. That may seem weird, since he’s more associated with the sixties. But he did live into the eighties, and used a computer. 

And get this, it was an Amiga. How cool is that?  Well, it's also frustrating, since that means they can't just load it up on Photoshop. It's not going to be in a format that is still used, so some computer students had to get creative to access the images.

This jumped out at me because years ago I read an article warning against this very situation: what if some famous person (in their example, an author) left behind potentially historic works on an obsolete computer system that is no longer used. Are they lost forever?

At the time, I didn't think the concern was warranted. Yes, technologies and file formats may come and go, but it's not like they are completely unique or undocumented. That is, a word processor file for, say, the TRS-80, may no longer be used, but it will be on a standard 5¼" disk, so someone will be able to read it, and with some knowledge of how word processors worked, you would likely be able to translate it into something modern. It won't be easy, but if it's for some important person, they'll be willing to put in the work.

Once again, because I'm living in the future, I can now rule on the accuracy of these concerns. And it looks like I was vindicated. Given sufficient motivation, people were able to make sense of a no-longer-used graphics format. And were rewarded with the surreal moment of loading a file called "campbells.pic".

Canadians Need To Stay Out Of Japan

Just the other day I was complimenting Japan, but now I find that as I was doing that, a couple of Canada's most famous citizens were embarrassing themselves there. Fortunately, few people noticed, because another famous Canadian decided to clean his pants.

First, Justin Bieber got in trouble for praying at a Japanese shrine. See, most countries with checkered military pasts have the good sense to make it well known that their war memorials are dedicated only to innocent victims and rank-and-file soldiers, not to the war criminals that led them. But Japan hasn't done this, and the Yasukuni Shrine memorializes the war criminals right along with everyone else.

Bieber apologized when this was pointed out to him. I may have criticized him in the past, but I find it hard to blame him here. Most of the other dumb things he's done were things he should have known better. But not knowing the controversial history of a shrine in another country? I can forgive him for that. What I find notable is that a twenty-year-old pop star with a history of bad decision-making handled the situation better than fifty years of Japanese politicians, who have visited the shrine unapologetically.

Meanwhile, Avril Lavigne has been accused of either racism or bad taste for her video for a song dedicated to Hello Kitty. I can't say whether or not it's racist, because the video was taken down from YouTube, and I don't want to watch it anyway. What it does tell me is: Lavigne's remaining fan base is in Japan, and there is no limit to how far she will go to stay popular with someone.

From the descriptions of the video, it doesn't sound racist so much as simplistic. We really need a term that can describe naive ignorance rather than actual hatred or prejudice.  People who think Mexico is full of Taco Bells.  Or more to the point, people who don't realize they don't know about a given country, and try to discuss it anyway.  It's annoying, but let's reserve inflammatory words like "racist" for people who have really earned it.

Don't Be A Nincompoop, You'll Ruin The Game

They're experimenting with new forms of golf, including one with a fifteen-inch hole. This is to stem the tide of golfers giving up the game. But this tide is probably just demographics: Baby Boomers caused the game to grow in popularity in the eighties, but now they're at retirement age and starting to hang up the clubs.
I don't think the big "pizza-sized" holes are going to help. I'm no expert on golf, but I was under the impression that the sport is balanced between driving and putting, with the player forced to be competent at both, but allowing a player to succeed if they excel at either. Having a giant hole takes the importance of putting out of the game, and make it mostly about long shots. But surely that's the party of the game that older players have the most difficulty with. If anything, you would attract more elderly with shorter holes (that is, have tees much closer to the hole.) Of course, if you're going to make the game more about the putting, they already have that: it's called miniature golf.

And that's why I don't like this idea. Even though I'm usually the guy advocating the discarding of sports tradition, I have to acknowledge that sometimes you're trying to change the sport into something it's not. So I'd say golf should stay the same and realize that if you live by the demographic shift, you die by the demographic shift.

Political Fantasy

State legislators in Louisiana have voted to uphold a law that ban "Crimes Against Nature."  That is, sexual crimes against nature, which this law from 1805 defines as homosexual sex, as well as heterosexual oral and anal sex. It's lead to a new level of head shaking.

First of all, don't worry, the law is purely symbolic - the U.S. supreme Court has already struck down laws restricting consensual sex as unconstitutional - so there's no need to cancel your Mardis Gras trip next year.

Of course that brings up point number one: should the state with New Orleans in it really be taking such a prudish stance? Yes, I know there's more to the state than the Big Easy, and rural areas are so often culturally different than the metropolises they abut. But still, it's hard to believe this won't lead to secession.

Judging by people's reaction to this vote, there seems to be a feeling that we've entered a new level of political hypocrisy beyond anything we've seen before. We're used to the idea of big symbolic gestures: Republicans in the house have voted to repeal Obamacare forty times, always knowing the Democrat-majority senate would overrule. So passing a law that's already struck down isn't that big of a surprise.

And we've seen plenty of examples of politicians making a show of swimming against culture's tide. So it's also not surprising that they'd like to ban homosexuality while other states are allowing gay marriage. Sometimes, politicians are so intent on defining a clear public image that they'll become more extreme than their own supporters, as when they opposed gun-purchase background-checks even when most gun owners supported them.

But keeping a ban on non-standard hetero sex? Now we're talking about politicians banning something most of the public has done, and most of them have done. So now legality has reached a new level of irrelevance. We're passing laws that don't apply in the real world, that no one believes in, and no one follows.

A Whale-Gorilla Of A Tale

I've mentioned before that the Japanese have a tendency to reaffirm their stereotypes. But to be fair, that's not always true. I figure Godzilla is a good example. He's not cute, and his back story has anti-technology undertones.
It's also interesting how the Japanese seem to understand him in a way that Americans don't. Back in the late nineties, there were American and Japanese reboots of the franchise. Based on stereotypes, you would expect the Japanese to be the ones that miss the point by applying all the technology they can. Yet, it was the Americans who tried to make it a realistic action movie, and the Japanese who realized that its just not Godzilla unless it's a guy in a rubber suit smashing model buildings. There even seemed to be a knowing sense of irony when they pointed out it was no mere man in a rubber suit, but an accomplished gymnast in a high-tech rubber suit.

But now the Americans are having another kick at the giant mutant can, and it looks like they're taking it as over-serious as ever, with post-apocalyptic scenes and heart-tugging over-acting. I'm not sure they considered the effect of our seeing these emotional scenes of devastation like something out of a war movie, only to the be told this is a Godzilla movie.

It's especially disappointing because there's so much you could do with Godzilla in our irony-aware world. Even if you insist on a realistic CGI monster, a tongue-in-cheek interpretation could be great. Say, have a story about a down-on-his-luck Godzilla reduced to arranged fights against Gamera in derelict neighborhoods of Detroit. It could be a great retelling of Rocky. Quentin Tarantino has got to be looking for new genres; who wouldn't pay to see his monster movie?

We Love It When Our Friends Become Controversial

Morrissey has now condemned all of Canada for the seal hunt. In a letter addressed to "This Sorrowful Canada" he condemns the hunt, Fisheries and Oceans minister Gail Shea, and declares Canada "regrettably fashionably dead."  I wonder if he always writes in the form of discarded song lyrics.

I'm not a fan of the seal hunt, but I am getting tired of Britons collectively condemning us for this one event. For one thing collective punishment never works. And on a national level, it usually backfires by promoting the target's national togetherness. It certainly has with the seal hunt; fur has really disappeared from the national culture, despite its being such a part of our early economy. But by attacking us as a country, it encourages people who normally have no love for fur to come to its defence.

But aside from the obvious futility of the attacks, they are also hypocritical. Britain's animal-rights hands aren't clean either, yet British activists fighting to ban British fox hunting didn't target their entire country in their protests.  And look, they successfully managed to get that hunt banned.

Having said all that, I do have some sympathy. Yeah, I'm an omnivore, so I can't claim so great a dedication to animal rights; but it always strikes me as unconvincing that people defending practices such as the seal hunt are always quick to resort to feeble excuses of tradition and economic hardship. And it really disappoints me that Canadians have gone along with defending the seal hunt out of nationalistic zeal rather than a rational discussion of the issue.

I noted that he claimed that the seal hunt has corroded our national reputation, saying "Canada’s sorry image is due entirely to its seal slaughter." That's ridiculous; the tar sands have done way more damage.  Of course, that's another issue where celebrities have lined up against us, and we've reflexively defended ourselves, thus aligning the country with something most of us wouldn't normally support.

So it occurs to me that Morrissey is anti-Canadian. I don't mean, "against Canada" (although he is that, apparently.) I mean that he is essentially the opposite of a Canadian. You can rely on him to be relentlessly combative and us to be politely pliant.

Known Unknowns

It may be spring, bit there's still curling on TV. The Players' Championship is showing that curling is the latest sport whose popularity has caused it to overflow its appointed season.

It used to be that the only curling you saw on TV - even here in Canada - were the Canadian and World Championships. But when someone noticed that a curling tourney could be a cheap ratings grabber, they invented a bunch of other events patterned after golf's majors or tennis's grand slams.

What I find interesting about this phenomenon is that although curling is a spectator sport in Canada but nowhere else, many competitors from other countries are good enough and well known enough that they get invited to these Canadian-based tournaments too.

So now people like David Murdoch, Eve Muirhead and Niklas Edin are better known in Canada than in their own countries. That's got to be strange. They probably have to keep explaining to their friends and relatives what this hobby of theirs is. Then they come here to curl on TV. And how do they explain why they keep flying to Canada every few weekends? I remember hearing that a Canadian curler working in Europe had trouble explaining to his boss why it was really important that he have a week off to play in the Brier. Imagine trying to ask your manager to find someone else to fill your shift at the Volvo factory so you can go to some place called "Kamloops" to vigorously sweep ice in front of a thousand people. Okay, it’s Europe, they get five weeks off, never mind.

Other than those awkward moments, it must be a great life: mostly you're just leading the average existence, but a few times a year, you travel off to a strange place where everyone knows who you are and is interested in what you do.

I know there are some cases where it's gone the other way, and Canadians have become more famous elsewhere. For instance, Canadian snooker players have made it big in Britain. So if you're looking for a sport to become world-class at, why not look elsewhere in the world? Consider handball, or Finland's variation on baseball, or that Afghani sport they play with a headless goat. Or you could try Aussie rules football. That's what I did.

I'm Not Making Any Guarantees

The Heartbleed bug continues to yield fallout. Earlier I expressed surprised at how few people seemed to know what a bug is. So I'm assuming that there are a lot of people confused as to where this widely used software came from. Many reports have mentioned that it's in something called OpenSSL. But many are surely wondering why there is no company name attached to it. You'd expect Mt. Gox-like story of incompetence, or a GM-like story of profit over responsibility. Geez, give us something to get angry at. Give us someone to sure.

The answer to all this is that there is no company behind it, it's open source.  That is, it's written primarily with volunteer work, given away for free, and not owned by anyone. In retrospect, yes, it's pretty weird that we have this widely-used product that no-one has figured out how to make money off of.

Perhaps this incident an important lesson in humanity. Normally there is an expectation that a misfortune this big must be someone's fault, that someone must have sleepy motives. But no, apparently it can just be an honest mistake. To err is still human.

As for suing, that theoretically won't happen. Everyone familiar with Open Source software is familiar with readme files that make it clear - usually in capitals - that the program comes WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY.  Hopefully no lawyer will try some legal black magic to get around that disclaimer. If lawsuits were to start flying, it would have a chilling effect on open source software, which - as we've just learned - is behind the scenes of a lot of today's technology.

Nowhere To Go But Up?

Of the seven Canadian NHL teams, only one (Montreal) has made the playoffs. To spell that out, there are 30 teams, 16 make the playoffs, and 7 teams are Canadian. If I remember my combinatorics correctly, that ads up to a thirteen per cent chance of only one Canadian team making the playoffs. Indeed, the last time it happened, there were just three Canadian teams total in the league.

So now hands are wringing and questions being asked. And the in-thing for getting your Canadian hockey team back on track is to hire a former player. Specifically it should be a Character Guy, with experience in management not a necessity.

I've talked in the past about the question of why Canadian teams don't win the Stanley Cup.  That drought is at twenty years (and the likelihood of the American teams having such a winning streak is about 1%.)  With it seeming less likely than ever to end, I'm wondering: What's gone wrong?  Let's look at all the teams (except Winnipeg, you've got a good excuse.)

Vancouver

The Canucks have been Canada's best team for most of the cup drought. And that's through three generations of teams. The first was dominated by Bure and Linden, the second by Naslund and He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, and now featuring the Sedin twins. It's time for a new generation, but the cupboard seems to be bare, in spite of having traded two star goalies in the last couple of years. So although the future doesn't look good, you can't really blame them for Canada's futility.

Edmonton

For the first half of the cup drought, they were barely staying in business.  So they didn't have much of a chance to build a winner.  Now the economic situation is much better, but the team seems to be worse.  The Oilers have been run by Character Guys from their Glory Years for a while now. That hasn't helped - don't tell Vancouver fans. Also not helping: years of high draft picks. It seems like they're building the perfect 1980's team: full of speed and skill and offence and other now-irrelevant things.

Calgary

For the last ten years, they've featured: a great goalie, strong defence, and a high-scoring power forward. That's not enough to win a cup, but it is a great start. Unfortunately, they were never able to add much to it. In fact, when they did make a splashy trade or free-agent signing, it was usually another winger or defender. It seemed like the stereotypical Canadian team: emphasizing physicality and goal scoring while ignoring everything else.

Toronto

Toronto have had some good teams during the drought, but never been able to make a great team. It seems that no matter what the team's situation is, it's always coached and managed as though it's on the verge of winning the cup. That's led to trading of draft picks and overpaying free agents, and the team seems to live hand-to-mouth, bringing in just enough talent to avoid disastrous seasons, but not developing a really strong team.

Montreal

The Canadiens won Canada's last Stanley cup in 1993. They did that with a team consisting of a great goalie and a solid-but-not-spectacular team. And they seem to have been trying to recreate that formula ever since. While some teams are considered "black holes of goaltending" (Ottawa or Philadelphia) Montreal is the opposite, always able to find another great goalie.  They've been successful in terms of making the playoffs, but haven't made a real cup contender.

Ottawa

The Senators had a disappointing season, and now pundits are talking like it's a foregone conclusion that they'll trade star forward Jason Spezza. That tells you plenty about the short-term thinking behind Canadian hockey.  It's too bad, because the Sens have had some of the most talented teams in Canada for the past decade.  So like Vancouver, kudos to them for giving it a good shot.

So it's hard to get excited in the near future for Canadian teams. There could be more making the playoffs next year, but none of them look like they're going to be contenders any time soon. It looks like we're going to be stick with the usual squeak-into-the-playoffs-then-hope-for-the-best attitude we've had to put up with for a whole now.

Still No Love For Bismarck?

So the latest premium-cable show that everyone is going to talk about (whether they've seen it or not) is Fargo, more or less based on the 1996 movie. That plot didn't really lend itself to an ongoing story, and this is apparently just in the same setting and style.

I'm kind of surprised. Not just because it's been so long since it first came out, but also because it doesn't seem to be as fondly remembered in the pantheon of nineties movies. Personally, I thought at the time that it was overrated. It wasn't a bad movie, but it seemed like it was jumping on the post-Pulp Fiction violent-thriller bandwagon, and mostly carried by Frances McDormand's excellent performance. The movie was regarded at the time as a masterpiece, but its reputation has faded to the point it only gets three stars in the newspaper TV listings.

But now it is back, sort of, without that character that everyone remembers, and starting guys from England and Arkansas in the Midwest. And I thought the accents were annoying in the movie.

I would watch the opposite of this show; that is, bringing back McDormand's character but removing everything else. But I probably won't watch this show, unless it's out of curiosity as to how they'll drop a woodchipper reference. But here are some nineties movies I would watch a TV series of:

• Pulp Fiction: The Early Years
• The Shawshank Redemption - you thought Andy and Red were an odd couple in prison, wait 'til you see them running an accounting firm together.
• The Truman Show - seems like a natural for TV
• Office Space - you wanted another season of The Office?
• Pretty Woman - revisit the same couple twenty years later.
• A Few Good Men - remember, it was about lawyers at Gitmo; it'll write itself
• Run Lola Run - it'll be really cheap; you just do the same story over and over
• Titanic - takes place in the decades between the movie's present and past time periods.
• Fight Club - you could focus on one of the Project Mayhem cells, and make lots of Men's Rights Activist jokes.

Is It (Frozen) In You?

You've got to admire companies' attempt to repurpose their products to meet the latest trend. But sometimes they overreach, as with this product I recently saw in the grocer's freezer:

Why have a plain old popsicle - like some kind of child - when you can have a Sport popsicle for Frozen Hydration.

My apologies for the blurry photo; I'll just have to tell you that the package also brags about being gluten free. So they have everyone covered.  Or they will once it's also organic.

Thanks, but I'll reserve judgement until I see an athlete sucking on one of these on the sidelines.  Or, see them drop a crate of them on the coach after winning a championship.

Reverse Sci-Fi, And I Don't Mean Spock With A Goatee

This new movie Transcendence is bugging me. Apparently Johnny Depp’s mind gets recorded into a computer, allowing him a sort of immortality. It’s the sort of concept that is very interesting, and I’d love to experience a story that takes a deep and open-minded examination of the issue. Unfortunately, this movie looks more like an expensive remake of the last act of The Lawnmower Man.

So I have no interest in seeing this movie, in spite of being a science fiction fan, and having an interest in artificial intelligence and the issues surrounding it. But what's stranger is that I really don't want to see this movie, since it clearly side-steps the more intriguing aspects of the premise so as to reach a preconceived, audience-pleasing conclusion.

It occurred to me that this movie isn't really science fiction - it's actually the opposite. Science fiction has a genuine sense of experimentation, investigating concepts to reach conclusions we wouldn't reach with our gut reactions. It has to have a sense of danger, that we may challenge our assumptions.  But with many mainstream sci-fi movies, there is no danger - you'll just be told what you want to hear, and then go away more ignorant than you came in.

World Serves Its Own Needs, Listen To Your Heartbleed

The Heartbleed bug has been in the news, and whenever information technology gets in the news, it means a whole-lotta-cringing for me as I watch journalists who can't figure out the camera on their iPhones try to explain new tech concepts.

This time the big revelation for me is: I can't believe how many people don't know what a "bug" is. I don't expect everyone to know the story about Grace Hopper pulling the moth out of the UNIVAC, but I thought everyone knew the word "bug" refers to an inadvertent error in software. Yet I keep hearing talking heads describe the bug as having "spread to two-thirds of the Internet." Bugs don't spread; they're either there or they're not. You wouldn't say that the GM ignition flaw has spread to five different models of cars.

There's been some confusion over Heartbleed. I've seen several contradictory lists of which web sites were affected. The disagreement seems to stem from the fact that the company that found the bug was nice enough to inform some major web sites before it was made public, so they were able to fix things before anyone knew about the vulnerability. So if you have sensitive data with any of those sites, you'll be save, as long as you assume no one else knew of this vulnerability until it was publicized.

But here's the strange thing. I've worked on countless bugs over the years, and few of them developed their own names. None of them had their own symbols. So what gives here? Both the name and logo come from Codenomicon, the company that discovered it. Apparently they figured that a massive hole in two-thirds of all web sites might not get enough publicity on its own, so they'd better give it a bit of a PR push. They even got the bug its own web page with its own domain.  And that exposes the questionable background of many of these software vulnerabilities. They're found by security consultants. The media does stories on them in which they quote security consultants on how severe the problem is. Everyone gets worried, so businesses rush off to hire security consultants.

He Won't Bort You If You Give Him A Fert Shot

Stephen Colbert has been named the new host of Late Night. No, I mean the Late Show. Well the one with David Letterman anyway. People seem fairly positive about the decision, which is good, because there seems to be an awful lot of discussion of late-night talk shows, given how few people actually watch them.

Some are concerned about the fact that Colbert, on his current show, plays a character. We don't really know what he's actually like. I doubt that would be a problem though. First, if you watch his show carefully, you'll see he drops out of character a lot. He'll occasionally say something extreme that plays into the type-A conservative persona, but then tones it down for most of what his dialog.  Secondly, if we're honest, we have to realize that current talk show hosts kind of play a character anyway. If you doubt that, try to imagine any of them at home acting like they do on air.

After Seth Meyers was named new host of Late Night, people lamented that it was yet another white male. The complaints have been surprisingly muted for Colbert, which I suppose is a result of his being an advocate of those who would otherwise complain about lack of representation. But I think it also could be an acknowledgement of this being a good decision.

Now people have started speculating on who will take over Colbert's old time slot. I saw a few tweeters pushing for Samantha Bee. My first reaction was to say, no way, her Daily Show character wouldn't work in doses longer than single sketches. But as I think about it, I think it just might work. If The Colbert Report is a spoof of right-wing pundit shows, Bee's character might be right for a spoof of desperate-to-make-a-story cable news. Or to put out another way: after spending the better part of a decade ridiculing Fox News, why not give CNN a go. So yes, I'd give Bee 180 or whatever it's called a chance.

Things The Teenage Me Wouldn't Have Believed About The Future, #12

Lots of people refuse to get their kids vaccinated, largely on the advice of a former Playmate of the Year.

This Much I Know

Of course, I have no idea whether Oscar Pistorius murdered Reeva Steenkamp. So as far as I know, any one of the following is true:

• He meant to kill her and is lying to stay out of jail.
• It really was an accident.
• He meant to kill her, but has deluded himself into thinking it was an accident.

Like I say, I have no idea. Any of these could be the reality; I'm just exploring the possibilities. So when he is testifying, we are hearing, respectively,

• The lies of a heartless man.
• The sorrows of an inconsolable man.
• The delusions of a mentally ill man.

Again, there is no way of knowing. But my question is: do you really want to hear any of this? News reports seem to love reveling in Pistoius's tearful testimony, and play long stretches of them. But why would anyone want to hear cold manipulation / terrifying flashbacks / shattered imaginings? Sure, report on the trial, but there's no need to turn it into a reality show.  So please, media, have some decency and don't assume that emotional scenes imply intrigue.

Selfie Steam

I stumbled across this article about the mystery of an unknown person who has taken pictures of himself at many photo-booths.

That got my attention for a couple of reasons. First, mysterious-photos-of-unknown-person-discarded-at-photo-booths was a subplot of the movie Amelie. No one involved in the publishing of this article seemed to know this, and thus didn't realise many reading the article would already know the answer.

But what's also interesting is the way they refer to photo-booth photos as "selfies." That just doesn't seem right. Yes, they are photos of one's self, but they were before the age of selfies. That would be like calling telegrams "e-mails" or Oscar Wilde's witticisms as "Tweets."

But I suppose that's what photo-booths are in the eyes of young people today. They would look on them and think that in the old days before mobile phones, people had to use these giant machines to take selfies.

They have a point. These were, in essence, steampunk selfie machines.  The lesson is that you never know how long technologies will stick around, or how they'll look in the long run.  For instance, future generations may look back on the era of broadcast television as a weird prelude to centuries of culture dominated by on-demand video. Things like bulletin boards and classified ads could be seen as crude attempts to move information around in a pre-digital age.  The next time the world changes in a way that's strange to you, remember that it could just be moving in a way that will ultimately make more sense.

Overshadowing

Trivia question: aside for being British authors, what did Aldous Huxley (Brave New World) and C.S. Lewis (Chronicles of Narnia) have in common? Answer later.

First: a big entertainment news story this weekend was the death of Hollywood legend Mickey Rooney. Although many tributes have been paid him by people in the business, he had the unfortunate distinction of outliving many who would have been fans.  So he is perhaps not as appreciated by people today as he could be.  For me the only thing I can think of that I know him from - other than cameo appearances and voice work - would be his role in Breakfast at Tiffany's. And the less said about that performance, the better.

Since celebrity deaths seems to be the theme of this post, you may have guessed that is the answer to the above question. Huxley and Lewis both died on the same day. Unfortunately for them, that day was November 22, 1963, which you may recognize as the day of a much more famous death, that of JFK. Because of that, hardly anyone even noticed, never mind celebrated their lives.

And that was kind of unfortunate yesterday. I'm sure Rooney touched many more lives in the world, but for me, I had more of a connection with comedian John Pinette. His death was reported about an hour earlier, and so it was missed by many.  So why not have a salad in his memory.

I'm About To Have Another Blowout

If you have any political values that you care about, you've probably experienced the frustration of seeing your ideas tarnished in the eyes of the public because the politicians implementing them are either incompetent or corrupt.  Just by bad luck, you know you're going to have to wait years for the bad taste to wash from the public's mouth.

That's what I've felt like watching General Motors' ignition recall scandal.  I don't want to diminish the tragedy of the deaths and injuries attributed to this problem, but in addition to anger over that, I have a lot of frustration that they've fumbled the American car industry's recovery.  Just as they were turning the corner, putting out genuinely better cars, a reminder of the old Detroit appears out of nowhere.

That's why GM won't come back from this as easily as Toyota did from their mechanical flaws.  Sure, Toyota had further to fall, due to a much better reputation for quality. But their scandal was so uncharacteristic that it was easy to forgive them once the memory of it faded.  But a potentially fatal flaw that they knew about, wouldn't fix in spite of a low cost, and then hid in the bureaucracy?  It's hard to imagine you could concoct a single flaw that would so perfectly give the impression that it was business as usual for GM.  I've always been disappointed in how little the average person has noticed the American industry's attempts come back, with many fully believing that they are still at their Pinto nadir.  Confirmation Bias will ensure that the current blunders are lodged in their brains forever.

I'm not sure how they should really get out of this.  People have been critical of new CEO Mary Barra's performance on the issue, since she has so far done little more than admit that she doesn't know much about what happened.  Some have said that this is an opportunity to redefine the company the way Tylenol did in the wake of the early-eighties cyanide poisonings.  But it will be hard to do that when GM is not an innocent bystander.  Probably the best they can do is to concede the lawsuits, and throw as many execs under the bus as they can.  Making so many enemies may end Barra's career early, but it's not looking too promising anyway right now.

Karma Police, Arrest This Girl

Avril Lavigne's awkwardly autobiographical song, "Here's To Never Growing Up" came out last year, but I only recently noticed that it describes "singing Radiohead at the top of our lungs." One of my earliest blog posts was to complain about a Katy Perry song that made reference to making out in a Mustang to Radiohead. I questioned the likelihood of that situation - or any part of it - actually happening.

Once again, the band is being referenced in a way that doesn't seem to fit. Are they really a band you sing along to, especially at the top of your lungs?  I'm trying to picture anyone, much less Lavigne, singing one of their songs in public with a youthful abandon. First there are the melancholy melodies that don't lend themselves to singing at high volume.  Then there are the cryptic lyrics. Go out in the streets and yell "Kicking and squeeling Gucci little piggy" and see what happens

But the stranger lesson is that apparently Gen-Y sees Radiohead as the exemplar of youthful joy. Is that weird? I wonder what band represents experimental rejection of traditional structure to them?

Beer Essentials

I remember one time in university there was a big party. I wasn’t involved in it, but I got to see the aftermath. It was one of those parties that leaves a room out of commission for a few days, if not weeks. Where you step carefully through the debris, because you know there’s a good chance of stepping on either broken glass or someone passed out.

Anyway, while inspecting the aftermath, I found that there were only two types of beer available at this party. One was Molson XXX, the high-alcohol choice of the nineties. And the other was Coors Light. That seemed odd: you get a choice of one extreme or the other. I wonder what food choices they had; deep-fried Mars bars or rice cakes? I’m joking of course: this sort of party doesn’t have food.

For that matter, it doesn’t usually have light beer. I rarely drink, so I am no expert in beer culture, but I was under the impression that light beer is something you drink if you don’t want to get drunk, or are concerned about your health. So why would it even make an appearance at a drink-’til-you-pass-out party? 

I'm reminded of this because Coors Light is now advertising their "vented" cans, in which there is a second opening to let air in as you pour, allowing the beer to pour out faster and more smoothly. It's a good idea, and I'm impressed that the ads haven't had to redo the grade four science experiment explaining why it works. But why are they pushing this for Coors Light? If your big complaint about beer cans is, "the beer doesn't come out fast enough," then light beer is not what you want.

Every Nation Army

You know I'm a fan of sports and independent music. Rarely do those worlds touch. So you can imagine my surprise the first time I heard a crowd singing the guitar riff from The White Stripes' "Seven Nation Army."

That seemed kind of funny. I think it was a college football game, where the fans are going to be more familiar with the song, and more willing to try some new cheer. But since then it's spread, and has now become a standard part of of the modern sports landscape. You've got to think a lot of people screaming along with it don't know what song they're singing, and perhaps not even know they're impersonating an electric guitar. Oddly, the song hasn't become a major part of sports DJ rotation, with "We Will Rock You" or "No Limit" still on top.

But today, when I heard the Seven Nation Army riff from Chinese curling fans, I knew the phenomena had gone as far as it possibly can. It makes me ask a couple of questions: First, what do you call singing like a guitar. We have the term "beatboxing" to mean imitating drums. So what is this? Riff Boxing?

And secondly, since it's so popular, why haven't other songs been adopted by crowds?  Here are my suggestions:

• (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction
• Sweet Child O' Mine (though it may be difficult for a largely male crowd to hit the high notes.)
• Beat It
• Devil Inside
• Self Esteem (it even begins with the band singing the guitar riff.)
• Blue Monday (the baseline)

Save Us, Brad Pitt

Is it too early to get off the Blue Jays’ bandwagon? This year, their hopes were pretty much counting on the following:

• Jose Reyes stays injury free, adding a new run-manufacturing dimension to their offence.
• The starting pitchers play to the best of their ability
• The other teams in the American League East aren’t as good as they seem to be.

Amazingly, all those hopes were dashed in the first couple of innings of the season, when R.A. Dickey gave up three runs to Tampa Bay, and Reyes pulled a hamstring in his first at bat. That’s a new record, since we can usually get to June before losing all hope.

And that’s the depressing thing in the toughest division in baseball. For most baseball fans, there’s some enjoyment in kidding yourself that your mediocre team can put together a slightly better season than the other mediocre teams in the division. But for the American League East, there are championship seasons where everything comes together perfectly, and then there are seasons where you’re twelve games behind at the All-Star break.

It’s not like a year is even going to make a difference. Usually, you can always say, “wait until next year” for another chance that your mediocre team will start overachieving then. But it’s not like we’re going to develop a bunch of superstars by then. So it’s more like “wait until five years from now, once we’ve had a chance to trade our veterans for draft-picks, replenish the farm system, and develop a team of low-cost stars who will reach their peak in a two-year window before they sign with someone else.”