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.

Get Ready For "Toryonto" Puns

Many people are looking at the polls in Toronto's mayoral race and wondering what is going on with Doug Ford staying close to the lead. Urban Studies Professor Richard Florida has been asking a further question: Is Toronto really as conservative as the polls seem to show.  John Tory is leading, and he is about as conservative as the Fords. Essentially, he is Rob Ford without the crack. Or the bigotry. Or the shamelessness, public drunkenness, bullying, or drunk and distracted driving. The point is that all told, about three-quarters of Torontonians are intending to vote for a highly conservative candidate.

It would be easy to discount Florida's questions as those of someone who can't accept that his own views aren't as popular as he'd like. But he does have a valid point that these polls are very unusual compared to any other North American city. All other large cities are more liberal than the areas around them, yet the choice of candidates here would indicate that Toronto is much more conservative than Canada as a whole.

But I think there are some good explanations for the polling:

• There's probably a sizeable Anybody-But-Ford sentiment in Toronto. So a lot of people planning on voting for Tory may be doing so only to keep Ford out of office. My own politics are closer to those of Olivia Chow, but if I lived in Toronto, I'd be seriously considering voting for Tory.
• The Fords have been the focus of the election all along. When that happens other candidates don't get the close inspection a major politician usually gets. It's entirely possible that many Tory supporters don't know much about the mild-mannered candidate's platform.
• It's naive to believe that all Ford's supporters are attached to conservative ideals. The Fords are populists, and people are drawn to populists not for politics, but for personal connection to the candidate.
• Thanks to amalgamation, Toronto includes a lot of its suburbs.  In most big Canadian or American cities, the itself is just the urban bit in the middle.  The suburbs - which may make up most of the population - are different political entities.  As Mike Harris showed, the suburban and satellite populations can get really enthusiastic for conservative economics.
• Expanding on that, the fact that Toronto has been amalgamated for a while now has caused some resentment and tension between its urban and suburban aspects. Probably a lot of people who normally would consider candidates from the middle of the spectrum are looking for some political vengeance.

Let Me Tell You How Much You Like This Blog

The hockey season is back, and with it are the TV commercials reminding us how much we love hockey.  Of course, you could understand any advertiser using the country's favourite sport to reach the Canadian heart.  But for some reason, it's no longer people associated with hockey telling us how great the product is; it's people telling us how important hockey is to Canadians.  Ron MacLean is coming to your hometown to tell everyone how much the town loves the sport.  That kid on the Scotiabank ad gives us a rousing speech about the imagined benefits of hockey to everyone.  And it's only a matter of time before Nike does another montage of players of all ages taking the ice, while the narrator talks about how passionate we are for hockey, yes all us Canadians like Nike can't get enough hockey.

I wonder if it's like this for other countries that have a big national obsession/sport.  Say, Indian ads reminding everyone how much they like Cricket. That would be strange, especially if it's done as a big musical number.  At least, I assume their commercials are just like their movies. 

While You Wait

I made a discovery in a Doctor's waiting room today:

Yes, that grey seal on the right shows that it's an official "Waiting Room Copy." No, I don't know what that means. I didn't go through it too carefully, but there didn't seem to be anything special about it.  But they've obviously put some effort into it - just look at the generic person in the logo reading the magazine, legs crossed impatiently.

Why would they need special waiting room editions of magazines?  The cost of publishing is so high, it must be expensive to have a run of special editions.  Maybe it's made of extra-strong paper, so it will survive its decades-long stay on the waiting room table.  Or they could be trying to cut down on theft of magazines from waiting rooms: this is the equivalent of the ink-filled tag on clothing.  No one would be caught in public reading a magazine with this logo telling everyone that it was stolen.

I guess I can understand their wanting to keep their magazines in the office.  I just wish they'd work harder on keeping the germs from leaving the office.

Diane, Something Strange Happened Today

I've mentioned in the past how I've been left out of some of the most discussed TV shows of recent years.  I've tried to make the case that these shows are not as widely viewed as their fans and the media think they are.  But the fact is that I've drifted away from TV as an entertainment medium.  Maybe the Internet has made me expect more bite-sized entertainment.  At a time when so many dramas are linear and progressive, I've found it harder to commit to a show and stay with it week after week.

So it was quite a switch today when the news came out that Twin Peaks is being revived.  People on Twitter were scrambling to watch the show or finish watching it.  And I was like, that was so twenty-years-ago.  Spoiler Alert, I can tell you who killed Laura Palmer.  Not that we knew what spoilers were at the time. 

(Dis)Unity

I've been experimenting with the Unity game engine. It's pretty impressive, but there's a problem, and that is the name. Any programming to you use is going to occasional leave you with questions, so googling for answers is a constant activity for the modern programmer. That's fine if you're working with software that has a unique name. If you consult Google on "jmonkey file opening procedure" there's nothing else you could be looking for.

But "unity" is a pretty common word. And worse, it's used on another piece of software: the controversial user interface for Ubuntu Linux. So if I Google "unity tutorial" I could get an introduction to either one.

And now it's just getting worse: the latest game in the Assassin's Creed series is coming out soon, and it has the subtitle "Unity". So now we'll have three different pieces of software competing for Googlespace.

Worse still is that I'm working with a programming language called, "Boo". There are lots of languages thy that are named after an English word, but languages like Java and Python have more web pages dedicated to them (at least in English) than the other things they share their names with. So you can Google "python guide" knowing that you won't get an introduction to snake grooming. But Boo is a fairly new, and not widely used yet, so there aren't many web pages about it yet. So if you Google "boo guide" you'll probably find a bunch of episode guides to Here Comes Honey Boo Boo.

So I've tried to make my search terms as specific as possible. For instance, it helps to use "boo language" instead of just "boo". Although that doesn't always work either, as it may just lead to pages offering to translate the language spoken by Honey Boo Boo and family.

The Endless Wait For Chinese Democracy

China's rise out of poverty has been good to see, but the way it has played out has been a little depressing. If you're my age, you remember the Tiananmen Square protests, which seemed to be - along with the freeing of Eastern Europe - part of a global revolution against totalitarian governments. Although those protests were ended by force, the people's desire seemed so strong that it would not be denied.

And yet it was. In the twenty-five years since then, the Chinese government had delivered only token democratic reforms, and yet their popularity is high. Of course, it's all because they've delivered prosperity.

And that's why the whole rise of China has been so depressing: it's demonstrated just how little we humans care about abstract concepts like freedom of speech.

On the one hand, it's understandable. According to Maslow's hierarchy of needs, people will want to be lifted out of poverty before they concern themselves with intellectual freedom. And a big mistake in the rebuilding of post-cold-war Russia and post-gulf-war Iraq was delivering on those abstract freedoms first with little consideration for building a system that would get people the necessities of life.

But China has, in many regions, gotten to that middle class level, and there still doesn't seem to be much push for democracy and rights. It looks like the government has succeeded in buying the complacency of the populous. Of course, many totalitarian governments try that, but few have the economic growth to pull it off. So although I could understand the starving giving their complicity in return for sustenance, it's shocking to see people knuckle-under just to get the same middle-class lifestyle we're starting to find so soulless.

But apparently there are some people who do care about this, and they are predominantly young people from Hong Kong. That makes sense: these are people born around the time Hong Kong was handed back to China. So unlike the rest of China, they have had a constantly good standard of living, and unlike the rest of Hong Kong, they haven't had any joy at being reunited with the rest of their culture. In that case, we might see more Chinese dissatisfaction with their lack of democracy, but it will have to wait for a generation that has grown up in the current Chinese economic success.

Pub Reporter

I'm always surprised at how people see pubs. I have a British background, so they're part of my cultural heritage. But I thought that even the most myopically North American had the basic idea: it's like a bar, but built around taking, eating and drinking, rather than dancing, dating and drinking. It's more classic than modern, they have food you've never heard of, and fries are called chips.

And yet, people throw the name around to mean pretty much anything. In university, I wrote an article for the math students' newsletter lampooning the university's food services for listing gyros under the heading "pub grub". That lead to someone writing a snarky letter pointing out that the university's pub served gyros. That didn't seem like much of a justification, since that establishment didn't seem very pub-like either.  Yes, I know I'm sort-of committing the True Scotsman Fallacy, but I don't think that a place University students go to get drunk is an exemplar of pub culture.

And now Chunky soup has a line of "pub inspired" soups. I'm sure they have soup at pubs, but it's not the first thing you associate with them. A quick search for "pub food" seems to confirm that in most pubs, the favourite soup is not Chunky, but Guinness.

And the flavours don't even pretend to fit pub culture. Alehouse Shepherd’s Pie is fine, but Blazin' Roadhouse Chili-Style? Chipotle Sirloin Burger? Meatball Bustin’ Sausage Rigatoni? And stranger, they're marketing these soups as an antidote for emasculation. There seems to be a big market for products that help men convince themselves they are men, but Chunky seems to be stretching it. Also, pubs don't seem like centres of masculinity, at least on this side of the Atlantic. And soups aren't real masculine as foods go. It seems like marketers drew topics out of a hat and thought they could associate them together through sheer repetition.

Imperfect Ten

Microsoft has announced the new version of Windows, which will be called Windows 10.  People have accused Microsoft of being complacent and arrogant, and if they feel like they can skip number nine just 'cause they feel like it, then perhaps they're right.

The good news is that it's going to be more like the older versions of Windows that people actually use, rather than force-feeding us something resembling their mobile operating system.  But the question is, will people upgrade? It used to be automatic that people would start shifting to the new version.  But after a succession of at-best-mediocre editions, that's not so true.  Just over 12% of users currently use the latest (Windows 8 or 8.1) while half of computer users are still using Windows 7.  Funnier still, Windows XP (which is essentially Windows 5) still has twice as many users as number eight.

The fact is, it's been a while since Microsoft gave anyone a good reason to upgrade.  XP finally made it reliable, and since then there really haven't been any compelling new features.  And the only User-Interface improvements have come when they remove their old interface changes.  I don't blame anyone who hangs on to XP.  They do have an interesting new feature: multiple desktops.  It's been available on Linux for years and recently on MacOS, and it's probably the feature I miss the most when I have to switch to using Windows.

Although Windows 10 is moving away from the mobile-style interface used in Windows 8, Microsoft is still crowing about how the new Windows is one common platform for all devices.  What they mean by that is that they're making it easier for developers to develop the same applications for both PC's and mobile devices.  Wired seems to think this is a brilliant aggressive move. 

Though I doubt it will work.  Lots of developers already use Microsoft software to develop their applications, and Microsoft has tried to use that to their advantage by making it easy for those developers to make Windows Phone apps.  But it hasn't helped, because there just aren't many users of Windows Phones.

And there doesn't seem to be much call for having the same apps on a phone as on a PC.  Even if you are going to work on the same data (say, a document in the cloud) you're probably going to use it quite differently.  That is, you wouldn't want the same word processor on your phone that you use on your laptop.  So all-in-all it looks like Microsoft is continuing to produce so-so PC software thanks to their misguided attempt to take over the phone.