A Tiny Window On My World

Everybody agrees that mobile computing is big and important. Everyone and their sibling is using a tablet or a phone. Wait, a tablet? That's so yesterday: I browse the web on a phone now. Ooh, no, not a phone. Google glass...no, I mean a Microsoft Hololens that hasn't been released yet.

By the way, my tablet seems to agree with me on Hololens, since it tried to suggest "hollowness".

So why do so many web sites work so badly on mobile devices? There are so many ways they screw up:

• Tiny little links, particularly lists of words so that you can hardly squeeze your fingertip on one without hitting its neighbours.
• Menus that only appear if you hover your mouse over them, so you don't even know they're there.
• Loading dozens of animations and gratuitous special effects, so your phone is so overloaded you can feel it starting to melt.

But the worst is the pop-up. A window appears in the centre of the page, asking you to subscribe to something or other. But they've positioned the pop-up based on the assumption that you have a desktop screen. So a window that's supposed to be a little message in the middle ends up covering your entire phone. The true frustration sets in if they've programmed the window to stay in the same place even if you try scrolling down the page. Then you end up as a modern Sisyphus, forever scrolling down to get to a "close" button you'll never reach.

I don't understand why this is such a problem. Aside from everyone agreeing that the mobile Net is important, there is plenty of software to help you create web pages that react to the size of the screen. So there's no excuse. In the early days of the Web there was a rule not to bother with a page that needed a minute to load. Well now there should be a rule not to bother with a page that doesn't fit your device.

I Wanna Grok

There's a principle you may have heard of that if you truly understand something, you should be able to explain it to a six-year-old. If you can't, then you don't really understand it as well as you think you do.

Personally, I think that's a bit harsh. After all, if it were true, we'd have much more educated six-year-olds. It would be more accurate to say that you should be able to explain something to another adult. Of course, that doesn't reflect well on our university professors: Their job is essentially to understand things and explain them to others. Given their success at the latter, it doesn't give me confidence to the former.

That brings me to a sudden realization: I don't believe in String Theory. No, it’s not based on emperical evidence or esoteric mathematics. It's because I don't believe anyone really understands it, because no one seems to be able to explain it.

I know, it's complicated, is hard to wrap your head around. But there are lots of things that are hard to understand. The Theory of Relativity, Quantum Mechanics: those are also hard to explain. But it can be done; I've seen people do it. But not String Theory. I've seen and read dozens of explanations, and here's what I've learned:

• All the fundamental particles in the universe are actually strings.
• The strings vibrate.
• Somehow this means that there are lots of other dimensions, but they're really small.

That's it! That's not an explanation. If you were explaining it, you'd also tell us things like:

• How does this help us understand how particles behave?
• What do the vibrations do?
• Okay smartass, what are the strings made of?
• For that matter, why are you explaining something simple (particles that are just little points) with something more complicated (strings)?

Science is all about figuring out how the world works. So the joy of learning about science is to gain a greater understanding of our surroundings. I don't want to hear a few disjointed facts; I want to acquire a mental model of the processes of nature. For whatever reason, String Theory proponents haven't put much effort into this. It's probably just that there isn't much incentive for explaining bleeding-edge physics well. But until someone puts some effort into it, I'm going to assume that String Theory is a massive Emperor's New Clothes situation, where no one wants to admit that none of them get it.

Unfortunately, this kind of explanation-that-isn't seems all too common these days. There's an assumption that if you give the context of a thing, together with some ideas you can drop at parties, that's considered explaining it. But really you haven't learned anything useful: you just know enough to sound intellectual during a superficial discussion, assuming you're talking with other people who don't understand it either.It's really unfortunate that in a society where we can communicate information so easily, we're still not good at spreading understanding.

Droning On

We're only hours away from the drone-pocalypse, or Christmas as it's also known. Authorities are worried about the growing number of drones out there (or more precisely, about the growing number of idiots with access to drones) and  there'll likely be many more after they unwrap them Christmas morning.

As if to punctuate the fears, a drone fell out of the sky at a ski race and narrowly missed a skier. That was a big and presumably professional drone, so one has to worry what happens when they become widespread. People have enough trouble driving, and now we're giving them another dimension to deal with.

Of course, this is another symptom of our modern society, where inventions spread too fast for us to properly deal with them. Take cars for instance: people talk about the revolution brought on by the Model-T, but that was preceded by decades of cars as curiosities for the rich or whatever-they-called-nerds-then. That allowed society a bit of a heads-up. Imagine if Karl Benz had got his automobile patent, then a couple of years later, there are Chinese knock-offs everyone can afford.

One has wonder what's going to become of drones in society. I was - and still am - skeptical on their predicted use for deliveries. But if I'm wrong, there's going to have to be some organisation to stop the Amazon drones from hitting the FedEx drones. No, I'm not imagining Jetsons-style roads in the sky, with neat but fast streams of flying machines. Really, with some sort of computer air-traffic control, it will likely look more chaotic to us. But if this does come to pass, it will be the latest way modern civilization has changed the look of the world. At least it will be prettier than asphalt.

Badly-Cooked Food For Thought

There's a story going around the Internet about American university students who have been complaining that their cafeteria is guilty of cultural appropriation. It's easy to see how that would get people's attention: many sins are committed in university cafeterias, but cultural appropriation had got to be a new one. Now they'll just need mail-fraud to complete the set.

If you're not familiar with it, cultural appropriation is the idea of taking another culture's symbols and using them for your own purposes. That fashion house that used Inuit designs for their own clothing is a classic example.

The concept is controversial, since it's hard to pin down, and potentially widespread. It's easy to come up with obviously bad examples, but it's also easy to come up with innocent, or even obviously positive things, that an extremist would consider appropriation. If I try to make my own pad thai, it would be hard to claim that as unfair to the people of southeast Asia.

And in this case, it's also hard to accept the students' criticism. Look, I spent longer in university residence than anyone really should, so I definitely wouldn't deny them the right to complain about school food. But, well, that's just the problem: this food is just bad, not disrespectful. And I should point out that I discovered that dorm/residence food is bad not because of the skills of the cooks, but primarily because of the poor supplies they have to make do with. And that just further explains the substandard dishes the students found: the cooks appear to be attempting to diversify, but without access to proper ingredients.

Of course, it's entirely possible that the students know all this, and just came up with the cultural angle because it was the only way they could get the administration to do something about the food. I have to admit that while my first thought about this story was that the students were misguided, my second thought was that I wish I'd thought of that. One particularly memorable bad meal from the residence cafeteria was a curry that somehow came out as bland. That was one of those mind-bendingly bad meals that wasn't just really bad, it was bad in an entirely unexpected way, if not a completely impossible way. If I'd thought of complaining that it was insensitive to students of South-Asian extraction, I might have gained some traction with the bureaucracy.

So no, I don't think there's grounds to believe the university is guilty of cultural appropriation. Just ask the white kids what they think of the school's rubber steaks and you'll see that there are some circumstances where all cultures are equally abused.

Turning Over A New Leaf

The big talk around the Toronto Maple Leafs is the possibility that they can sign Steve Stamkos, because of course a star player entering his prime years would want to sign with a team that's been telling everyone they're just starting a multi-year rebuilding. That's unfortunate, since there was another story going on that might actually happen: the team is getting a new logo for its hundredth anniversary next year.

And I've got to say, it's about time. I've never liked this logo, so I'd welcome a new attempt. And so far the journalists I've read on the topic are surprisingly supportive. Normally, I assume that people will get angry when anyone mentions changing anything in hockey, especially with one of the original six teams. We'll see how fans react in the coming days.

The Leafs' logo is, well, symbolic of the strange nature of hockey fandom in general and the Leafs in particular. The Leafs have a tremendously strong following, one that's based on the team's long tradition as a successful institution. Yet all of that success was too long ago for most of today's fans to have seen it. And the team's current logo was introduced right around the time that success ended. But no one wants to change the logo. Why? Tradition!

The current logo was introduced just as Harald Ballard was starting to run the team into the ground, so you'd think it would have been dumped the day after his funeral. Yet, it's endured for another quarter-century.

But on top of its associations, I have to point out that it's never really looked right. For one thing, the shape and font look stuck in the sixties. But also, it looks off-centre. The lobe at the top tries to balance that little stem; it always looks top-heavy.

What should the new logo look like? There'll be lots of worry that they're going to do something crazy with it - the Toronto Star dredged up the horrors of the 90's Islanders' logo. That would qualify as fear mongering if we were talking about anything but sports logos. But really the Leafs' path is clear: take a page out of the Blue Jays' book and come up with a modernized version of a classic logo. Just pick out one of the old symbols - you know, with the big veiny leaf - and neaten it up and find a more modern font. Easy. It'll look great on an aging Steven Stamkos when they sign him in 2022 to compliment the team they've finally finished rebuilding.

Take The Star Wars Challenge

The world premiere of the new Star Wars movie us tonight, with wider opening this Friday. Are you reading this on your phone while you're in line? If not, then you won't be seeing it until a week from Wednesday.

But it's it any good? It seems like people just asked that question, since I suddenly noticed "Will this be a disappointment?" stories appearing today. That's pretty late in the game to be asking that question, especially given the disappointment with the last trilogy. Of course, that brings up the point that it may not matter; even if it is disappointing, movie-goers will probably keep watching the sequels anyway. People are already talking about how the franchise may outlive it's original fans; with large-scale timelines like that, it doesn't really matter if they need to pause the parade of new Star Wars movies for a decade to wash the bad taste out of viewers' mouths. It's sort of reminiscent of the aliens from Contact, where we don't understand its strategy because these beings are thinking much longer term. Ironically, sci-fi franchises have become like sci-fi beings.

It's not necessarily a bad thing that Star Wars may never end, spawning several movie series, TV shows, video games etc. But I would hope that if it's going to go that far that there would be some competition. The market is big, why not have a competing science fiction world to create a never-ending series of movies, TV and other media? In other words, this Coke needs a Pepsi. Star Trek would be an obvious possibility as the other big sci-fi franchise, that has always been the yin to Star Wars' yang. But I'm not really sure it can reach the same audience numbers. Well, not without making it more like Star Wars.

Perhaps some media conglomerate will try making a Star Wars competitor from scratch. I know that sounds like a recipe for disaster. Or at the very least, a recipe for Go-Bots.  But consider the amount of creation, art, world-building and promotion that goes into a Massively Multiplayer Online game. They're practically building a complete science fiction/fantasy franchise right there, and might be paying the cost of a movie or three to build it. If you're making that investment, and intend to stick with it for years to come, you might as well make some tie-in movies to further cash in.

It's something to think about if you're a media company out there that's not part of the Disney/Lucasfilm empire. And if you need any story ideas, call me, I've got plenty.

Eh B C

So Canada has its own font now. Well kind of; a font maker has created a font to commemorate Canada's 150th birthday in 2017. What's so Canadian about it? For one thing, it - unlike many fonts - can be used for all languages used in Canada, including the syllabic symbols used with Cree and Inuktitut. And I'm glad to see that the overall look seems to be inspired by one of my all-time favorites: the Toronto subway font.

Wired complains that it has some problems, which is just the kind of pretentious perfectionism I always seem to see from font-o-philes. Have a look and you'll see it looks completely - oh my, that middle line in the "B" does look strange doesn't it? I guess it does need a bit of work, but it's a nice start.

But here's the funny/sad/bitterly symbolic part: although you don't have to pay to use it, you can't just download it. As with other symbols of the anniversary, you have to apply for permission. Even though the font was a gift, rather than a taxpayer-funded project, it still feels wrong not to just let anyone have it. Keeping tight control over branding on a national celebration seems downright Harperian.

So if I can't use our national font, I'll use an athlete's font. It turns out that's the latest thing for a transcendent athlete celebrity. A few years back, I wrote a post about athletes with their own logos, but apparently that's passe. Now, Lebron James, Kobe Bryant, and Kevin Durant have fonts based on their logos. I guess that could be useful: if you've got your own logo for branding proposes, you might as well go for other things, like fonts, slogans, or colour schemes. Okay, color schemes could be bad for an athlete, since it would limit you to only signing with teams that don't clash with you.

As part of the aforementioned post on athlete logos, I created my own. So now I apparently have to make my own personal font. Well, I don't have time right now, so maybe tomorrow.

Kobe Beef

The Kobe Bryant retirement tour pulled into Toronto on Monday, as the retiring basketball star played his final game in Toronto (with the possible exception of the upcoming All-Star game.) Although the Toronto Raptors usually have good fan support, a big portion of the audience was there purely to see Kobe, cheering him, and the rest of the Lakers. The cheers for their baskets was nearly as loud as for the home team. That rubbed a few people the wrong way, including Raptors coach Dwayne Casey, who criticized the pro-visitors fans on the post-game interview.

It bothered me too. It's not just that this retirement tour is starting to resemble the ridiculous Derek Jeter tribute tour last year. And it's not just that Bryant isn't a real great person to look up to. But it also seems like it's missing the point of being a sports fan.

This is hard for me, since my sports fandom is permeated by that rare understanding that sports are ultimately meaningless. There really is no logical reason that the Toronto fans should cheer for the Americans (and Lithuanian) in Toronto uniforms rather than those based in Los Angeles. No, there is no moral need to cheer for the home team. But I have to question their motivation. Yes, I'm sure some of them have a deep appreciation of Bryant's athletic skill, but most are just attracted to his mixture of accomplishment and attitude that is oh so marketable to young people. You know there will be similar reactions a few years down the road when Lebron James retires, but there will be nothing of the sort when Tim Duncan calls it a career.

The Raptors are an interesting case for this kind of worship. You know that Boston fans won't be so fawning over Bryant, just as they weren't with Jeter. Of course, that's a team that has both success and history, things the Raptors have little of. But I also think there's a bit of good old Canadian self-deprecation, where we just have a natural assumption that American things are better and cooler, at least in matters pop-cultural. It will be interesting to see how the Minnesota Timberwolves react to the Kobe retirement tour - they too are a young and not-so-winning team, an American counterpart to the Raptors. And oh look, the Lakers are playing there on Wednesday. So we'll get a quick comparison on how to host a retiring superstar.

It's Everyone's Thing

You have to wonder what advertisers are thinking when they choose music for their commercials. Obviously they're trying to associate a catchy, usually energetic and positive, song with their product.Ford has decided to build their entire campaign around Rachel Platten's "Fight Song."  It's the kind of transparently defiant pop song that I honestly was surprised was not by Kelly Clarkson. Is that really the tone to sell cars? They're trying to convince me to buy a compact crossover, then close-out the pitch with a song of someone trying to overcome a personal crisis.

But what really surprises me is that advertisers don't consider the problems with reusing a song. They're trying to associate their product with the song, so you'd think they'd shut away from songs already associated with a different product. Yes, "Good Morning" seems like the ideal music for an orange juice ad, but don't they know we've been trained to associate that song with Viagra?

But the worst is "It's Your Thing." Already made annoying by Ramada, now both Phillips and SlimFast are using it. Strangely, the latter seem to be building their whole campaign around the song, using the title for their website and hashtag. With all the music in the world, why would anyone reuse psychologically-polluted songs like these? I can only assume it's because the folks who own the rights to these songs are much quicker to sell permission than most. Indeed, "It's Your Thing" was by The Isley Brothers, who also recorded "Shout," another song abused by commercials.  So, Messrs Isley, please have some self-respect and raise your rates

David Signs With Goliath

In investing, there's a concept called selling short, which allows you to make money on a stock that you think will go down in value. Sometimes I wish there were a way to make money off things in everyday life that decline in value.

Take, for instance, Blue Jays season tickets. Yes, I'm glad I didn't buy them during their playoff run, only to see the hype and hope come to a crashing halt this week when David Price signed with rival Boston. It's nice to know I didn't waste money on those tickets, but it's hard to feel smug given that I couldn't have afforded them anyway.
At the time the Jays traded for Price in the final year of his contact, sports pundits/killjoys warned everyone that it was unlikely they'd be able to sign him beyond this season. So I'm sure that those pundits are currently telling tut-tutting fans for being disappointed. But that misses the point.

In baseball - as in all non-salary-capped sports leagues - there's two ways to be successful, business-wise:

• Low-income, low-costs - don't spend much on players, meaning that your expenses are low, and you make money despite having less success, thus fewer fans, thus less income.
• High-income, high-costs - you spend big to build and maintain a winner. That costs a lot, but you make up for it by having more fans, this more income.

For some teams, the decision is made for them: a team in a smaller city can't pay big, because even a successful team won't bring in enough money to pay for high end salaries. You have to hope you can succeed by developing talent quickly (like this year's World Series winners, Kansas City.) But more likely you'll languish at the bottom (like Kansas City in the previous two decades.) On the other hand it's hard for a team in New York or Los Angeles to justify sitting on their big pile of cash while watching the team lose year after year.

But for cities in the middle, like Toronto, it's not clear which direction to go in. To make matters worse, the two strategies tend to be self-perpetuating: is hard to sell a low-budget loser to fans used to competing, and its hard to convince a cheap team to start spending on the hope that fans will open their wallets.
It's kind of forgotten now, but the Blue Jays we in that big budget category in their World Series years; although those teams were mostly built on drafts and trades, they also bought free agents to fill in weaknesses and departures, and had one of the highest payrolls in the Majors. Now, of course, they don't, and occasionally people ask, when did everyone decide Toronto was a small market?

The answer is probably sometime around when then-owners Labatts was bought by Interbrew, and became less interested in paying big for ballplayers. But however it happened, they've been caught in that small-market vicious circle for a while now, and its hard to get out of. That's why we Jays fans with an eye economics were overjoyed for this year's turn around: it wasn't just the fact that they were winning, and the positive vibes of a full SkyDome had returned. It also seemed like they had jump started the big-market set up. The team took chances to bring in big names, and the fans responded with attendance and ratings. Suddenly, there's no risk: the guys writing the checks know the fans will respond.

And that's why the Price deal stings. It's not just seeing a player leave. It's losing him after we just signed Happ, a good-but-not-great pitcher who has already had one stone with the team, and left without most of us noticing he was gone. And it's the fact that he's going to one of our two big-spending division rivals. The message could not possibly be clearer: last year was an aberration, and everything is back to the way it had been during our playoff drought, with the Yankees and Red Sox buying whatever they need, while we take mediocre players and hope for a miracle.

I realize there are plenty of reasons why this could be bad for the Red Sox, like the fact that they're going to be paying a 37-year-old pitcher $30 million in 2022. But for now I'm not optimistic. But hopefully this post will prove to be as accurate as last week's "Donald Trump has finally gone too far" article, in which case the Jays will probably sign Zach Grienke.

And Them Good Ole Boys Were Drinking Butterbeer And Pumpkin Juice

Hey, remember a few months ago when they auctioned off the original lyrics of "American Pie," complete with all Don McLean's original notes and annotations? That was supposed to answer all our questions about the meanings in the song. But so far, we haven't heard anything. I'm hoping whoever won the auction isn't just going to be a jerk about it and sit on the answers forever.

I was wondering this, because the situation with that song is in sharp contrast to works being created today. Just this past week, we saw headlines that JK Rowling was further explaining the Harry Potter story, in this case detailing Snape’s motivation.

Some people dislike this sort of thing, thinking that it takes away from the stories if we're going to find out after-the-fact that Dumbledore is gay, or Hermione should have married Harry or Sirius Black is lactose intolerant. But it seems to me that this fleshing-out of the background is just an inevitable part of the modern world. In a world where Rowling has almost six million Twitter followers, it's inevitable that she's occasionally going to pull back the curtain. I'm sure Tolkien often livened up dinner parties by dropping hints about his inspiration for Lord of the Rings characters. Difference is, there was no one there to report it to a wider audience.

So we probably all have to learn not to make a big deal every time an author gives us behind-the-scenes info. Certainly, we shouldn't keep turning it into a news story. Can you imagine what it would have been like off Twitter existed when "American Pie" came out? @realDonMclean would be inundated with questions about the song. Some 4chan’ers would threaten to kidnap his dog unless he confirmed that the Jester represents Bob Dylan.  It'd be a mess, and might have even lead to popular music getting dumbed down over the next twenty years.

And, further confirming my theory that you can find any combination of two geeky things on the Internet, here is the Harry Potter story, from Voldemort's perspective, to the tune of "American Pie."

Hoverboards Falling Back To Earth

What's up with hoverboards? Not the ones from Back to the Future, I mean these new devices that look like the spawn of a Segway and a skateboard. A lot of people have decided that it's the thing we're going to Cabbage-Patch into a Christmas obsession this year.

For a start, that's a bad name, since it doesn't hover. I know, I shouldn't expect the name of a commercial product to be accurate. But there is a problem with promising that much more than you can deliver. Lots of car companies exaggerate their products' performance, but no one just suddenly decided to call their engines "warp drive."  And yet, despite the pathetic attempt to oversell a product by piggybacking on a pop-culture favourite celebrating an anniversary this year, the public seems to be eating it up.

But somehow, I don't think this is a big breakthrough in wheeled conveyances. Yes, it looks clever and useful. But often new inventions turn out to be just stepping-stones to more profound achievements. For instance, people in the 70's probably thought roller skates were here to stay, but now it seems they'll just be remembered as an evolutionary step towards inline skates. Similarly, this "hoverboard" just looks like an invention that someone in the future will turn into something else.

(I just looked it up, and apparently the first roller skate was inline-style, so never mind.)

I don't just mean actual hoverboards - even with today's technology, I'm sure we could do better. I mean take a look at Orbitwheels. Doesn't that look cooler? And I know they have robots that balance on a single ball. And since Sergways/pseudo-hoverboards use the same sort of technology, why not a platform with a ball in the middle, so you can move in any direction?
I'm going to get to work on that right now, out at least after I check Amazon for Black Friday deals on hoverboards.

I Definitely Mean This

I'm really getting tried of the phrase, "_____ like you mean it."  It's no surprise for KFC to tell me to "Eat like you mean it." But when the CBC is telling me to "Holiday like you mean it," you know it's gone too far. Yes, it's an unfortunate aspect of pop culture that reckless aggressive entities get to use the memes when they're still cool, but the awkward ones that have trouble expressing themselves end up using them later, oblivious they've gone stale, and end up sounding like a dad trying to be cool.

But why is like-you-mean-it so annoying? Well, it's always frustrating when advertisers want us to believe that their product is the best way to express ourselves, like it's somehow a purer expression of our true spirit than everything else in this numbingly artificial world. One made numbingly artificial by all the mass produced products we're constantly being sold.

But in this case, we have an added dose of macho competitiveness. We're not just accusing you of living half-heatedly, we're making it sound like you're a wimp for not putting some effort into your life. Have some self-respect you wuss, and watch Frosty the Snowman.

So I am giving "_____ like you mean it" the "______ is the new black" award for phrases that have outstayed their welcome. This, I can now say, "Like you mean it is the new black." This causing the saying to disappear into the linguistic vortex in an implosion of cliche.

Things The Teenage Me Would Never Have Believed About Life In The Future, # 28

CoverGirl has a line of Star Wars makeup.

Two Rails Are Safe, Let's Try The Third

I figure that every country has an issue that just never goes away. It's an issue that somehow touches all other issues, and gets brought up in connection with things you'd never expect. It's something everyone tries to stay away from - not out of political correctness, but just because everyone knows that if you bring it up, you'll never hear the end of it. And this is why it's so hard to understand the politics of a country other than your own: there's this one issue everyone is thinking about and reacting to, but not mentioning.

In Canada, that issue is language. I've seen it trip up Americans, in the few times they try to talk about us. They know we have French people, and to them, The French are an easy joke target. So they say something in jest, and then wonder why everyone reacts like a war crime has been committed.

In Britain, the issue is class. And in the U.S., it's race. They try to ignore it out downplay it, but it never goes away.

But speaking of things that are controversial and never go away, Donald Trump. He's entered another iteration of his cycle of offensive statement/free publicity/more support. As usual, that middle step consists of the media asking if he's gone too far this time. Pundit Jeet Heer pointed out the folly of this question by pointing out that were asking if a guy sorted by racists will lose his support because he just said something racist.

Normally, I'd be as pessimistic as Heer on this, but I think that if Trump is ever going to lose his infallibility, this is it. Of course, is for the reason I outlined at the start: he's now taking on America's raw nerve of racial issues. Yes, overt racism against Mexicans and Muslims turn on his supporters and don't offend the mainstream to any significant degree. But now he's exaggerating black crime, and defending the attack on a black demonstrator by his supporters.

I don't think that's going to go over the same way, just because this isn't the same kind of issue. Yes, I know, politicians in the US have been using race baiting for years. But they've always dressed that up to make it palletable. Trump's modus operandi is to come right out and say what the bigots are thinking.
If he does that here, it may finally be the end. We'll likely find that many of his supporters are no longer comfortable as racist if it's what they think of as the "real" kind of racist, not just hating foreigners. Also, the relatively mainstream forces currently giving Trump tacit approval (big donors and cable channels) might dessert him. After all, we know from the past that overt hatred of African-Americans is one of the few things that money and Fox News will not defend you from.

Blog, Dictionary, Person Speaking

You've probably seen how the Oxford Dictionaries named the "tears of joy" emoji as the "word" of the year. Of course, these dictionary word-of-the-year pronouncements are thinly-veiled attempts to get free publicity. But this year, that veil is thinner than ever. I suppose you can make the case that this symbol is being used for communication, so it is sort of like a word. But I have the feeling that this is the thin edge of the wedge, and a few years from now the word of the year will be the taste of cilantro.
BTW, this tablet's keyboard seems to be having a great deal of difficulty recognizing the word "dictionary." I think it could be jealous.
But who knows, maybe this is the beginning of emojis being accepted as words. I've seen the idea in science fiction that people in the future will only be able to "read" a set of universal symbols, like that you'd see in a multilingual instruction or warning label. Given that we've already standardized symbols for "pause" or "on/off" I wonder just how sophisticated symbols will become after a few decades of globalized technology.
Or, here's another way of blowing this out of proportion: perhaps this will lead to us creating a written language where each word gets its own symbol, like in Chinese. Centuries from now, the word "joy" might be written as a circle with teardrop shapes on either side of it.

My Reputation Precedes Me

There's a lot of talk about how much advertisers know about us. Of course, there's not a lot of respect for privacy, and companies want to assemble as much data about us as possible so they can give us the most targeted ads. My response is that I wish my ads were targeted to me. No, I don't want to download Candy Crush! What have I ever done that would make you think I want to play that? Being human sure, but the point is, it's not really a good use of the data about me.
But on the other hand, there's plenty of data out there that we hand out voluntarily. When I tried using Microsoft's new Edge web browser, I was shocked to find that it presented me with a list of recent scores of my favorite sports teams. How did it know? My phone knows my favorite teams, since I put them into the "Google Now" feature to get updates on them. But that's a Google product, and they don't talk to Microsoft.
So here I was, worried that my laptop had hacked my phone, all in an effort to please me. But then I remembered that had inputted my favorite teams into Windows 8.1 to get scores in one of those squares in that weird time interface. Of course, like most people, I tried to avoid using that interface, so I forgot all about what if told it about myself. But apparently, in some Microsoft computer somewhere, there's a notation that I'm looking for Raptors scores. And that my affinity for Minesweeper somehow translates into a desire for Candy Crush. (Completely ridiculous - Minesweeper is true strategic, intellectual timewasting.)
But this brings up a question: how much other information have I left out there. I can't count how many sites I've signed up to, or created a log in for, but no longer use. I remember using a movie recommendation site in the nineties. So somewhere out there a computer knows all about the movies I liked as a twenty-something. But we've probably all left a digital impression of ourselves behind us. I don't know if anyone tries using that data, perhaps trying to link the info in abandoned accounts with the information they have about us today. Who knows how accurate that process is. They could be confusing me with an old GeoCities account for a James Roe. And he really loves Candy Crush.

Hi-Res Monitor

In my last year of university, I remember a dormmate asking how we were going to deal with living in normal places. Here we were living in a very social format, but in the real world, everyone is very private.

Just so you don't get the wrong idea, our residence floor was hardly a stereotypical university living space. It was fairly restrained and nerdy even by the standards of the University of Waterloo. But still, it's a very different situation: you have a private room (or at least, as private as you want it to be) and pretty much everything else is communal. Compare that to my current apartment, where I don't know most of my floormate's names, much less organized late-night StarCraft tournaments with them.

My answer at the time was to point out that I had read about an experimental building where people were housed in more public circumstances. You get your own apartment, but there are also nice lounge area outside to socialize with neighbours. I think it was in Vancouver (Big surprise.) I had the same worry about leaving the inclusive society of the university residence, and was a little scared of the lonely life of a single adult.

Today it's hard to believe I felt that way. When I imagine ideal accommodations, it's usually getting away from my neighbours, rather than getting closer to them. Maybe I've grown up, out maybe I've gotten used to a new paradigm. But I think it's a different reason: there's essentially two strategies for getting along with your neighbours: get friendly with them, or try to get away from them. Our residence was built on the first strategy, but most living circumstances in the western world are based on the latter.

But maybe things are changing. The Atlantic has an article about a company offering dorm-like accommodations to the general public. It's in Syracuse, New York (genuinely big surprise.)  The article mostly looks at it from an angle that the concept appeals primarily to millennials - before pointing out that they've had interest from all ages. So perhaps there is hope for a new way of living, and an appetite for it.

Still Writing

I'm having computer problems, so it's not as easy to log in and write. But I thought I'd check in and prove I'm still alive. I guess I should at least say something thoughtful, so, um...um...centaurs - are there female centaurs? You never see pictures of them. I know, that's because centaurs are usually depicted as not wearing clothes, so that gives the artist a challenge.

Is this sexist? The male centaurs are essentially naked and we just accept that. Okay, they also have the advantage that we can't really see their private parts very well. Wait, are their genitals between their back or front legs? That's a separate issue.

But mermaids/mermen give us a precedent that half-animals may keep their animal parts unclothed. Of course, mermaids usually have a tasteful bikini top, so centauresses could do something like that.

A Two-Four And A Six-Pack Of Canadians

Yesterday Canada's new Liberal government unveiled its cabinet, and there was more excitement than ever before. By that I mean, there was some excitement.  It was because Prime Minister Trudeau promised to have the first gender-balanced cabinet.  And he managed to do it, with the thirty members split right down the middle. So there was a lot of talk about how the cabinet "looked like Canada."

That had me wondering about just how representative it was. People have complained about a phenomena where we misjudge how representative groups are.  For example, if everyone expects the group to be dominated by men, but the genders are actually 50-50, people will think of it as over-representing women, because there are more women than expected.

With that in mind, I looked up some of the statistics for this cabinet and for Canada as a whole.  At least I think these are accurate statistics; it seems someone has cancelled the long-form census.

Group	Cabinet	Canada
People from Greater Toronto	23.3%	16.3%
Quebeckers	20.0%	23.61%
Ontarians	36.7%	38.4%
Albertans	6.7%	10.9%
Nunavummiut**	3.3%	0.09%
Sikhs	10.0%	1.4%
Aboriginals	6.7%	4.3%
Men	50%	49.0%
Women	50%	51.0%
People with physical disabilities*	6.7%	13.7%
African-Canadians	0%	2.9%
Visible minorities***	16.7%	16.2%
LGBT*	3.3%	5%
Astronauts	3.3%	0.000026%
* as far as I know
** people from Nunavut
*** Did you know that First Nations aren't considered "Visible Minorities"?

So it's not perfect, but it is surprisingly close.  Except for Sikhs, who are statistically way over-represented; not sure how that happened. Commence "Sikhs are taking over" paranoia in 3, 2, 1...

Sticking Around

Here's something I've always wondered:

When they were making the first video game consoles in the 1970's, they needed a device that could be a generic control for any type of game.  So they borrowed the concept of the "joystick" from the world of aviation, where it had been used for close to seventy years.

Once the video game industry got its hands on the concept, it took about 25 years to mutate into this:

Meanwhile, aviation still uses this:

detail from "Airbus A380 cockpit" by Naddsy - http://www.flickr.com/photos/83823904@N00/64156219/. Licensed under CC BY 2.0 via Commons.

That picture is from the Airbus A380, the super-jumbo flagship from one of the world's biggest aerospace companies, and yet it's being controlled by something that looks like it plugged in to my old Commodore 64. 

So one industry must know something the other doesn't. We'll have to see if over time gaming's innovations leak back to aviation, and pilots of the future will be hunched over grasping a controller with both hands, hoping they don't drop it during a landing.

The Force Sleeps In

One of the advantages of being a geek is that you don’t feel your age as harshly. For most people, there is a time when you realize that you are no longer cool. It could be the time you overhear some teenagers talking and realize that you don’t understand anything they’re saying - and worse, you don’t care. Or it could be when you hear a hit song on the radio and don’t recognize it, or you haven't heard of whoever is playing it.

But if you’re a geek, that never happens. Or more precisely, it has always happened. You aren’t embarrassed when you don’t understand teenagers because you didn’t really get them even when you were one, and you didn’t much care what they said then, either. In fact, an ageing geek may even feel younger: By the time you reach adulthood, you’ve spent so much time dealing with mainstream culture that you’re starting to understand it, if only by repetition. Those teenagers may actually seem less alien now, even if you are observing them like an anthropologist.

Lately though, I have been feeling old, even in my geekiness. The problem is, I'm just not excited over the new Star Wars movie. Yes, it looks promising. Yes, I would like to see it. But the fact is, I can wait.

I don't know if it's cynicism after the last trilogy, or if I don't yet trust JJ Abrams and Disney to run the franchise. Maybe it's because I've now spent most of my life with vague promises of more Star Wars eventually.

What's weird is that most of my fellow geeks do seem excited, and very much so. And that enthusiasm seems to be coming from a wide age range. They were stretching the Internet to its limits to see the trailer for the new movie as soon as it came out. But I didn't bother until a week later. Others spent October looking for two ideally-sized pumpkins to make a jack-o-lantern that looks like that little rolling droid,; I can't even remember the name of that little rolling droid.

So I feel a bit left out. I don't feel like I fit in with the outcasts any more.  I guess I could consider myself a non-geek.  But I still can't fit in with them.  Or I could just look at it the other way and become a geek-among-geeks, a nerd-squared.  Yes, you can keep your Star Wars; while you're camped out for tickets, I'll be in the sci-fi section of my local independent bookstore.

Who Ought To Be In Pictures

What's the deal with these posters featuring Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe, James Dean, and Humphrey Bogart?  A local diner has several, as they seem to see them as the way to get their 50's vibe on. (That previous sentence involved a collision of the slang from at least three decades, I apologise for it.) I thought maybe it was one artist with a weird fixation, but I've found at least two artists making them.

You can get them playing poker, singing karaoke, even working on an anachronistic stock car. Which is at least less morbid than Dean with the car he died in.  And perhaps most famously, you get get them replacing the original subjects of Edward Hopper's classic Nighthawks.

But I have to wonder, why them?  If you want to evoke the fifties, there are plenty of other choices. Even if you specifically wanted to show bitter-sweet heroes embodying America's lost innocence, you could have used, say, Buddy Holly.  The page I linked to at the start of this post also included a number of suggestions.  I'm guessing that the reason is that descendants of celebrities may have a problem with how they are depicted, and perhaps these four have less legal problems.

I also wonder what people other decades might turn into poster stars.  I need to know for when I go into business with my retro 80's fast food joint.  Michael Jackson is an obvious choice.  Madonna and Prince have probably stayed around too long to represent the era. Duran Duran's Simon Le Bon would work as an 80's symbol, but is probably not well-known enough as an individual. Who else? How about:

• Michael J. Fox
• Boy George
• Corey Haim
• Molly Ringwald
• Cindy Lauper
• Mr. T
• Brooke Shields
• Pee Wee Herman
• Max Headroom

Those are my suggestions. Painters, get to it; I'll be by in a few years to pick up my painting of four of the above playing Trivial Pursuit.

Tattoo Who

I have no tattoos, and no plans to get any.  Yet, tattoos have become so common in our culture that I've asked myself what would I get.  I mean, what could there possibly be in the universe that is important enough to me that I would want to make a permanent commitment to it. (Why yes, I am single.)

I'm thinking about this because I saw something about a Walmart employee who got the Walmart logo tattooed on his arm.  You might laugh at him for that, but at least he's made a commitment to something that's important to him, which is more thought than usually goes into tattoos.  I'm not sure Walmart has as much commitment to him, but that could be part of his plan: it would be terrible publicity to lay-off the guy who got a company tattoo, so his job is safe.

Rarely have I ever felt that kind of unreserved belonging in a group.  And as I'm sure this blog has shown, I frequently end up disappointed in people and things.  I've never loved, say, a TV show enough to want to put it on my body.  Sports teams are out; I may allow them to play with my emotions, but I remind myself that they have no dedication to me.  Essentially, I treat them like cats.  I don't even feel a close enough affinity to a particular idea, as these people do with math. I had thought that the only thing I feel a complete love for is Lego, and now I see that they screwed over Ai Weiwei.

(Having said that, here are some Lego tattoos I just found.)

So that's it.  Unless I decide to just get a big question mark, I don't think I'll ever get a tattoo.  Or I'll just tell people that I got a tattoo of the blank space that represents my ultimate disappointment with modern society.

That's The News, And I Am Outta Here

“But I believe in this - and it’s been tested by research,
that he who fucks nuns will later join the church”

-The Clash, "Death or Glory"

Still the greatest line in the history of rock. In the song it was part of a critique of rebellious musicians, but I always associate that quote with either Joan Rivers or Dennis Miller, two great comedians who turned into the sort of people that their younger selves would have made fun of. When Rivers died, some younger people were genuinely surprised at what positive feelings she elicited from so many people. I guess that's understandable: to many adults today, she was known only for catty red carpet coverage and work on the shopping channel. I always wondered what 1970’s Rivers would have had to say about a person like that.

Miller turned off a lot of fans with his drift to the right in the last decade. Defenders have pointed out that he was never really lefty, and his SNL colleague Al Franken has said he doesn't find Miller’s current work surprising.

But to me the disappointing part wasn't his ideology, but his partisanship. Though he may have leaned right in the past - or more accurately, libertarian - the joy from his routines came mainly from his ridiculing the stupidity of society in general and politics especially. Now he's not really a conservative, but a loyal Republican. Or to put it another way, is hard to believe the guy who said of Reagan and nuclear weapons,

"There's no more frightening image in the world, than the finger having access to the button, having a string tied around it."

...later said,

“I’d like to thank George (W) Bush for allowing me to respect the American presidency again.”

But now we can add another to the list of those joining the church later in life, and that is Miller's former show, Saturday Night Live. They’ve announced that Donald Trump will host an upcoming show. Of course, this isn’t the first time they’ve had a politician on the show - Hillary Clinton was on just a few weeks ago. These appearances can be fun, even though they are usually awkward and even though everyone knows it’s just the politician trying to look human by displaying a sense of humour. But most importantly, politicians’ cameos are always short, allowing the show to go back to what it should be doing: making fun of things, often including those politicians.

I realize political satire has never been the focus of the show, but it’s always been a component. And we rely on political humour to puncture the egos and highlight the flaws of our leaders and candidates, rather than assist them. Having a politician host the show means softening the satire, and that’s really unfortunate in this case. Trump is the biggest story in politics at the moment, and someone who is pushing politics in troubling directions. He should be a target, rather than a performer.

But it’s not hard to understand why the show is doing this: As the focus of so much attention right now, Trump drags viewers wherever he goes. Whether it’s his supporters, or people who just can’t look away from a trainwreck, Trump’s SNL episode is sure to be a ratings winner. And that’s another difference from other political appearances on the show: instead of SNL assisting a politician in forming their image, here the politician is helping the show, which just emphasizes what a clear example of selling-out this is.

Historically, the Saturday Night Live bandwagon has had a widely-varying number of passengers. Many people may be jumping on for the Trump episode, but I’ll be leaving it.

I'll Do My Driving In The Rain

I've mentioned before that I don't think highly of Formula One boss Bernie Ecclestone. I think it would be accurate to describe him as being like FIFA president Sepp Blatter, but without the selflessness.  So a few years ago, when he proposed making races more exciting by having sprinklers around the course randomly spray water on the track, I was neither impressed nor surprised.  Indeed, the idea got a lot of jeers from the racing community.

While that was a crazy idea from a terrible person, I can actually understand the thinking behind it. Today's American Grand Prix was one of the most entertaining Formula One races in recent years, and that was largely due to Hurricane Patricia, the edges of which dumped rain on the track in Austin, Texas. 

And that's nothing new: Formula One races have long been more exciting in the rain.  In perfect conditions, it's just a fast parade, with the cars ending up in order of who has the most money.  The lack of traction makes things unpredictable, cancels out a lot of the technology advantage, and rewards driving skill. In fact, today's race seemed to get noticeably less entertaining through the race as the rain stopped and the track tried out.

But sprinklers?  Surely there's a more sophisticated way to approach the problem.  Besides, I have the feeling that if all races were in uniformly wet conditions, the engineers would start to adapt and turn it into a predictable competition of technology again.

So here's an idea.  I have no idea if this makes sense or not, but I feel confident enough to put it forward, since it's already guaranteed not to be the dumbest suggestion anyone's made.  For a while now, Formula One has had just one tire supplier, currently Pirelli. They make a few different types of tires with different rubber compounds (crash course on racing tires: the tire compound is a trade-off, where softer rubber gives better traction, but wears out quicker.)  Currently they bring two different compounds to each race, and the teams are free to choose between them (aside from the rule that they have to use each type at least once during the race.)

So hows this: They bring just one type of tire to each race, but they don't tell anyone what it is. Qualification and practice could be done with standard tires, but the ones supplied for race day are a random formulation that no one knows until the race starts. Everyone has to figure out how much traction they have during the race, and adapt their driving and strategies to it. 

The Right Honourable Devil-You-Know

Can you stand one more election post? Well, this one isn't about this election, but about a pattern I've noticed. It occurred to me that the result of this election was actually pretty unusual, at least among elections in my lifetime.

American pundits have commented that Presidents rarely lose the election for their second term, despite the public's supposed hatred of politicians. During my life, the only Presidents to fail to win re-election were Carter and Bush Sr. (and Ford, though he wasn't elected in the first place.)

But Canada is much the same, if not more so.  This election, where a government ran for re-election, but lost, was pretty unusual, even though that seems like a pretty ordinary result for an election. In my forty-two years, there have been only four sitting Prime Ministers that have lost elections, and they generally haven't been like this one.

• John Turner and Kim Campbell got to be PM by the quirk of parliamentary system: they replaced long-time Prime Ministers, called an election, and lost, leaving office in just a few months.
• Paul Martin did slightly better. He replaced a long-time PM, then won an election with a minority. It fell after two years, and he lost the subsequent election.
• The only time a Prime Minister who served more than a longer than a Presidential term, then lost an election, was 1979 when Joe Clark defeated Pierre Trudeau, albeit with a minority. Clark's government collapsed after nine months, at which point Trudeau defeated him in the election, winning a majority.

So this election is the first time in my life that a Prime Minister with a majority lost an election to another party that won a majority. That says something about how we like to go with the flow in Canada.

Things The Teenage Me Would Never Have Believed About Life In The Future, # 28

They'll do a feature film based on the Peanuts comic strip.

• It will be computer generated
• It will be 3-D
• The ads will feature The Who's "Baba O'Riley."

Assessing Threats

Last week, Wilfrid Laurier University here in KW was locked down after someone online posted a threat of a shooting in the science building. Of course, locals were shocked: who knew Laurier has a science building?

Okay, that's just my UW, heritage talking, sorry Laurier folks.  Anyway, the person who made that posting was in London (England.) He got arrested, and just spent nearly three days in jail before posting bail. He was interviewed upon release, and it came out that:

• He didn't think this would happen, or that it would be taken seriously
• He doesn't know anything about Laurier, and was only copying it's name from another post.
• He assumed that freedom of speech covered this sort of thing

That last part jumped out at me. It's a concept that a lot of people online seem to think: that freedom of speech is absolute and allows any sort of speech in any circumstance. Most people - both inside and outside the legal profession - will know that there are practical limits on free speech. The classic (i.e., quoted on Law & Order) example is that you don't have the right to shout, “fire” in a crowded theatre.

But now we have a couple of problems: in the Internet age, you can yell “fire” from the other side of the planet, and there's a lot of people who think freedom of speech means freedom from consequences.  Actually, three problems: there’s also our increasingly fuzzy definition of irony.  Afterall, our perpetrator said he didn’t think his threat would be taken seriously, since it was on 4chan, a site known for pranks.  I can see how a person might assume that, since many things of questionable taste happen there without affecting the real world. But the flipside is that if a person were to plan a shooting rampage, an untraceable discussion board is exactly where they would talk about it.

We’re left with a big overlap between what people think is acceptable online, and what raises red flags for law enforcement.  So we’re going to have to create some new understandings about what is legal, and someone is going to be very disappointed.

Blue And Red

Oh, um, I guess I should write something about the election.  Let's see, I'll just insert a joke in which it seems like I'm commenting about the election, but then it turns out I'm talking about the Jays game.  I'll think of that later.

Anyway, about the election:

• Thesis: Harper's downfall was winning a majority in the last election.  Giving complete power to a controlling personality brought out the worst in his personality.  Discuss.
• People are still talking about the possibility of electoral reform, such as proportional representation.  But we're facing the same problem electoral reform always has: the government that just won with the current rules will be reluctant to change the rules.  Too bad it wasn't a Liberal minority depending on the NDP, that would have been the optimum result for reform.
• Speaking of the NDP, they had a pretty disappointing result, ending up with the sort of seat count you would have expected, well, the last time the Jays were in the playoffs.  It's like the clock struck midnight, and now the party has turned back into a pumpkin, or something.  Hmm, orange/pumpkins?  I should work out a joke for that and put that in later too.
• Lots of people noted that Harper was desperate if he was using Rob Ford for support (see the hilarious photo op here.)  But the NDP also made a late attempt to invoke the late Jack Layton in one of their final ads.  Neither of the last-second associations worked.

So over all, I got the result I was looking for.  Then the ballgame ended and I saw the Liberals won the election. Ha, that's the joke I should use.  Nah, that's stupid.  Maybe I could talk about "that guy who keeps talking but isn't as smart as he thinks he is" and it turns out I'm talking about both Rex Murphy and Harold Reynolds.

iVoted

With the election coming up, people are once again asking why we don't have online voting. Lots of people think making voting more convenient would finally stem the tide of decreasing voter turn-out.

Techie people seem to be of two minds when this subject comes up. Some will exhaustedly explain that, yes, we can do it without security problems. Others will shudder with fear at the mere mention of the possibility of online voting. I'm in that second group, so allow me to explain our case, and why people with the same knowledge can come to such different conclusions.

The problem is the difference between what can be done and what likely will be done. It's like at McDonald's: you might get a Big Mac that looks like the picture on the menu - there's no reason that it won't look like that. But in practice, it almost certainly won't.

And with software, it can be secure, but it probably won't be. One thing I've learned is that you can't assume software is safe. Because I'm all about analogies: let's say you're buying a car. If you're like me, you'd like a reasonably safe car. And yet, I probably wouldn't put much effort into ensuring the car I choose is safe. How does that make any sense? Because I know there's a lot of infrastructure making sure all cars are fairly safe. There are regulations, government testers, watchdog groups etc. Yes, I could do some research to make sure I get the safest car available, but I know that I can get away with not doing that research, because in our world even the least-safe car is still pretty safe.

But that's exactly the sort of assumption you can't make in software. There's little regulation and independent testing, so you can't assume anything. That's not to say that all software is insecure; but if you're getting custom software made and you want it to be secure, you'll have to specify that you want security, and pay extra for it.

And that's why I'm uneasy about online voting. That other group of techies is right: we can make a safe and secure online voting system. But it's unlikely that the bureaucrats and politicians that would have to oversee the project would know how much they'll have to push to get it made right. And in the world of government contracts, where it's either take-the-low-bid or take-the-lowest-bid-that-has-connections, it's pretty certain they won't be putting the needed money into the project. If you look to the U.S. and the low quality of their voting machines, I don't like our chances with online voting.

(Pause while I remove my computer geek hat and put on my amateur political pundit hat)

And I seriously doubt that online voting would even increase voter turn-out anyway. After all, voting is pretty convenient. Or at least, it’s as convenient as many of the other errands we run. The point is, if you care about politics, the act of voting is not asking a lot. There can’t be many people who truly care about the outcome of an election but can’t spare the fifteen minutes or so to take part. The fact is, the declining number of voters is due to people’s losing interest in, or knowledge of, politics. That’s what we have to fix; reducing the time to vote from fifteen minutes to one isn’t going to coax a vote out of someone with no concern for the political state of the country.

And that’s why I don’t want to see online voting anytime soon: It will be more dangerous than it has to be, and will not accomplish the results people want. Having said this, there are other premises for promoting it: After all, it would be a boon for people with physical challenges, or those in rural areas. On those grounds, perhaps we should weigh the costs and benefits. But if it’s just about enticing the elusive non-voter, then it’s not worth it.

Spirit of Radio

There's an ad on TV for Sportsnet, and it's trying to emphasize what a multi-media sports source it is.  They feature TV, radio, the web, apps, and a dead-tree magazine.  So to do this, they show a radio playing one of their stations, a TV showing sports, a tablet also showing sports etc.

What's weird is the radio they showed.  It's got a big round speaker and a big round dial, and I wasn't sure if it was supposed to be an old-fashioned radio, a modern radio that was trying to look retro, or a modern radio that was trying to be minimalist and accidentally looked retro. 

I guess what I'm getting at is that it's pretty much impossible for a radio to not look retro. No, it's not that radios are out of date, it's just that they no longer look like anything. When I tried asking myself what I would have expected a radio to look like, I didn't have an answer.  I have several radios, but they're just parts of a clock, stereo, car, even an MP3 player.  I don't really have a mental image of a radio.

So radios are now invisible. I wonder what other devices could become invisible in the future by being consumed by other things. Say, an MP3 player, since most people probably just use their phones for that. For a while now, tech pundits have predicted that computers will become invisible as they start to use gestures or voice commands, and start to get incorporated into TVs, appliances, clothes or houses (and as I'm writing this, I see a commercial for Amazon's "Echo" voice-activated thingamajig.) 

So if you're reading this on some big, intrusive device, it's something to think about.  Or, if this is being read-out to you by a computer woven into your shirt, then it's something to look back and laugh at.

The Wishful Thinking Is Out There

The question of whether or not aliens exist is an awkward one. On the one hand, some people will answer that question with any number of bizarre answers:

“Yes, I sure hope they exist.”
“Yes, and the Loch Ness Monster too.”
“Of course. Why, my uncle Kenny’s been abducted twice in the last year alone.”

Because of this, many people who are sensible (but not particularly knowledgeable) will answer the question with an emphatic no, congratulating themselves on their sensibility. It seems to make sense: You haven’t seen aliens, and their existence seems to be far beyond anything we’ve actually experienced.

But then you’ll get a different answer from someone who is sensible and more knowledgeable. If take someone like myself - who saw Cosmos and now thinks he’s an astronomy expert - and ask them if aliens exist, they’ll tell you that they most certainly do. After all, space is really big. So yes, even though life is surely unlikely to arise on any particular planet, there are so many possibilities, that life must exist somewhere out there. And if you ask the follow-up question, where are they (smartass)? They will refer you back to the “space is really big” principle.

But there’s a problem with that space-is-big, many-possibilities argument. See, space is not only big, it’s also old. It’s about four times older than life on earth, or 70,000 times older than modern humans. On the one hand, that fact adds to the lots-of-chances argument: not only are there lots of planets on which life could have arisen, but there’s been plenty of time for life to arise on them too.

The problem is when it begs that follow-up: Where are they? If the universe is so old, then not only must there be lots of alien races out there, but some of them must have been around for a long time. So even though space is big, they’ve had plenty of time to spread out, explore, and build lots of things. Even if we’re assuming that there’s no way to travel faster than the speed of light, and it will take years just to get to the nearest stars, a race could spread throughout our galaxy in, say, a million years. When you look at it that way, it doesn’t make sense that we haven’t seen any evidence of alien civilizations.

That’s called Fermi’s Paradox. We can’t explain why we can’t find any evidence of aliens, but we also can’t explain how there could not be aliens. There's a long list of interesting explanations for the paradox.

Why rehash this? The Kepler Space Telescope has found a star that appears to have thousands of objects orbiting it. That’s not unusual: a newly created star would have that. Over time, the matter surrounding it would accumulate into bigger and bigger chunks which would turn into planets. Anyone observing our sun five billion years ago would have seen the same thing. But this isn’t a new star, it’s “mature,” like ours. So it should only have a few planets orbiting it. No one has seen anything like this, and we aren’t sure what we’re looking at.

So if science can’t explain it, why not try some wild speculation? People have speculated that a really advanced civilization, with tremendous technology and voracious energy requirements, might build a Dyson Sphere. (Named for physicist Freeman Dyson, not the vacuum cleaner guy.) Essentially the idea is to build a shell around the star to collect all its energy, rather than just settle for the tiny little amount that falls on one planet.

In science fiction, this is often depicted as, literally, a big shell, where your people would live on the inside surface of the shell, with the star essentially above them. Yes, that’s right, there was one on a Star Trek episode once. But there’s a bunch of reasons why that probably wouldn’t work. So if an advanced civilization really wanted to make maximum use of their star’s energy, they’d more likely build something closer to what Dyson actually specified: a “swarm” of small structures of planetlets. They would all orbit the star, absorbing as much of its energy as possible.

So even though there’s probably some rational, boring explanation for this unusual star system, it does seem to resemble what we imagine a Dyson Sphere would look like. And it would provide an answer to Fermi’s Paradox, since this is the sort of thing we would expect to see, given how many really old, presumably advanced civilizations should be out there.

So please allow me to have my moment believing that this really is the sign of intelligent life we’ve always been looking for. Lots of people believe in things just because they want them to be true, and unlike them, at least I’m not voting based on it. And we could all use some good news: just when I was researching this, I found that most astrophysicists on social media were instead complaining about an astronomer given a slap on the wrist for serial sexual harassment. So let’s believe the aliens are there, and we have something better to aspire to.

We Don't Have To Take Our Clothes Off

It was a news story that caught just about everyone’s eye: Playboy is going to stop publishing nudity. So…

Things The Teenage Me Would Never Have Believed About Life In The Future, # 27

Playboy will voluntarily stop printing nude pictures of women. They’ll do this to try to increase circulation. Specifically, they’ll be hoping to get more younger readers.

Of course, the explanation for this new strategy was fairly obvious: porn is just too easy to get in this age of the Internet. I mean really, you’re on the Internet, why are you reading this now? You could be looking at porn. In that light, I really appreciate your readership.  Anyway, this is just another example of a new medium forcing old media to reassess what they do best. So non-nude Playboy is just like abstract art, when you think about it.

And it just might work. Playboy without nudity is essentially Maxim, which I see has about ten-times the circulation. They could position themselves as the more urbane version of the bro magazines. Strangely, Playboy would seem like the sophisticated version, and we could one day see someone reading a copy of Maxim, inside a copy of Playboy.

The lack of nudity would allow it to be sold in more places, so that would open up new markets. But perhaps more importantly, a lot of people will probably feel more comfortable buying it. That is, after all, the oddity of men’s magazines: Playboy has given up selling nude pictures of women - since you can get them for free on the Internet - yet Maxim has made a mint selling sexy but not nude pictures of women, which you can also get for free on the Internet. Essentially they are selling permission. It’s socially acceptable to look at a magazine from the local store, in a way that surfing for porn on the Internet is not. So Playboy is just looking for a little more acceptability.

How Soon Is Now?

I notice that a lot of people are focused on what kind of future we live in, and how far along we are in getting there. For instance, I’ve confronted the why-don’t-we-have-flying-cars question. And it seems as though more people are looking in amazement/frustration at how our world has changed from the world we were born into.

I'm wondering why we care so much about that. I mean, I don't remember in, say, the 80’s, people talking about whether or not they were living in the future imagined by people in the 30’s. I suppose that could be because, for people in the twentieth century, the future officially started in the year 2000.

Of course, that brings up the question of whether people in the nineteenth century looked to 1900 as "the future" and if so, how long after the turn of the century did people still think they were living in the future. They had certainly stopped by the time I was born.

It could be that 2000 was special because it was a turn of the millennium rather than just a century, but I suspect it has more to do with people's attitudes. If you remember the story of the patent officer who thought everything has already been invented, it seems people didn't really think they were living in an age of technological progress.

I just looked for a link to the story of the patent officer, and discovered that - surprise, surprise - it's a myth. Further, it turns out that the man in question was actually very optimistic about the many innovations coming in the future.  So that totally undermines my assumption.

Though I don't know if his certainty about the future of invention was shared by everyone at the time. Certainly, by my time in the late twentieth century were keenly aware of the movement of technology. In fact, we took it for granted, and were disappointed when it didn't love up to our expectations, or simply didn't go in the direction we expected. And that's exactly what happened: people of a certain age were promised flying cars, and instead got iPhones. Even someone like myself, who grew up after the period of greatest optimism about the future, still had his expectations coloured by those optimistic assumptions about the future.

Yearly reminder: unless you're over 60, you weren't promised flying cars. You were promised an oppressive cyberpunk dystopia. Here you go.

— Kyle Marquis (@Moochava) July 10, 2013

I realize this is pretty far down the techno-cultural rabbit hole, even for me. But thinking about ourselves as living in “the future” is probably going to have a big effect on how we look at things. You’d think that would be good; if we think of our world as something we’ve made, perhaps we’ll take a more active and thoughtful role in crafting it well.

Cup Of Mudslinging

Here's an ad sent to me by my local Conservative candidate. 

I'm not even sure where to begin.  The first thing I noticed is the "Career Politician" label they've put on Mr. Mulcair.  So now the Tories are criticizing one of their competitors over his lack of experience, and criticizing the other for having too much experience.  And of course, Mulcair and Harper have spent about the same amount of time in elected office.

But more than anything, I keep trying to imagine the planning that went into such an ad.  For instance, you know that actual adults with a great deal of education actually had a conversation about whether the coffee stain would be over-the-top.  They asked, how can we make Mulcair look as unprofessional as possible? 

We could write it in crayon, but that would come off as mean.  Let's go with the coffee stain.

Oh, but could that hurt us, make him sound like a man of the people, someone for the Tim Hortons crowd?  

Good point, we'll have to make it look like it came from a coffee cup, not a Tim's takeout cup.

I'm not one of those naive people who believes that negative ads don't work. But I'm wondering why this is the one type of advertising where subtlety goes out the window.  Even that semi-racist Hyundai ad wasn't this vicious with its depiction of its competitors (for instance, they weren't shown wearing stained clothing.)  And that ad was about as vicious as normal advertising gets.  It could be that they have less time to get their message across.  But then, the ads the Conservatives run between elections hit just as hard. So maybe someday we'll have parties using long-term brand-building strategies.  I think it would be much easier to take elections if they were just like reliving the 1980's cola war.

Eat Locally, Rant Globally

I have a long history of trying to recycle things. I sorted through the blue boxes in our early recycling program in high school, I tried to get my roommates to recycle in university. Living on my own, I've done everything I can to divert as much waste as possible from the landfill.

So I know just how hard it is to get people to understand what is and isn't recyclable. Many don’t consider that there has to be someone somewhere who sorts everything you put in the blue box. Or they just assume that putting other stuff in there will somehow make it magically become recyclable. Or they have bizarre reasoning, like assuming that if paper is recyclable, then wood is also recyclable.

But now I find myself on the other end of things whenever I eat at a food court in a shopping mall. In a commendable effort to be responsible, they’re introducing recycling. And they’re doing the best they can in an industry - fast food - that doesn’t try to hard to minimize waste.

Having said that, whenever I try to throw things out, I feel like I’m taking a test. There’ll be several categories, like paper and plastic, but then there’s also a “garbage” category. There are pictures to give examples of each category, but the pictures of the garbage also include plastic and paper things, so I’m still confused. What about a straw? I have no idea what kind of plastic that is. And you have cardboard in the paper section, but does that include waxy paper cups? So there I am looking back and forth at the different pictures, nervously grasping my Subway cup, while people line up behind me. I’m sure they’re quietly cursing me, with the final judgement coming when I make a decision and become a terrible person for either adding to the landfill unnecessarily, or for making life harder for some sorter.

The frustrating part of all this is that there’s only so many types of waste at a food court. Waxy drink cups, sandwiches and burgers in paper or foil, paper napkins, plastic cutlery, cardboard boxes, and the segmented plates from the chinese place. So you could just have a photo of everything people are going to throw out, and it will be nice and simple. And I’m sure whoever empties the recycling will be glad to take the photos for you.

Split The Difference

There's an old statistician's joke that points out the average person has one breast and one testicle. Well, more likely it's a joke about statisticians. I'm sure the statisticians themselves hear that and go on about the difference between means and modes, and that not everything is a bell curve, do you even know what a distribution is, etc.

But the point is that we often assume that the average thing is a popular thing, when it may actually be exceptional. An example is in poor countries, where you might see the average income listed as $1000 a year. But that's because most people get by on next-to-nothing, while a small elite are millionaires, bringing up the average. In fact, there's virtually no one in the country who actually makes $1000 a year.

Elections follow a similar pattern. When you're electing a national leader or ruling party, the people are essentially finding someone whose views are the average of everyone in the country. That sounds easy enough, but you could find that, like that gender-ambiguous average person, the average politician is hard to find.

So far in the American political process, we're seeing anything but the average. From the perspective of winning the election, it seems bizarre that both parties are ignoring strong candidates and fascinating themselves with far-from-mainstream folks that wouldn't do well in a general election.

Hillary Clinton is the best-known on either side. And Republicans don't seem to have noticed that a Jeb!-Kasich ticket would have one centre-sellable candidate from each of the main swing states. Trouble is, those folks who would come close to representing all of America don't have the passionate supporters needed to get them into the White House.

That means the election would end up being an all-or-nothing choice of the candidates that have a vocal minority with passion. Some would say that’s a good thing, but I don’t like it. Sure, I’d like to see a left-leaning guy like Bernie Sanders win the election, but I wouldn’t want to bet Western Civilization on an apocalyptic election against Donald Trump. I’d rather have a boring old election between candidates nearer the centre. Such an election would also offer the more moderate majority of Americans a choice of candidates closer to their ideology. So the election system is really messed up if it’s threatening to give us candidates that no one will be happy with.

But seriously, remember: Bush-Kasich ’16, I called it.

(Accurately) In The Zone

With the Blue Jays as the hottest sports property in Canada all of a sudden, their broadcaster, Sportsnet is trying to take advantage.  Normally at this time of year, the Canadian sports media would be covering the pre-season NHL with all the seriousness and analysis usually reserved for regular season games.  But instead, Sportsnet has been showing more classic (that is, 20+ year old) Blue Jays games. 

I've mentioned in the past some of the strange things I've noticed in these old broadcasts.  But recently I've noticed another couple of things: one is the absence of the pitch-tracker, that radar-or-whatever thing that tracks where the pitch crosses the plate, relative to the strike zone.  I kept looking over to the right side of the screen expecting to see a diagram of where the last pitch was.  Then I look down to see the count, and it's not there either.  How did people even understand baseball then?

But that leads to the other thing I noticed.  It really seems like balls and strikes are called much more accurately now.  Obviously, there are still mistakes, but for the most part, when you look at the pitch tracker, you see that incorrect calls are nearly always so close you can hardly blame the umpire for getting it wrong.  That's in sharp contrast to the wild calls we used to get, like when they first installed that camera in the SkyDome roof that showed the plate from above, and you could see that some strikes were six inches out of the zone.

So I was going to write a post about how it seems like strikes are more accurate, and I wonder if the new technology has anything to do with it, I'm probably the first person to wonder about this, but just in case, I'll Google it to find out.  Sure enough, fans of the most statistically-analysed sport on earth have been discussing this, arguing about it, and going full Chicken Little on the topic.

In short, yes they are better, yes it is because they've been training with technological feedback, and of course, some people have found a reason to believe this is a bad thing.  The problem is that now that the strike zone is being called accurately, it's increased strike-outs, and making it harder for hitters.  (Pause while Blue Jays fans laugh at the idea that modern baseball is too difficult for the batters.)

This is another example of one of the strange aspect of sports: The way officials and players settle into informal understandings of what is and isn't legal, which is often different from what is in the rule book.  Hockey is surely the most extreme example of this, where the rules are only sort-of enforced, yet fans and players have very specific expectations of how they're going to be sort-of enforced.  I've never understood this whole concept; if the rules are not good, surely it makes sense to change them, rather than ignore them.

The new accuracy of the strike zone puts baseball in the position where they may have to be formally changing the rules, rather than informally.  If there are too many strikeouts, they'll have to change the size or position of the strike zone.  That's especially true if they - as some suggest - drop the umpire altogether, and have a machine call balls and strikes.  I think that would be a good thing: if sports officiating could be made completely accurate, it will force leagues to confront aspects of their sports that they've ignored for a long time.  It would be good if basketball had to consider its problem with favouritism to star players, or if football had to actually define "holding."

You Had Several Jobs

It used to be that if they were going to reboot a movie franchise, they'd wait a few years. Like there was quite a gap between the Tim Burton Batman movie and the Christopher Nolan Batman movies. But now they think nothing of just restarting a franchise immediately. The Eric Bana Hulk movie didn't do well, so they just remade it a few years later. Even with a successful franchise like Spiderman just restarted once the trilogy was done.

And now we're seeing a new attempt at making Peter Pan grown up. And then there's the Steve Jobs franchise. The first movie was only modestly successful, so Hollywood just does what they always do: get a new actor and director, then redo the origin story, but make it a little grittier this time around.

As someone who was put off by the Jobs worship following his death, it's refreshing that this movie (or at least its marketing campaign) is willing to go warts-and-all. Obviously, we don’t yet know how the movie itself treats its subject, but someone at the studio thinks we’re Okay with a less-than-perfect Jobs.

So I wonder if this is a lesson to biographical filmmakers that sometimes it's necessary to wait. For instance, after Princess Diana died, there was some idle speculation about a biopic. That struck me as a really bad idea. Although her story was unique and intriguing enough for a movie treatment, it was much too early. If you think back to that time (if you were around then,) you'd have to agree the wild adoration wouldn't have allowed a balanced view of her life.

I'm still not sure we've had enough time to really look at Steve Jobs with 20/20 hindsight. Although we have a much better perspective now, there's still a great misconception of his part in the modern world. It would be like doing a biopic of Bill Gates in the 90's. Now that his career is mostly in the rear-view mirror, we could probably do well, but then we were still living in the world he built, so we couldn't see it realistically.