No, It's Alright, You Don't Have To Be Back

One of the great things about science fiction is that a story can lead to the creation of at entire world. That is, the audience is inspired to imagine what else is in the world out the story. Yes, I know, lots of stories inspire the imagination of the audience, as any browse through fan fiction architects archives will prove. But science fiction is particularly well suited to this sort of speculation since it requires creation of a believable world for the characters to inhabit. When well done, the audience will want to know more about that works, even the parts that don't involve the story's characters.

This is one of the few areas where big-budget pop-sci-fi movies can outdo their literary cousins. Those expensive effects can (when done well) give the audience a sense of detail that gives a great sense of realism, where a sparse description may not.

But it doesn't have to be that way. A lot of good science fiction doesn't have a complex world behind it. Usually that's because the science is used more to set up a confrontation than to create a setting. I would point to the Alien series as an example. It's my some mind-bending sci-fi concept, so much as an excuse to create a great villain.

That's not a criticism. Action movies work by giving you a hero who's just slightly stronger/smarter/braver than the villain. Many lackluster movies accomplish this setup by giving you a semi competent villain and an average hero. But the best action movies give a very powerful hero who barely defeats a seemingly invincible villain. And that's where science fiction can contribute well: by providing us with a seemingly unstoppable bad guy.

But if a movie is primarily about that struggle between a perfect setup of hep and villain, we don't really need to know more about them. Take Die Hard, for instance (yes, despite what I wrote earlier, I did eventually see it.) Hans Gruber was a great bad guy because he seemed so well-prepared as to be invincible, but I didn't really have any interest in learning his back story. A movie about the life and times of Mr Gruber probably wouldn't be very successful. We didn’t need to know about him, we just needed to know what he’s like.

Similarly, I didn't really have much interest in learning where the xenomorphs in Alien came from. Having said that, there was a movie on that very topic, Prometheus, and I actually did enjoy it. But I approached it as a stand-alone story only tangentially related to the Alien series. I find that Alien fans who saw Prometheus looking for some great revelation about the Alien story were quite disappointed. Personally, I think that was because there wasn’t any way to create a backstory that would add to the franchise’s mythology.

Which brings me to the latest Terminator movie, out this week. Like a lot of people, I liked the first two Terminator movies. I would argue that's because they squarely fit into the pattern I'm talking about, with competent heroes vs invincible villain. And like Alien, it uses a fairly simple sci-fi premise to concoct that situation.

But I - and again, probably a lot of people - lost interest after that. The simple premise produced a nice action movie set up, and did it in an easy-to-follow way that didn't limit the movie's appeal to hard-core geeks. But it also meant that I didn't really feel the need to learn more of the story. I can’t really imagine walking out of Terminator 2 back in 1991 thinking, this story really needs three more movies and a TV series. And yet, they keep going to the well again and again. Yes, I know, it’s because they make money, it’s a recognizable brand, haven’t you been paying attention to the entertainment industry for the past twenty years, etc. But they don’t keep making Terminator properties by rehashing the successful formula. Instead they set movies in different time periods, or focus on different characters. It’s like they think this sci-fi universe demands fleshing-out, Star Wars style. I wish they would understand that some stories don’t need, or even benefit from, extensive exploration.

Getting On My Soapbox

It’s summer, so there may be a soapbox derby in your community on an upcoming weekend. Here's something I've always wanted to know: should a soapbox car be heavy or light.

You might instinctively say, "light," because all things being equal, lighter cars are faster.

...but that's when you have an engine pushing the car's mass. In this case, it's gravity pulling the car down. So the weight shouldn't matter, because, as Galileo showed, things fall at the same speed, regardless of mass.

...but that's in a vacuum. In an atmosphere, heavier things fall faster, because they have more force to overcome aerodynamic drag. So a heavier car would be faster.

...but, a heavier car will have more rolling resistance, because the weight of the car will be pushing down on the axles, increasing the friction.

I tried googling this question once before and never got a straight answer. I tried again just now and found someone with experience had answered this. Yes, there are engineers with extensive experience with soapbox cars; surely that’s not a surprise. The answer is, it depends.

Things the Teenage Me Would Never Have Believed About Life In The Future, #24

One of the world's biggest news stories is something called a “Wikileaks dump.”

I Am Aware Of Too Many Things

I don't normally listen to the music in stores and waiting rooms.  We'll, I guess no one really listens to it; it's intended to be an unconscious, background thing. Saying you listen to it is like saying to look at wallpaper.  I have written about it in the past.  So the fact that I notice it at all shows that I listen to it more than most.

Anyway, the reason I've noticed the background music recently is that twice in the past week, I've heard "What I Am" by Edie Brickell & New Bohemians.  That song is from 1988, and it's folky style doesn't make it candidate for 80's nostalgia, so I haven't heard it many times in the quarter-century since it was released.

(For some reason I always associated the song with hearing her perform it on Saturday Night Live, and according to Wikipedia, that was the night she met her husband, Paul Simon.)

So why the sudden popularity of this song?  I've heard that songs can be revived unexpectedly if they test well on focus groups.  Yes, big radio companies do test songs on people before they go into regular rotation, and they'll play even old songs if the guinea pigs like it.  This was a few years ago when Bruce Springsteen's "Dancing in the Dark" suddenly made it onto many radio stations.

But that doesn't explain how they decide which songs get to the focus groups.  I mean, they can't test the entirety of recorded music on those people - someone must make a decision what gets put in front of the test groups, and they are the closest thing we have to the traditional DJ.

I Am Panning The Games

Last week, the "Stats Canada" satirical Twitter account reported that the Pan-Am Games are 3% as impressive as the Olympic Games. If you're praise Ontario, I probably have to give you context that Toronto is hosting the Pan-Am Games this summer. And in needing to inform you of that, I've pretty big confirmed the point of the joke. I'd been meaning to write something about the Pan-Am Games, and that tweet was closely related to the point I was going to make, so here it is:

Hosting the Olympics is expensive - the summer games will cost $10 billion+, and that even if you don't have a Putin-style ego-and-corruption-fueled spending spree. We can argue ‘til the cows come home about whether that is - in any sense - "worth it" in terms of our spending priorities and value for the money. But let's acknowledge that when it comes to buying publicity, it is at least possibly worth the money: you spend through the nose, but the prize is that you get the world's undivided attention for two weeks, and get a mention in sports history forever.

If you're going to host one of the "secondary" games like the Pan-Ams (or equivalents on other continents) or the Commonwealth Games. You'll spend about a tenth as much (Toronto is spending about $2.5 billion.) So if the Olympics are close to worth it at ten-times as much, the question is, do those secondary games get you one-tenth the publicity for one tenth the money?

And the answer is clearly no. The fact is, hardly anyone who's not hosting notices these games. To put it in perspective, I tried naming the Summer Olympics host cities of the top of my head, and was able to name all of them back to Rome in 1960. But when it comes to the Pan-Am hosts, well, I remembered Winnipeg hosting it back in the 90's, and I remember Indianapolis in the 80's when I first heard of the Pan-Ams, but that's it.

The fact is, we in Canada are suckers for the lesser games like the Pan-Ams. They appeal to two of our main national characteristics: wishing the world would pay attention to us, and being cheap. So we spend big-but-not-huge bucks on these events that seem Olympicy.  It's sort of like buying off-brand products at Walmart and congratulating ourselves on saving money, not considering that they'll fall apart in a couple of months.

Soccer Stars

You may have seen this week that a new galaxy has been named after Cristiano Ronaldo. Well, it’s technically named “CR7” which is his nickname/brandname, combining his initials and number. As you may know, he’s one of the sports megastars with his own symbol, which is a stylized CR7.

It's bad enough that we confuse him with Ronaldo, now we have a galaxy in his honour too. And there are so many galaxies out there that Ronaldo will eventually get his own, and that will surely lead to a massive war centuries from now.

And that's what's weird about this. For a while now they've been naming asteroids after people, and that seems reasonable. You're a good person; here, have a big rock. But galaxies? It may seem like a little smudge on the lens from our perspective, but it is a collection of billions of stars and planets. The billion-year-old collective experience of entire civilizations, and we named it after the second-best soccer player of his generation.

(Speaking of which, there's a list of major galaxies and other astronomical phenomena called the Messier objects. I tried to make a "Messi-eh" joke, couldn't make it work.)

Now really, this is unlikely to be a problem. If humanity survives and advances to the point where we could ever get to the Ronaldo galaxy, it will surely be so far into the future that our current names for things will be long forgotten. But who knows. In the same way we still use the name America long after we’ve forgotten what was so great about Amerigo Vespucci, these names could survive.

Sure, it may seem like there are lots of things out there to name after people. It’s estimated that there are far more galaxies out there than people on Earth, so we could afford to hand out galaxy names just for remembering to do a shoulder-check changing lanes. But if we were to expand through the cosmos, we’d run out of galaxies to name after ourselves, and then we’d regret wasting a bunch of them on athletes. "Well, Zartog, we appreciate your single-handedly saving the Stellar Alliance from the Jarfan raiders of the Beckham Galaxy, but we ran out of unnamed galaxies a few years ago. Here, have a rock."

American Woman, Listen What I Say

Donald Trump's entry into the U.S. presidential race has attracted quite a bit of attention.  There were a lot of complaints about the rally in which he introduced his candidacy, mostly his bizarre and insulting remarks about Mexicans.  But one of the more predictable reactions was that Neil Young didn't appreciate Trump's use of Keep On Rocking In the Free World.

Of course, that was obvious.  I mentioned before that conservative politicians have to get used to a limited selection of artists who will allow the use of their songs.  At this point, I'm assuming they're betting on the no-such-thing-as-bad-publicity concept.  Although in Trump's fault, I'm betting he just didn't care.  He certainly didn't care that the song was a criticism of the conservative American politics of the eighties.

What's weird is that at the same time, Nike is running ads in the U.S. promoting the Women's World Cup.  And the featured music?  American Woman by the Guess Who.  I'd assume that in this case, the necessary permissions were granted, but the bigger question is, has anyone listened to the lyrics?  The song is quite anti-American, using the titular character as a symbol of a seductive but dangerous culture.

Of course, misunderstanding songs is hardly new - here's a list, and here's another example. But in the two songs I've documented here, the similarity is not just that they are inappropriate, but in both cases people were looking for pro-American songs, and somehow used anti-American songs, by Canadians.  Somehow that represents our national personalities perfectly: we're so obsessed with them that we write songs about them, and then they don't listen to what we actually sing.

Pax Canadiana

What am I supposed to write about tonight?  The latest annoying TV commercial? Political analysis? Something about cars? Wait, what's that, Bloomberg has an article predicting Canada could be the next superpower? Drop everything, that's the topic.

The argument is threefold: first is resources, which we have plenty of. But I don't really buy that as a reason for gaining power. I could point out that the Middle East has lots of resources, but it's mostly just got them empty displays of wealth, plus invasions by the countries with actual power. But mainly I dismiss the argument because my ancestors came from a glorified rock off the coast of Europe and came to dominate the world for a century. When it comes down to it, the powerful can buy, borrow, or steal whatever resources they need.

The second point is that we have a relatively efficient, effective and trusted government. (I'll pause now so my Canadian readers can stop laughing.) Note that I said relatively. As I've mentioned before, we seem to be far more able to get things done than or American and European brethren. I'd like to think that we can keep that up, but I feel like the partisanship and risk-aversion that have paralysed other western nations threaten us too. We merely seem to be less far-along the road to political stalemate.

His third point, immigration, is the most compelling. Our immigration rate remains high. For one thing, that will remedy the biggest argument against or world domination: our relatively small population. But a diverse population has tended to be a trait of innovative times and places.

I do think that is our strongest characteristic at the moment. And it's accented by the fact that Europe, Australia and Japan are strongly anti-immigrant to the point of xenophobia, relight at the time they should be letting more people in to avoid demographic disaster caused by crashing birthrates. The Americans have recently been rather paranoid on immigration issues, though to be fair, it seems like they could be softening in that issue. But if they don't, Canada could be left as the only big developed-world immigration destination.

As for other world powers, it's easy to imagine Europe fumbling away their power with indecisiveness, mistrust, and poor planning. Japan arguably already has done that with its inability to reform its economy. Then there's the Americans. For all the talk of their decline, I still believe they have a lot of life left in them, but who knows how well they'll deal with their current ideological schism. And they appear to be one Rick-Perry-with-charisma from disaster.

Then there are the developing nations. Though most assume China's dominance is a foregone conclusion, I'm far more sure that:

1. Their economic boom can't last forever.
2. The people will demand democracy eventually, and
3. #2 will probably happen right after #1.

I still have my money on the dark horse India for world domination, but their political fragility, cultural diversity, corruption, and portly distributed wealth. As for the rest of the BRICS, is appearing that their wealth is greatly based resource sales due to the growth of China.

Of course that brings up perhaps the best argument against Canadian dominance: our economy has always ridden the coattails of the Americans, so it's hard to imagine a scenario where we replace a fading America, given that we'd likely fade right along with them. One would have to count on the idea that an influx of global talent would take us out of our traditional branch-plant mentality.

So it's not too likely that Canada would be a superpower. It’s possible, but would take a lot of things falling just right. And that’s just to be a relatively big power; I don’t think there’s any scenario where we would end up facing off against, say, South Korea in a new Cold War.

Take My Name, Take My Name

A lot of people are talking about actress Zoe Saldana getting married, and her husband taking her last name, rather than vice versa. That’s pretty controversial, and it’s great for our modern media, since it’s something they can talk about without doing any research or delivering any facts. Just run down all the possible reactions people have to it, and that’s considered enough. Though I am surprised none of the news stories have mentioned that there's already a male celebrity who took his wife's last name. I'll give the answer at the end.

Is amusing that this is such an unusual thing that the media isn't sure how to report on it. I just read an article reporting that Marco Perego changed his name. I believe that should be, "Marco Saldana, nee Perego." Seriously, you reported that a man changed his name, using his old name.

I'm actually pretty surprised that the wife-taking-the-husband's-name tradition is still as strong as it is. I never would have believed that we'd have gay marriage at a time when it's still expected that women take the man's name. For that matter, there seems to be more open vitriol and debate over a man changing his name than changing his gender.

It's not just the tradition’s longevity that surprises me, it's the enthusiasm with which it is still enforced. I've seen women get quite upset with women who don't take their husband's name. I've heard of businesses that automatically change a woman's name in their contact info when she gets married; they find they gave less anger from women about the automatic change than they get from women annoyed the change wasn't automatically acknowledged.

So why is it still going strong? It could be self-perpetuating: as long as women think of their name as belonging to their father, the less attached they are to it. And one could argue that a marrying woman is choosing between her father’s name and her husband’s, so neither is really a unique part of her identity. I haven’t talked to many women about this, but what I have heard - and read in a brief online search - is that there aren’t many deep explanations of why women change their name. It seems that the costs of changing your name are small, so if the expectation is that you will take the husband’s name unless you have a good reason not to, then you probably will. While the man will keep his name, because he doesn't have a reason not to.  Unless you're Jack White, then you'll take Meg's name.

You're Watching The Turing News Network

There's a phrase you sometimes see in discussions of artificial intelligence: "Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana." That phrase illustrates some of the problems with getting computers to understand human language.

• "Flies" can be a plural of a common insect, or the third-person singular form of the verb "fly"
• "Like" is either a verb indicating affection, or a preposition indicating similarity.
• Many nouns (such as "fruit") can be turned into adjectives.

See, it's grammatically legitimate to assume that these sentences are telling us that time-traveling insects use arrows as their weapon of choice, and fruit travels through the air in the same way a banana does. The point is that you can't understand human speech or writing without a lot of background knowledge about the human experience. And that's why you should be patient with Siri.

Of course, even other human beings sometimes misunderstand things when the meanings of words and phrases are ambiguous. I find this happens to me often when reading the news scroll on BBC World News. I mentioned this on Twitter a couple of months back:

BBC World, a headline like "French Air Strike" sounds rather more military than what you meant, "Air France Strike"

— Jason Roe (@JasonTRoe) April 8, 2015

But then last night I had a great deal of trouble parsing the headline, "Baby from ovary frozen in childhood." Wait, was the baby frozen? Wouldn't the baby have to be frozen in childhood; I mean, it hasn't experienced any other life stages yet. And aren't all babies from ovaries?

This was followed by the solemn even-harder-to-read news about the Alps plane crash: "Alps crash remains land in Germany." Does no one read these?

There’s also the problem that the scroll is all in capitals, and they are unable or unwilling to use periods in initials. That makes American news hard to read. A visit by the CEO of China’s Alibaba.com to the U.S. comes out as, "Alibaba boss in us charm offensive." Really, he's in us right now? And I thought Amazon was everywhere.

And they just had to decode to refer to ISIS/ISIL/Islamic State as "IS". With the U.S. fighting them, you get a headline like, “Us ‘spends $9M a day’ fighting is.”

Go Strip It On The Mountain

You may have seen the story out this weekend about the tourists who were accused of starting an earthquake in Malaysia. Of course, hearing an opener like that, I wanted to see more of the story. The explanation was, these travelers - including a couple of Canadians - got naked to pose for pictures on top of a mountain. There was an earthquake the next day, and the locals believed it was because the mountain spirits were angry.

So I thought, that's ridiculous, earthquakes are about tectonic plates, modernize your religion. (And lest you call me eurocentric, I'd say the same to Christians who blame hurricanes on abortion or gay marriage.)

But then we find out, this mountain is sacred to the locals, tourists are asked to be respectful, it's like a church to them, and you wouldn't strip down in the middle of St. Peter's now would you?

Well, when you put it that way, I do hate it when people are unnecessarily insulting and confrontational. We all should me more respectful of one another, even when we disagree.

But we can't live our lives to avoid offending people. There are way too many people with way too many rules. If you're going to change your behaviour because it offends people, you're going to have everyone wearing burqas to avoid offending someone's God. Oh, I'm sorry, "G-d."

Of course, that's hardly the same thing. It is their mountain, after all. They're not telling you not to get naked in the privacy of your own home. Or your own mountain. They expect you to follow their rules in their land.

I've seen that attitude before, that moral rules are different in other places, and we should accept things that we consider wrong if it's in a place with different cultures and traditions. But I've always believed that there are - at least in the context of human beings - absolute rules of morality, and tradition shouldn't be an excuse for ignoring them.

Having said all that, we often have to accept unjust things as a matter of practicality. Its just the price of civility. In this example, I seriously doubt that their god is punishing the locals for the tourists misbehaviour. But going along with their not-very-restrictive rules on their mountain seems like a reasonable price to get along with them.

And that's why I don't like either side's knee-jerk responses on the question of offending others. To the folks who are presumable busy printing up "je suis naked tourists" t-shirts, I'd point out that we constantly curtail our behaviour for the sake of those we disagree with. And to those who always prioritise lack of offense, realize that you can't tolerate everyone, because some won't tolerate you. Sadly, this is another issue where we're forced to think, not just react.

Just Like Starting Over

The Tampa Bay Lightning are going for their second Stanley Cup. A second would be pretty impressive for a team that only dates back to 1990. Of course, other teams can claim similar accomplishments (the Avalanche won two cups in less time.) But what would be impressive is that the Lightning would be doing it with a different core of players. Their first was only eleven years ago, yet the principal players from that team have moved on. In fact, they don't have a single player left from the first cup.

If you'll permit me a sports-stats geek-out, I'm wondering how many franchises have won at least two championships with entirely different teams? That is, you can point out two championships in their history without a single person on the roster for both.

In the NHL, all original six teams have done it (yes, even Toronto; they may not have won in decades, but their wins were spread over fifty years.) The only other team I can think of is Pittsburgh, who won two cups in the Lemieux-Jagr era, and another in the Crosby-Malkin era.

As for other leagues, here are all the multi-roster winners I could find with Wikipedia and fifteen minutes:

NFL: Cowboys, Steelers, Packers, Colts*, Giants, and 49ers. (If you're asking, "What about Jerry Rice?" Remember that he wasn't there for their first two Superbowls.)

Major League Baseball: Red Sox, Yankees, Mets, Phillies, Pirates, White Sox, Cardinals, Braves*, Athletics, Dodgers, Giants*, Twins*, Tigers (Contrary to people’s impressions, the Marlins did have a few players on both their World Series Winners.)

NBA: Lakers, Celtics, 76ers, Pistons, Warriors

(* = only if you count championships won in other cities)

Alma Matters

A few days ago I received a call from the university alumni association asking for a donation. Of course, they don't immediately ask for money, there's a few other questions first. 

I don't want to sound too cynical - I understand that the university needs money, and asking for it up front is both unprofitable and impolite. But it is a bit, um, artificial to pretend the call is to make sure you still have my contact information correct. They did, after all, call me.

But they also talk about the new buildings on campus. Again, I understand: it's a nice segue to asking for money. But they always seem to bring it up by asking if I've been to campus lately.  So I have to ask, what am I supposed to be doing on campus, all these years after I've graduated? Both the alumni association and newsletter make it sound like I should hanging out there on a regular basis, but I can't really think what would bring me to campus to see all the new buildings my donation helped pay for.

Sure, I have been back to campus since graduation: a few times I've used the library, and I've researched grad school possibilities. But being in a fast-changing field, and knowing about the Internet, there's less reason to actually go to their library. If we had, you know, school spirit, I might go to football games. 

Eventually, when they ask if I've been to campus lately, I'll just say, I don't remember, have you had reports of some creepy old guy hanging out nearby?

What Else Is In A Name?

Lots of people are taking about the Vanity Fair cover featuring Caitlyn Jenner. If you somehow missed the story - I assume because it was intercepted by your computer's "Kardashian Filter" - she was until recently known as Bruce Jenner.

It's been pleasantly surprising how the public has been quite supportive of her. Other than the usual suspects, the media has been complimentary, and respected her requested name and pronouns.

But I do have one problem with all this: as a Jason, I'm very sensitive to the fact that names come and go in popularity. So I find it quite incongruous when I see a 65 year-old woman named "Caitlyn." I have to carry around a sign of my age on every ID, and you shouldn't get a free pass just because you're transgender. So I purpose that we establish the rule now at the dawn of transgender acceptance: you have to choose a name that was popular at the time you were born.  That's all I ask, then I'll wholeheartedly support you, Mary Jenner.