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.