Eyeworm

An "earworm" is a song that gets caught on your head and won't go away. For instance, recently I've found the song "Spirits" by The Strumbellas going through my head. That song has the chorus,

I got guns in my head and they won't go
Spirits in my head and they won't go

Of course, that's pretty ironic to have the song in my head and it won't go. I start to wish I also had spirits with guns in there, they might scare the song out.

Well, recently I was listening to Internet radio on my phone. This particular radio app gives the name of the song on the phone's notifications, which is convenient because you can check the name of the song or artist without going to the app itself. Unfortunately, there's a bug: if you close the app, sometimes the name of the song currently playing stays in the notifications list, even though the song is long gone, and the app is closed.

When this happens, there doesn't seem to be any way to remove the song name, short of restarting the phone. So for the next few days, whenever I check messages, texts, or e-mails, somewhere in the list, I see "Hozier - Take Me To Church." That's a pretty earwormy song, and I find that just reading the name makes it go through my head.

But when a song sticks in your head after you've heard it, you can replay that fresh and accurate memory to yourself. When it's triggered by something else, you're singing the song based on faded memories. I find myself with fragments of the song that bleed into other tunes, and suddenly I have three different songs in my head, and they're all out of tune, with the wrong lyrics.  To defeat it, I have to listen to some other music, so I start up the radio app and begin the cycle all over again.

You Underestimate The Power Of The Gray Side

Something that's always bugged me about the Star Wars movies: Return of the Jedi never gets its due. The rest seem to have their personalities and reputations, for better or worse:

• Star Wars (I, like many, refuse to call it A New Hope) was the first one, the most emotionally satisfying, and really, the best one.
• The Empire Strikes Back is the one movie snobs insist was the best.
• The Phantom Menace was the disappointing one.
• Attack of the Clones was the worst one.
• Revenge of the Sith was the somewhat-redemptive one.
• Time will tell, but The Force Awakens will probably be remembered as the nostalgic one.

But Return of the Jedi is the George Harrison of the series. It pads out the numbers, but we're not really sure what to think about it. It usually just reminds people of Ewoks, for better or worse. Or recycling the blowing-up-the-Death-Star-with-a-fatal-design-flaw premise of the first movie. Or killing thousands of independent contractors.

But I always appreciated the message at the end that violence begets violence, that anger in any direction is all part of The Dark Side. I know many people have ridiculed this concept over the years, but it seemed like a profound insight to me.

(Warning! Severe topic change ahead!)

Take Israel for instance. A few people have pointed out that the Palestinian terrorist organization Hamas and Israel's conservative and hawkish Likud party are essentially allies. Likud have positioned themselves as the only ones who can stand up to the terrorists who threaten Israel, and Hamas have positioned themselves as the only ones strong enough to fight for Palestinian interests. So war and violence benefits them both, because they can use it to convince their people that their more aggressive approach is necessary.  And that aggressive approach fuels the next round of revenge that keeps the system self-sustaining.

And now we're seeing the pattern play out again with Donald Trump.  He's peddling a get-tough approach to, well, everything.  But most notable is his most shocking policy, a ban on Muslims entering the country. To no one's surprise, he has started popping up in ISIS recruitment videos., since an American politician demonizing Islam is a good way to convince Muslims that America is out to get them.  Once again, the enemies' behaviour is mutually beneficial.

But the similarity gets clearer when you consider the ISIS statement that they wanted to eliminate the "gray zone," which is the part of the world where there is mixing of cultures.  By that, they mean much of the Western World.  Terror attacks there promote anti-Muslim feelings, and leave Muslims afraid of reprisals against them, and thus discouraging the mixing of religious followers. And sure enough, Trump and his supporters similarly dislike the ambiguous, open, and multicultural world we've created. Their motivations may be different, but both are served by policies of separation and purity.

Okay, there's now no way I can segue from Donald Trump back to Star Wars, other than showing this picture. I guess I should also assure you that despite my respect for the philosophies of the series, I will not be listing my religion as "Jedi" on the next census.  But at a time when many politicians seem to have acquired their aggression at the movies, perhaps it's an improvement to get more positive values there instead.

Box Set

How did we get to the point where we have to connect boxes to our TVs?  It wasn't that long ago when the TV plugged into a cable in the wall.  But now, you've got the cable box.  (Or satellite box, or Phone Company acting like a cable company box.)  I mean, how would you explain this to someone from fifty-years ago?

Our TVs are bigger and wider!  But they're really flat!  And we get hundreds of chanels!
Wow! You just connect to the cable system and you get that many chanels?
Well, no.  We have to connect the TV to this box, and then it connects to the cable.
Oh.  What's in the box?
I dunno, some kind of electronics.
I see.  It must be dangerous to put electronics in the TV itself.
No, it's full of electronics too.

So why is this?  Is it just because companies couldn't agree on digital standards?  Or they couldn't think of another way to make us rent PVRs?  The need to rent them is bad enough, but I find the biggest annoyance is the need to turn it on.

Having two devices that need to be on for me to watch TV is really aggrevating.  I know on some systems, you turn on the TV, and see a message telling you to turn on the box.  That begs the question of how the box is telling you to turn it on if it's off.  But that's just part of our modern world where "off" has become a relative term.

On my system it's even more confusing, since the box appears to be on all the time, but still requires me to turn it on to use it.  That is, I turn on the TV, it starts showing beautiful colour TV programing, just like I expect TVs to do.  But after a few seconds, the screen goes blank and is replaced by a message telling me to hit "Select" on the remote if I want to watch TV.  To that I feel like pointing out that I just was watching TV a second ago, why do I need to press a button. 

Apparently the cable box just sits there all day long broadcasting to my TV, but as soon as it notices that I've turned on the television, it stops.  I have no idea how this makes sense to anyone, other than to make sure I'm paying attention.  I'd hypothesize that this behaviour grows out of the "inactivity" feature cable boxes seem to have, where they turn off (or threaten to turn off) if no one has changed chanels in several hours. 

I guess it says something about our current media behaviours that they assume no one will watch the same chanel for three hours straight.  Is that a good thing, that we don't spend as much time watching TV now, or a result of lowered attention-spans, that they assume we're going to jump from one chanel to another.  Certainly there are still reasons why we might become traditional couch potatoes again.  I found my cable box went blank and anounced it was about to turn off due to inactivity - I swear I'm not making this up - with one out to go in the Jays' deciding game against Texas in this year's playoffs.

So please, electronics companies and cable providers, get this sorted out so we can just have a one-piece TV.  I'd rather have that than a TV that has a Twitter app.  Or 3D.  Or 4K.

Requiem For A McDonald's

Our local McDonald's is closing. Of course, this being downtown Kitchener, it's not a conventional McDonald's; it's in Market Square. That's an urban mall that has its own depressing story, but suffice to say it's yet another Canadian downtown mall that hasn't done well in recent decades. It's largely empty, even though most of it has been repurposed for other uses.

But thanks to office workers' lunch needs, the second floor food court has hung on to life, much longer than it has any right to. There are local food vendors that have come and gone, a Tim Hortons that was replaced by a Subway, and a Chinese place that I don't think anyone has noticed isn't Manchu Wok. But the McDonald's has been consistently popular.

As I say, it's not an ordinary McDonald's. For one thing, the mall's attempt to reinvent itself has meant that this is one of the few fast food places directly outside a health club.  (I've always wondered which of them benefits from that arrangement.) And being a mere counter, it doesn't even carry the full menu. Really, I think the whole place would fit in the ball pit at a suburban McDonald's Play Place.

But it's also unusual in its clientele. In an urban setting, the average wealth of the customers is probably a lot lower than your average. I've noticed that orders tend to be pretty small, many go for the free refills, and people pick and choose from the menu looking to stretch their cash. That gets pushed in your face when you're waiting for your order, and realizing customers have become experts in maximizing value.

Manager: I have three double cheeseburgers and an apple pie! Here you go sir. Who else is still waiting for their order? You sir, what are you waiting for?
Me: A Big Mac combo
Manager, to kitchen: Do we have a Big Mac meal for Mr. Big Spender here?

I guess that's a big part of why it's closing. Supposedly fast food places make their money in certain very specific items, like drinks, so I can image this place doesn't make much money. But I do worry about the many people who have been regulars. I know, as a lefty I'm supposed to blame McDonald's for exploiting the poor, but I don't see many locally-owned fair-trade artisan restaurants selling anything you could call a meal for just pocket change.

New York Solitudes

Lots of people are weighing-in on a recent New York Times article declaring that Canada is now "hip." This is based in part on the election of Justin Trudeau, but also on a selection of Canadians. Not surprisingly it includes Drake, The Weeknd, and Justin Bieber. I was surprised to see Sarah Polley, since it seems like she's been around forever. But she is only a couple of years older than Ryan Gosling (also on the list.) But there were also lots of non-obvious selections; nice to see them recognizing Grimes.

But this isn't the only time Canada has made a prominent appearance in a New York newspaper.  The New York Post had a notable cover attacking Ted Cruz. In the latest Republican debate, Cruz had attacked "New York values" as an indirect way of attaching Donald Trump. So the Post - which is living proof that some New Yorkers have values in common with Cruz - showed a cartoon of The Statue of Liberty giving the finger. That was pretty appropriate, but what bothered me was the comment that Cruz should "Go back to Canada." (Cruz was born in Canada.)

Aside from the fact that we don't want him back, there's the obvious point that Canadian values have a lot more in common with New York values than with the extreme social conservatism Cruz is selling. But this is part of a trend: I've seen many Americans associate Cruz with Canada without appreciating the irony, and in some cases actually thinking Cruz is somehow an example of Canadians.

So I'm not sure what New Yorkers must think of us: some see us as cool, in part because of a liberal politician, while others find us an appropriate dumping ground for a politician who's conservative even by American standards.

California Here We Come...

...right back where we started from. That refers to the St. Louis Rams moving back to Los Angeles. Yes, I realize that's not totally accurate, because the franchise started in Cleveland, but the point is that it's spent most of its existence in Los Angeles.

As a fan of the team, I have mixed emotions. I don't like seeing a team move, but this does bring them back to where I've always known them. Oh, by the way Mom and Dad, I'll be by soon to dig all my "Los Angeles Rams" stuff out of your basement.

It's also good to see that the yet-to-be-built stadium will be privately funded, which is a rarity in modern sports. It had appeared that if the team stayed in St. Louis, it would have been in a blackmail-funded stadium. I know that may seem like weak compensation for losing your team, people of St. Louis, but at least you don't have to pay for a stadium.

The funny/sad part of the story is that there were three teams wanting to move to L.A. The Rams were given first dibs, the San Diego Chargers can move in to the same stadium next year if they wish. And if they don't, the Oakland Raiders will get the opportunity. And among the further layers of irony:

• All three teams have already been based in Los Angeles before.
• The Rams and Raiders both left in 1994, allowing America's second-largest city to go from two teams directly to none. Then, after two decades of the league operating perfectly well with no team there, three teams want to move to L.A. as soon as possible.

Most people seem to be hoping that the Chargers stay in San Diego. Aside from the fact that they've been in the city for a half-century, it appears that their desire to move is not just the greed of getting a new stadium, but the greed of wanting part of the big L.A. market, rather than be satisfied with the adequate San Diego market.

If they don't move, Oakland certainly will. Their owner, Mark Davis, has the odd distinction of being the least-wealthy NFL owner. That may not sound like much, but it means he is one one the few owners who honestly does need government help to build a new stadium.

And as an aside: women, I know you hate it when your accomplishments her ignored and you are discussed and judged on your appearance. So I invite you to luxuriate in the criticism directed at Davis for his awful haircut. Sure, it doesn't make up for the millennia of superficial judgement you've suffered, but take a minute to enjoy it.

But I wonder if the Los Angeles market is as good as these owners think it is. It wasn't too supportive of the Rams in the past. Admittedly those were a lot of mediocre teams, but note that none of the city's three suitors is particularly strong right now.

Also, there seems to be a parallel with the disappointing series of Buffalo Bills games in Toronto. In that case, there seemed to be an assumption that because there are a lot of people in Canada who follow the NFL, there'd be a lot of enthusiasm for games involving the nearest team. But that didn't work out, because many Canadian NFL fans arbitrarily cheer on some far-off team with whom they have no real connection. I'm a great example: I'm writing this article on a team I chose at age eight because I thought their helmets looked cool. So I wonder, after the city of Los Angeles had gone a generation with no local team, how many people have developed attachments to other teams. Possibly the Rams will face a few years of crowds with divided loyalties. And that could be worse if there are two local teams diluting civic pride.

But still, I'll be cheering for them, even if locals don't. Now if you'll excuse me, I have I have an Eric Dickerson jersey to look for.

The Musical South Pacific

The BBC has an interesting page allowing you to find your city's "musical twin. " Here's the premise: someone's analyzed the information from Shazam, the music recognition app. Specifically, they've found which songs are most commonly accessed in each city. Then they've gone through all the cities, trying to find city's that look up the same songs. So now you can look up your city, and find another city somewhere else in the world that seems to have the same taste in music as your home.

So I looked up Kitchener, and I was surprised to find that out musical twin is Muar, Malaysia. It's a similarly sized city, about halfway between Kuala Lumpur and Singapore. So there's an interesting but useless but of trivia. Just to compare, I looked up other cities around southern Ontario. Toronto got Beer Sheva, Israel. But then London, Ontario got Sandakan, Malaysia. It's at the other end of Malaysia, but still, that's weird. So I looked up other cities nearby that were in the database.  Windsor, Buffalo, Niagara Falls, NY, and Detroit were all paired with Johor Bahru, Malaysia, which is near Muar. Erie, PA was partnered with Malaysia's capital, Kuala Lumpur.

So what's going on? I was beginning to suspect that this study was a fraud, and they just put in a bunch of random cities from Malaysia because that would sound exotic and impressive. I tried cities from other parts of the U.S. and Canada, and there were still lots of Malaysian results, though not as completely as in this part of the world. And I tried some British cities, but they were mostly trying with New Zealand.

So I have no idea what to make of this. Apparently we have a strange musical connection with people on the other side of the world. I'm sure you could come up with some impressive pseudoscience to explain it, involving the magnetic field of the earth's core to transmit or thoughts. And after you've explained that, try explaining why people all over the world need an app to recognize Adele's "Hello." Seriously, it was number one everywhere, probably even Malaysia.

Virtual Insanity

You may have seen a posting passed around social media in the past couple of days: someone says that if we just divide the $1.3 billion Powerball jackpot among the 300 million out so Americans, everyone would get a million dollars. Of course, they are mistaken in a way that's hard to comprehend. I can accept that many people are not good calculating with large numbers. But putting the math aside, they apparently think that after we've amassed a big pile of money by having many Americans pitch in a few dollars at a time, you can then divide that pile among all Americans and get millions a piece.

The first time I saw it, it was just a screen capture of a Facebook status making this case. But then I saw the idea expressed again, this time as a nice, neat graphic, complete with a Twitter handle, presumably of the creator. That made me a little suspicious: someone went through the trouble of putting together a graphic of an obviously-ridiculous idea? I realize some people have unexpected combinations of skills and ways to apply intelligence, but I still can't believe that this idea passed through the hands of someone with computer graphic design skills without its failings being revealed. And the prominent Twitter handle? You'd go out of your way to take credit for this?

I sensed fakery, so I went looking for the Twitter user's page. It turned out to be a musician using this as an odd sort of viral marketing scheme. They either came up with the idea independently, or copied it from the original post, made it into a nice graphic, and added the Twitter handler. That was a bit of a relief - I had guessed it was an attempt to publicly shame someone by signing their name to something so stupid it would go viral. Nevertheless, the posting has attracted a large number of people attempting to correct the calculations, using varying levels of politeness. Indeed, several were using older viral memes, such as the Batman-slapping-Robin graphic, to make fun of it.

I think this is some sort of stupidity Inception. You have a clever person pretending to be stupid. Smart people correct him, but they aren't as smart as they think they are, because they can't recognize the difference between real and fake stupidity. They're even using old memes to make fun of something that has become a new meme. And after explaining all this, I feel stupider.

At The Centre Of It All

You probably heard about David Bowie's death today. I won't try to eulogize him - as a late-gen-x'er I missed much of his career. But I do appreciate that I was an "indirect fan," since many of the musicians I liked were influenced by him.

So today the news was all-Bowie-all-the-time. I know, that happens every time a major celebrity dies. But given his position in society and the arts, it seems particularly inappropriate. Aside from the fact that he probably wouldn't want the world fawning over him, there is his final album, released last week; it's now acknowledged by his manager that it was recorded knowing it would be good last. That's very fortunate for an artist to get to say goodbye in their own terms. So surely the best way to pay tribute is not to listen to an anchorman reaching for words, but to listen to the music. (Doing that as I type; it's really good.)

But more to a point, the remembrance today has seemed incongruous with our society. For instance, when Michael Jackson died, there was a big deal made about it, and that was understandable. For good or bad, we're living in a Michael Jackson world. But really, if David Bowie had so many fans, then how do you explain this <points at Western Civilization>? A guy who prided himself in eclecticism and reinvention was a major inspiration in a world that keeps repeating itself?

I know, you're probably expecting me to call out non-fans for jumping on the posthumous bandwagon. But I'm going to be a bit more optimistic: I think all these people really do care about Bowie, and they've just lost their way. So everybody, take time to read the quotes and compliments orbiting social media right now and learn from them.

What A Concept

In the automotive world, there are these things called concept cars. They're one-off cars displayed at shows, as a kind of demonstration or prototype. There are several purposes behind them:

• They catch people's attention, and get them to stop at the manufacturer's booth.
• They give tangible form to a new technology. (Instead of describing the abstract benefits of a new technology, you talk about what this car is capable of.)
• It's a chance to evaluate a new design style in a way drawings and computer models never could.
• It lets the manufacturer evaluate reaction to a car they may actually be considering building (if is a relatively conservative design.)

But here's the grain of salt you should take with these cars: often times, they aren't real. I mean, there is actually a car there at the show, it's just that it might not be what is implied. Often, it's just the body and interior, with no engine. Or it's one of the company's existing cars with a futuristic body on top of it. Some don't even have interiors. And when the execs talk about the car's capabilities, they're usually just talking about what the hypothetical car would be capable of, if it were built. On top of it all, there's the simple fact that just because something can be built, doesn't mean it can be built for a reasonable price. Or that it can be built in large numbers.

Within the automotive press, this is all understood, and concept cars get treated with the aforementioned grain of salt. They're news if they have a particularly novel technology, or if they fit into that last category of cars that might make the market. But otherwise, they're just eye candy. Unfortunately, as the line between the car business and the tech business gets blurred, there's more opportunity for naive journalists to get taken in by concept car snake oil.

The latest example is from Faraday Future, an American-based, Chinese-funded electric car start-up. There's a lot of scepticism about them, and rightly so: it's hard to get an entirely new car company off the ground. And extra hard if you're also using new technology. Sure, there's Tesla, but there's also a graveyard of small car companies that never got across the starting line. They might have been unlucky, incompetent, or they were just scams from the start. And even if you make it to market, for every Tesla, there's a Fisker.

So Faraday Future is a believe-it-when-I-see-it proposition. And when they showed up at Consumer Electronics Show with an outrageous, non-running concept car, it was a non-story. If anything, it was such a transparent distraction tactic, that it raised doubts about them. But because it was an electronics show rather than a car show, the many reporters there to report on the latest gizmos just ate up Faraday's offering. Lots of them described it as looking like the Batmobile. It did, but it made me think of the styling of the Vector, an exotic sports car from the 80's. And oh look, it turned out to be a scam that never made it to market.

All Those Moments Will Be Lost In Time...

During the hype for the new Star Wars, there was a tweet passed around that dared you to quote any line of dialog, or name more than one character, from Avatar. Of course, that should be easy, since Avatar is the highest-grossing movie of all time, at least for the next few days. Lots of people couldn't do it, which underlines the weird way pop-culture works.

When I was a kid, I remember going to the movies in 1982, and they had three movies playing. (Three screens! How adorable!) This stuck on my mind because I, unlike most of the world's movie-goers was excited about seeing Tron, while one of the other screens was showing E.T., which was turning out to be far more popular. In my mind's eye, I think the other screen was showing Blade Runner. I could just be imagining that, but according to the release dates, that seems likely.

In retrospect, it's interesting to see how those three movies have taken such different trajectories. E.T. was a huge hit, breaking Star Wars' box office record. It was also a cultural phenomena, getting referenced, spoofed and imitated all over. Yet it faded quickly from the public's memory over the years. The 20th anniversary reissue bombed. And now, at a time when other 80's blockbusters have had amazingly long lives, it gets ignored.

Tron was hugely anticipated, but died at the box office. For a while it was remembered only as the cinematic equivalent of the Edsel. But it maintained a following among us weird kids, and then when we took over the world, we elevated it to cult classic status, and it eventually got an unexpected big budget sequel.

Blade Runner was a disappointment at domestic theatres, but did better in Europe. Then it got rescued by, of all things, the director's cut reissue on video. It's reputation grew, and now it's regularly mentioned as the greatest Science Fiction movie of all time.

And we can see the same sort of things happening with newer movies. Avatar may not be as well remembered, despite its success. On the other hand, the previous James Cameron movie that held the box office record, Titanic, does seem to have maintained space in the hearts and minds of the public, at least if the there-was-room-on-the-lifeboat-for-Jack discussions are anything to go by.

The same thing happens in other media too. When I first noticed it, I called it the "Grand Funk Railroad phenomenon," after the band that broke Beatles' records in the 70's only to be forgotten by the 80's. Or on TV, there was The Cosby Show, which was very popular when it was on the air, but even before its star was revealed as a sexual predator, had faded from there public consciousness.

So what causes this? I've been trying to come up with some commonality to explain the fates of these pop-cultural artifacts, but I can't find it. For any rule about what makes something last, I can come up with a counterexample. Any ideas?

Broken Resolutions

You may have seen that Canada's shiny new federal government missed its goal on Syrian refugees. During the campaign, the Liberals pledged to bring in 25,000 refugees by the end of the year. When they got into office and realized just what a logistical nightmare it is to move so many people. It's essentially moving Corner Brook, Newfoundland to another continent.

So they reduced the goal to 25,000 over all, and just 10,000 by the end of the year. That's a mere Selkirk, Saskatchewan. Much easier. But unfortunately, that goal was also missed, with only 6,000 entering the country by year's end.

That's unfortunate, and the media and opposition should take them to task for it, but I've been disappointed by how they've both been sleepwalking through the broken-government-promises script on this issue.

The problem is, this is an unusual issue, since the breaking of the promise was based pretty much entirely on put judgement on what's possible. Normally, the cause is laziness, graft, or misleading the public about the governing party's motives. So it sounds strange hearing people berate the government over dishonesty when they have in fact put in an actual effort that's come up against the constraints of reality.

But this is a difficult issue to criticize. Normally, Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition would be all over the government's first mistake. But after trying to ride hijabphobia into office, they can't really complain that the government isn't letting Muslims into the country fast enough. And the go-to criticism style in Canada is to compare us unfavorably to other countries, preferably the Americans. But again, you can hardly cry scandal over our slowly accepting 25,000 refugees, when 10,000 refugees has them flirting with fascism.

So ultimately, this is a uniquely Canadian scandal. We're worried that we aren't doing altruistic actions fast enough, and we don't really know how to word our complaints about it.