Wednesday, April 27, 2016
Things The Teenage Me Would Never Have Believed About Life In The Future, #31
In baseball, they have machines that can call balls and strikes better than human umpires, they just don't use them.
Tuesday, April 26, 2016
The Days The Music Dies
About twenty years ago I saw a web page from a religious group that was trying to make the case that Rock and Roll was evil. Their reasoning was that God punishes rock stars by killing them off, and the group showed this with a long list of deceased rock stars and their cause of death. They noted that very few of them had died of natural causes, and they claimed that this was because God was punishing them.
To be clear, they weren't just saying that the rock lifestyle is dangerous, so you're more likely to die of, say, an overdose. They were including people like Buddy Holly, who lead a fairly upstanding life and died for what seemed like pure bad luck. They would say the plane crash that killed him was divine retribution.
You might assume that this "proof" was the result of gaming the numbers, but the intriguing thing was that the numbers were real. Rock stars that died early of unnatural causes really did greatly outnumber rock stars that has died of natural causes. So how can this be, if we hang on to the popular assumption that God doesn't really hate rock?
Supposedly this puzzle was actually used by some employers to test applicants' intelligence in interviews, presumably after they were sick of asking why manhole covers are round. To figure it out you have to do some simple math. (And remember that this was twenty years ago.) Let's say you're one of the oldest rock stars there is. Say you were thirty at the birth of rock and roll in the mid-fifties. That would mean you were born in the mid-twenties. So by the time I was reading this web page in the mid-nineties, you would be around seventy. There's no guarantee that you'd still be alive, but you probably would be. And remember, that's just the oldest rock star: in a more typical case, someone who made it big at twenty, in the sixties, would have only been about fifty, and probably not even retired.
Of course, this was twenty years ago. Today, our hypothetical oldest rock star is ninety, and most likely no longer with us. Even that typical sixties rock star is now seventy. The point is that we're entering an era when more rock stars are going to be dying than we're used to.
None of this is supposed to make anyone feel any better about the sudden rash of musician deaths. I'm just noting that the way pop culture has gone, we (meaning anyone likely to be reading this) have been relatively insulated from the deaths of our musical heroes. Obviously, there have been deaths. But they've mostly been both isolated and unusual. For instance, people my age were affected by the death of Kurt Cobain, and it made us think about death in new ways (and possibly for the first time.) But you could still chalk it up to unusual circumstances, or to the peculiarities of mental illness. And it's not like his death was part of a wave that robbed us of all our heroes.
I'm sure earlier generations had similar feelings on the deaths of people like Freddie Mercury, John Lennon, Elvis, and of course Buddy Holly. As well, in my life we've seen giants of music die after long and full careers. Say, Frank Sinatra, Miles Davis and Sammy Davis Jr. But of course, they all seemed to belong to a different era and different genres. You don't think of it the same way when it's not someone you personally listened to.
But now we're finally at the point where rock stars are dying not because they're rock stars, but just because they're human, and that's what we do eventually. For one thing, that means it's going to happen more often now - the start of 2016 has been unfortunate bad luck, but it's the sort of thing that's going to happen more often in the coming years. And it's going to make us think about mortality in ways that the occasional stereotypical live-fast-die-young death wouldn't.
To be clear, they weren't just saying that the rock lifestyle is dangerous, so you're more likely to die of, say, an overdose. They were including people like Buddy Holly, who lead a fairly upstanding life and died for what seemed like pure bad luck. They would say the plane crash that killed him was divine retribution.
You might assume that this "proof" was the result of gaming the numbers, but the intriguing thing was that the numbers were real. Rock stars that died early of unnatural causes really did greatly outnumber rock stars that has died of natural causes. So how can this be, if we hang on to the popular assumption that God doesn't really hate rock?
Supposedly this puzzle was actually used by some employers to test applicants' intelligence in interviews, presumably after they were sick of asking why manhole covers are round. To figure it out you have to do some simple math. (And remember that this was twenty years ago.) Let's say you're one of the oldest rock stars there is. Say you were thirty at the birth of rock and roll in the mid-fifties. That would mean you were born in the mid-twenties. So by the time I was reading this web page in the mid-nineties, you would be around seventy. There's no guarantee that you'd still be alive, but you probably would be. And remember, that's just the oldest rock star: in a more typical case, someone who made it big at twenty, in the sixties, would have only been about fifty, and probably not even retired.
Of course, this was twenty years ago. Today, our hypothetical oldest rock star is ninety, and most likely no longer with us. Even that typical sixties rock star is now seventy. The point is that we're entering an era when more rock stars are going to be dying than we're used to.
None of this is supposed to make anyone feel any better about the sudden rash of musician deaths. I'm just noting that the way pop culture has gone, we (meaning anyone likely to be reading this) have been relatively insulated from the deaths of our musical heroes. Obviously, there have been deaths. But they've mostly been both isolated and unusual. For instance, people my age were affected by the death of Kurt Cobain, and it made us think about death in new ways (and possibly for the first time.) But you could still chalk it up to unusual circumstances, or to the peculiarities of mental illness. And it's not like his death was part of a wave that robbed us of all our heroes.
I'm sure earlier generations had similar feelings on the deaths of people like Freddie Mercury, John Lennon, Elvis, and of course Buddy Holly. As well, in my life we've seen giants of music die after long and full careers. Say, Frank Sinatra, Miles Davis and Sammy Davis Jr. But of course, they all seemed to belong to a different era and different genres. You don't think of it the same way when it's not someone you personally listened to.
But now we're finally at the point where rock stars are dying not because they're rock stars, but just because they're human, and that's what we do eventually. For one thing, that means it's going to happen more often now - the start of 2016 has been unfortunate bad luck, but it's the sort of thing that's going to happen more often in the coming years. And it's going to make us think about mortality in ways that the occasional stereotypical live-fast-die-young death wouldn't.
Saturday, April 23, 2016
What An Adorable Little Starship
One thing I missed in the past week was the announcement of Breakthrough Starshot, an effort to send the first space probe to another star. Mini-spacecraft going to Alpha Centauri. Didn't see that one coming.
The main difficulty with traveling anywhere in space is weight. Here on earth, we're used to the idea that you can make something faster just by giving it a bigger engine. Sure, you'll be going through fuel faster, but that just means you'll have to stop to refuel more often; you'll still be faster overall. But in space, there's nowhere to refuel; you have to carry it all with you.
That's a limitation you just can't get around: more powerful engines mean that you'll need to carry more fuel, which will weigh down your spaceship and nullify the advantage of the more powerful engines. So with current rocket technology, there's really no way to get to Mars in less than about 18 months, or to Alpha Centauri in less than ten thousand years.
The only way to go faster is to come up with new technology that gets more energy per pound of fuel. Nuclear power would help, though not as much as you might hope. You'd still need a huge amount of fuel, requiring a huge ship. Some people have tried to get around the weight problem by not carrying the fuel with you. One such concept of the Bussard Ramjet. It would scoop up the very few atoms hanging around space and shove them into a nuclear reactor to generate power. Unfortunately, this would require a huge ship, and no one is entirely sure the concept will work.
Another possibility is to provide the energy from elsewhere. That's how this proposal works. For a while people have suggested the idea of a "solar sail." In that concept, the ship would be pushed by the miniscule force of the sunlight hitting it. Of course, because the force is so small, you would need big sails, and even then the force wouldn't be great; but it would be persistent, and over the course of weeks or months, it would add up to great speed, possibly faster than conventional rockets.
But solar sails will only work in the inner solar system. To go further, you'd need some artificial source of light. Of course, to accelerate any reasonably-sized spacecraft, it would have to be an incredibly powerful laser, beyond what we could currently build.
And that's where this proposal comes in: it takes advantage of the fact that we can make the ship very small, and thus very light, so that we could build lasers but enough to accelerate it to high speeds. When you think about it, that's quite symbolic of how our technology works today: in the past, we imagined that we would build starships by creating huge new power sources. We haven't had much luck making those, but we have done better than we ever expected at miniaturizing machines. So it appears we're going to use those technologies to our advantage.
One thing that's surprised me about this story is just how many people are clueless about astronomy. Sure, as a geek who occasionally interacts with non-geeks, I'm aware that many people know words like "galaxy" and "nebula" only from movies, but have no idea what they mean. But I always assumed that in any small group of people, at least one will have seen enough episodes of Cosmos to be astronomically literate.
Yet I saw two different news programs say that this proposal was to send a probe to the nearest galaxy. I can understand a flustered host who was hired mostly for his voice making that mistake, but these were in a recorded voice-over and a bottom of the screen title. That means it would have passed a few people without anyone noticing how embarrassingly inaccurate it was.
The main difficulty with traveling anywhere in space is weight. Here on earth, we're used to the idea that you can make something faster just by giving it a bigger engine. Sure, you'll be going through fuel faster, but that just means you'll have to stop to refuel more often; you'll still be faster overall. But in space, there's nowhere to refuel; you have to carry it all with you.
That's a limitation you just can't get around: more powerful engines mean that you'll need to carry more fuel, which will weigh down your spaceship and nullify the advantage of the more powerful engines. So with current rocket technology, there's really no way to get to Mars in less than about 18 months, or to Alpha Centauri in less than ten thousand years.
The only way to go faster is to come up with new technology that gets more energy per pound of fuel. Nuclear power would help, though not as much as you might hope. You'd still need a huge amount of fuel, requiring a huge ship. Some people have tried to get around the weight problem by not carrying the fuel with you. One such concept of the Bussard Ramjet. It would scoop up the very few atoms hanging around space and shove them into a nuclear reactor to generate power. Unfortunately, this would require a huge ship, and no one is entirely sure the concept will work.
Another possibility is to provide the energy from elsewhere. That's how this proposal works. For a while people have suggested the idea of a "solar sail." In that concept, the ship would be pushed by the miniscule force of the sunlight hitting it. Of course, because the force is so small, you would need big sails, and even then the force wouldn't be great; but it would be persistent, and over the course of weeks or months, it would add up to great speed, possibly faster than conventional rockets.
But solar sails will only work in the inner solar system. To go further, you'd need some artificial source of light. Of course, to accelerate any reasonably-sized spacecraft, it would have to be an incredibly powerful laser, beyond what we could currently build.
And that's where this proposal comes in: it takes advantage of the fact that we can make the ship very small, and thus very light, so that we could build lasers but enough to accelerate it to high speeds. When you think about it, that's quite symbolic of how our technology works today: in the past, we imagined that we would build starships by creating huge new power sources. We haven't had much luck making those, but we have done better than we ever expected at miniaturizing machines. So it appears we're going to use those technologies to our advantage.
One thing that's surprised me about this story is just how many people are clueless about astronomy. Sure, as a geek who occasionally interacts with non-geeks, I'm aware that many people know words like "galaxy" and "nebula" only from movies, but have no idea what they mean. But I always assumed that in any small group of people, at least one will have seen enough episodes of Cosmos to be astronomically literate.
Yet I saw two different news programs say that this proposal was to send a probe to the nearest galaxy. I can understand a flustered host who was hired mostly for his voice making that mistake, but these were in a recorded voice-over and a bottom of the screen title. That means it would have passed a few people without anyone noticing how embarrassingly inaccurate it was.
Wednesday, April 20, 2016
Weed The North
In politics, we often think that there's little difference between parties and politicians. We're seeing that in the U.S. as members of both parties wrestle with the choice of mainstream candidates or people who promise to shake up the whole system.
But the truth is, the all-politicians-are-the-same idea is only true if you're a radical who thinks destroying the system is more important than any change you can make within it. Actually, politicians and parties have a lot of differences with real consequences. Here in Canada, we've seen a lot of evidence of that in the first six months of the Liberal government. Just in the last week:
And as a further tweak of the nose of the Conservatives, the pot plan was announced on 4/20. It's hard to believe that so many changes are happening with so little anger. Of course, some of that is because the Tories' interim leader, Rona Ambrose, has a very different vision of the party than Stephen Harper. And the fact is that Conservative opinion was never as uniform as Harper made it seem. A lot of what his government did or didn't do was a result of political expediency, rather than widespread desires within the party.
It'll be interesting to see where this marijuana legislation goes, culturally. We tend to think of the War On Drugs as an American thing, but the fact is that it's built into international treaties signed by almost everyone. But there seems to be a growing belief that we need to change, so you can imagine the hardcore anti-drug consensus collapsing. But it's hard to imagine the U.S. government backing down, so liberal drug laws could end up like the metric system - accepted everywhere except the States. And since the drugs are measured in metric, that seems appropriate.
But, wait! Some of the boldest legalization is coming from inside the United States. So it appears that this is just going to be the latest battleground in their cultural civil war. And the usual way that works is that the other countries of the world choose a side and entrench themselves, while watching the frontlines of the battle pushed back and forth across America. As always, we in Canada have a front row seat, so we'll be watching, and giggling.
But the truth is, the all-politicians-are-the-same idea is only true if you're a radical who thinks destroying the system is more important than any change you can make within it. Actually, politicians and parties have a lot of differences with real consequences. Here in Canada, we've seen a lot of evidence of that in the first six months of the Liberal government. Just in the last week:
- Assisted-dying legislation has been proposed
- The Prime Minister bragged that he knows about science
- We've started seeing ads warning us the long-form census is coming
- Politicians of all stripes have started caring if native people live or die
- Omar Khadr is apparently getting on with life
- The government has announced a timeline for legalizing pot
And as a further tweak of the nose of the Conservatives, the pot plan was announced on 4/20. It's hard to believe that so many changes are happening with so little anger. Of course, some of that is because the Tories' interim leader, Rona Ambrose, has a very different vision of the party than Stephen Harper. And the fact is that Conservative opinion was never as uniform as Harper made it seem. A lot of what his government did or didn't do was a result of political expediency, rather than widespread desires within the party.
It'll be interesting to see where this marijuana legislation goes, culturally. We tend to think of the War On Drugs as an American thing, but the fact is that it's built into international treaties signed by almost everyone. But there seems to be a growing belief that we need to change, so you can imagine the hardcore anti-drug consensus collapsing. But it's hard to imagine the U.S. government backing down, so liberal drug laws could end up like the metric system - accepted everywhere except the States. And since the drugs are measured in metric, that seems appropriate.
But, wait! Some of the boldest legalization is coming from inside the United States. So it appears that this is just going to be the latest battleground in their cultural civil war. And the usual way that works is that the other countries of the world choose a side and entrench themselves, while watching the frontlines of the battle pushed back and forth across America. As always, we in Canada have a front row seat, so we'll be watching, and giggling.
Tuesday, April 19, 2016
Section Nine So White
You may have been confused by recent news reports saying that people are angry that Scarlett Johansson is not Asian. See, they're making a movie based on the classic manga series/anime movie Ghost In The Shell and she's going to be playing the lead role. But, like most anime, Ghost In The Shell is set in Japan, and about Japanese people. Coming on the heels of the #OscarsSoWhite controversy, this whitewashed casting didn't sit well with many people.
I was prepared to write a post about this. I wasn't going to defend the casting, but just to point out that it isn't racism per se, but rather it's America's uneasiness with foreign stuff. (Remember that it was only by JK Rowling's insistance that the Harry Potter movies were actually as British as the books.) I would then claim that in the unlikely event that Canadians made a movie Hollywood deemed worthy of remaking, they would probably insist on re-setting it on their side of the 49th. Then I'd point out that I don't condone this sort of soft-xenophobia, but that it's not as serious a charge as racism.
But now I find out that the upcoming movie hasn't been transplanted to the U.S. It's still set in Japan, with Japanese characters. That is, they're making a movie whose main character is named "Motoko Kusanagi", but we're just supposed to accept that she looks like Scarlett Johansson. Yes, I know, the character is a cyborg, you could easily explain that she has chosen a body that looks caucasian because she felt like it. Aside from not being real true to the character, that's the sort of fake-sounding exposition that jams up the audience's suspension of disbelief. But the fact is, the issue is apparently not making the movie more American, but more white.
To explain the casting, many people have resorted to money. The phrase, "you don't know how the industry works" seems to come up a lot. The idea is that there aren't any famous (in the West) Japanese actresses. First of all, that's hardly an excuse, it's merely a deflection, like my aforementioned planned post. But that line of reasoning has a few problems:
I was prepared to write a post about this. I wasn't going to defend the casting, but just to point out that it isn't racism per se, but rather it's America's uneasiness with foreign stuff. (Remember that it was only by JK Rowling's insistance that the Harry Potter movies were actually as British as the books.) I would then claim that in the unlikely event that Canadians made a movie Hollywood deemed worthy of remaking, they would probably insist on re-setting it on their side of the 49th. Then I'd point out that I don't condone this sort of soft-xenophobia, but that it's not as serious a charge as racism.
But now I find out that the upcoming movie hasn't been transplanted to the U.S. It's still set in Japan, with Japanese characters. That is, they're making a movie whose main character is named "Motoko Kusanagi", but we're just supposed to accept that she looks like Scarlett Johansson. Yes, I know, the character is a cyborg, you could easily explain that she has chosen a body that looks caucasian because she felt like it. Aside from not being real true to the character, that's the sort of fake-sounding exposition that jams up the audience's suspension of disbelief. But the fact is, the issue is apparently not making the movie more American, but more white.
To explain the casting, many people have resorted to money. The phrase, "you don't know how the industry works" seems to come up a lot. The idea is that there aren't any famous (in the West) Japanese actresses. First of all, that's hardly an excuse, it's merely a deflection, like my aforementioned planned post. But that line of reasoning has a few problems:
- They originally cast the significantly-less-famous Margot Robbie in the role
- When a movie's main draw is either special effects or a pre-established franchise, Hollywood is okay with a little-known star.
- Most of the major supporting players are white too.
Saturday, April 16, 2016
When The Moon Hits Your Eye
I love pizza. I don't just love pizza itself, I love the idea of pizza. It's unpretentious, something we all have in common, and yet it's infinitely customizable. It's universal and individualistic at the same time. Also, it's become enough a part of Western culture that elites can't dismiss it as worthless pablum of the great unwashed, the way they might for hamburgers. But in the other hand, pizza's individuality defuses the one-upmanship that usually poisons food discussion: You may encounter some self-righteous foodie who insists that the best pizza is from Guido's at 9th and Broadway, and anything less is inedible cardboard. But you can always say you prefer deep-dish pizza; the foodie will be infuriated, but you'll have diffused his power of culinary elitism over you.
What's interesting is, I'm just starting to see how many types of pizza there are, even if we restrict it to this continent. Lots of people have heard of Chicago-style deep-dish pizza, but I was intrigued to find that is not the only kind of pizza that's unique to an American region. Detroit (deep-dish, rectangular, crispy cheese), St. Louis (thin crust, local cheese) New Haven (thin crust, bitter cheese, no sauce), Colorado (lots of toppings, extra thick rim) and even Iowa/Illinois's Quad Cities (nutty-crust, spicy sauce) have their own styles.
I recently read that the Detroit style of pizza is actually related to the auto industry. It's rectangular because it's made on a kind of tray that was originally intended for holding spare parts in car factories. And because it's in a tray, rather than on a sheet, the toppings can go right to the edge, allowing the cheese to get crispy.
And that leads to the really mind-blowing part: in the last few years, the Little Caesar's chain has started selling a square deep-dish pizza with crispy-edge cheese. Well you might assume that was just something they made up, but no, it's based on Detroit-style pizza, since Little Caesar's is from Detroit. Those weird ads with the creepy seventies-style disembodied heads? They're actually introducing customers to authentic Americana.
This all leads back to my never-ending quest to get unique and slightly weird things for Canada in general, and Kitchener-Waterloo in particular. First off, could Canada get its own pizza? Yes, many restaurants and grocery stores have "Canadian" pizza, but that usually just means regular pizza with bacon. Further research reveals that Nova Scotia is way ahead of us on this: Halifax has Donair Pizza (donair meat and sauce on pizza crust) and Pictou County, on the north side of the province has its own unique style (with a "brown" sauce made with a variety of vegetables, and thick pepperoni.) These are now spreading slowly through the country with emigrating Nova Scotians, though mostly in places where there's a critical mass of expats to support a business (like in Toronto or Fort McMurray.) So one day these pizzas could be as common as poutine. It's facinating to see Canada create a culture, even if it is at a glacial pace. Come back in a few centuries and we might have our own identity.
And KW? I can't find any pizza that's particular to here, but we could do our usual thing of adopting German stuff. They have a pizza-like bread called Flammkuchen. I also searched for Mennonite pizza, but that doesn't seem to be a thing. Surely in a city with two universities, an influx of different cultures, and precocious downtown eateries looking to make a name for themselves, we can come up with something unique.
What's interesting is, I'm just starting to see how many types of pizza there are, even if we restrict it to this continent. Lots of people have heard of Chicago-style deep-dish pizza, but I was intrigued to find that is not the only kind of pizza that's unique to an American region. Detroit (deep-dish, rectangular, crispy cheese), St. Louis (thin crust, local cheese) New Haven (thin crust, bitter cheese, no sauce), Colorado (lots of toppings, extra thick rim) and even Iowa/Illinois's Quad Cities (nutty-crust, spicy sauce) have their own styles.
I recently read that the Detroit style of pizza is actually related to the auto industry. It's rectangular because it's made on a kind of tray that was originally intended for holding spare parts in car factories. And because it's in a tray, rather than on a sheet, the toppings can go right to the edge, allowing the cheese to get crispy.
And that leads to the really mind-blowing part: in the last few years, the Little Caesar's chain has started selling a square deep-dish pizza with crispy-edge cheese. Well you might assume that was just something they made up, but no, it's based on Detroit-style pizza, since Little Caesar's is from Detroit. Those weird ads with the creepy seventies-style disembodied heads? They're actually introducing customers to authentic Americana.
This all leads back to my never-ending quest to get unique and slightly weird things for Canada in general, and Kitchener-Waterloo in particular. First off, could Canada get its own pizza? Yes, many restaurants and grocery stores have "Canadian" pizza, but that usually just means regular pizza with bacon. Further research reveals that Nova Scotia is way ahead of us on this: Halifax has Donair Pizza (donair meat and sauce on pizza crust) and Pictou County, on the north side of the province has its own unique style (with a "brown" sauce made with a variety of vegetables, and thick pepperoni.) These are now spreading slowly through the country with emigrating Nova Scotians, though mostly in places where there's a critical mass of expats to support a business (like in Toronto or Fort McMurray.) So one day these pizzas could be as common as poutine. It's facinating to see Canada create a culture, even if it is at a glacial pace. Come back in a few centuries and we might have our own identity.
And KW? I can't find any pizza that's particular to here, but we could do our usual thing of adopting German stuff. They have a pizza-like bread called Flammkuchen. I also searched for Mennonite pizza, but that doesn't seem to be a thing. Surely in a city with two universities, an influx of different cultures, and precocious downtown eateries looking to make a name for themselves, we can come up with something unique.
Thursday, April 14, 2016
The Matter Of The Truth
BBC World News has been running a commercial for their coverage of the U.S. election. In it they're trying to showcase their impartiality, listing off the things they won't tell you, like "who to vote for" or "what to think." I can get behind that, but what really stands out is that two of the most prominent things they promise not to tell you is "who's right," and "who's wrong." To that, I must ask, isn't telling us what's right the whole purpose of journalism?
Of course, this philosophy is hardly unique: it's obvious that this is the policy of most news organizations now: report the claims of both sides without comment. Actually mentioning which side is lying and which is telling the truth is considered bias. It's been this way for a while, but in an election campaign in which we've seen some of the most brazen lying in living memory, the noncritical reporting strategy is lookin sillier all the time.
So the ad's promise is not a foreign concept, but I don't think I've ever seen a news organization state it so boldly. If you hang on to the old ideas that journalism is supposed to be about finding the truth, it's pathetic to see a reputable news outlet promising not to bother you with reality.
Of course, this philosophy is hardly unique: it's obvious that this is the policy of most news organizations now: report the claims of both sides without comment. Actually mentioning which side is lying and which is telling the truth is considered bias. It's been this way for a while, but in an election campaign in which we've seen some of the most brazen lying in living memory, the noncritical reporting strategy is lookin sillier all the time.
So the ad's promise is not a foreign concept, but I don't think I've ever seen a news organization state it so boldly. If you hang on to the old ideas that journalism is supposed to be about finding the truth, it's pathetic to see a reputable news outlet promising not to bother you with reality.
Monday, April 11, 2016
Playoffs? Don't Talk About Playoffs
The National Hockey League season is over, and Canada is in mourning. No Canadian teams made the playoffs, for the first time since 1970, when we only had three teams. So we already know that the nation's Stanley Cup drought will reach 23 years.
What are the chances of all our teams missing the playoffs? Let's see, I used to know how to do this...23 choose 16...the 16 factorials cancel...ah, one in 593. As if that's not enough, I notice that the two American teams that used to be based in Canada (the Arizona Coyotes and Colorado Avalanche) also missed the playoffs. Even stranger, in the past twelve months, the Toronto Raptors, Toronto Blue Jays, and all three of Canada's Major League Soccer teams did make the playoffs.
At this point, you've got to think this is more than chance. The Toronto Sun is doing a series of articles trying to explain it. Today that explored the lack of free-agent signings going to Canadian teams. Their explanation for that was the weather, the pressure, and the vicious circle of players not wanting to come to a losing team. You could tell the Sun was pretty devastated by this topic - they forgot to blame Canadian taxes. But they further pointed out that teams from the northern U.S. don't have problem attracting free agents, so that puts paid to the weather excuse. It really just comes down to the crazy fans and media.
But really, the teams that did make the playoffs are dominated by players drafted and traded, rather than free agent signings. More of this comes down to not developing better teams. In the nineties, a low Canadian dollar and no salary cap meant that most Canadian teams had difficulty competing. But we've had about a decade of a high-dollar & salary cap world, and it's surprising how little success the Canadian teams have had constructing good teams. For the most part, our teams have had the same attitude they had when the economics were against them: try to hang on to one or two good players, and hope that our goalie gets hot at the right time.
That's why it's good to see the Leafs' pronounced rebuild. The fans were surprisingly accepting of it, though we'll see how much they still support it a couple of years from now. Hopefully their effort will prove to other Canadian franchises that their fans are more patient than everyone assumed.
What are the chances of all our teams missing the playoffs? Let's see, I used to know how to do this...23 choose 16...the 16 factorials cancel...ah, one in 593. As if that's not enough, I notice that the two American teams that used to be based in Canada (the Arizona Coyotes and Colorado Avalanche) also missed the playoffs. Even stranger, in the past twelve months, the Toronto Raptors, Toronto Blue Jays, and all three of Canada's Major League Soccer teams did make the playoffs.
At this point, you've got to think this is more than chance. The Toronto Sun is doing a series of articles trying to explain it. Today that explored the lack of free-agent signings going to Canadian teams. Their explanation for that was the weather, the pressure, and the vicious circle of players not wanting to come to a losing team. You could tell the Sun was pretty devastated by this topic - they forgot to blame Canadian taxes. But they further pointed out that teams from the northern U.S. don't have problem attracting free agents, so that puts paid to the weather excuse. It really just comes down to the crazy fans and media.
But really, the teams that did make the playoffs are dominated by players drafted and traded, rather than free agent signings. More of this comes down to not developing better teams. In the nineties, a low Canadian dollar and no salary cap meant that most Canadian teams had difficulty competing. But we've had about a decade of a high-dollar & salary cap world, and it's surprising how little success the Canadian teams have had constructing good teams. For the most part, our teams have had the same attitude they had when the economics were against them: try to hang on to one or two good players, and hope that our goalie gets hot at the right time.
That's why it's good to see the Leafs' pronounced rebuild. The fans were surprisingly accepting of it, though we'll see how much they still support it a couple of years from now. Hopefully their effort will prove to other Canadian franchises that their fans are more patient than everyone assumed.
Saturday, April 9, 2016
With Friends Like These...
What's up with good guys fighting each other? First Batman Vs. Superman, now Captain America: Civil War, which seems to actually be Captain America Vs. Iron Man: Plus Avengers that Won't Get Their Own Movies. Yes, I know, I already complained about pitting arbitrarily-powered superheroes against each other. But know I'm wondering why we suddenly feel the need to have good guys fight each other. It does go against the usual rule of action movies, which dictates that you need a great bad guy.
Of course, the obvious explanation is that it parallels modern American society, where everyone seems more interested in fighting each other than in fighting the nation's enemies. That seems like a good explanation, though it would be better the battling heroes seemed more representative of America's cultural poles. I mean, Superman and Batman don't really have differing views of the world. Okay, maybe Clark Kent wrote an article supporting the Capital Gains Tax, and Bruce Wayne took it personaly, but that's a stretch. I mean it would be nice if the heroes at war in a movie actually represented the two sides of the American culture war. You could film it like Godzilla Vs. King Kong, where (Spoiler Alert) there were two endings so that Japanese and American audiences each got to see the home-town-favourite monster win. In this case, they'd just distribute different endings to red and blue states.
Or maybe in today's confused world, the line between good and bad is sort of arbitrary. Afterall, the next big event in the DC Cinematic Universe is Suicide Squad, in which a collection of bad guys are the protagonists. So the good guys fight each other, the bad guys are doing good, Jesse Eisenberg is Lex Luthor; nothing makes sense anymore. And we have already had a few enemies/anti-heroes fighting each other in movies: there was the aforementioned Godzilla Vs. King Kong, plus Alien Vs. Predator and Freddy Vs. Jason.
Of course, the obvious explanation is that it parallels modern American society, where everyone seems more interested in fighting each other than in fighting the nation's enemies. That seems like a good explanation, though it would be better the battling heroes seemed more representative of America's cultural poles. I mean, Superman and Batman don't really have differing views of the world. Okay, maybe Clark Kent wrote an article supporting the Capital Gains Tax, and Bruce Wayne took it personaly, but that's a stretch. I mean it would be nice if the heroes at war in a movie actually represented the two sides of the American culture war. You could film it like Godzilla Vs. King Kong, where (Spoiler Alert) there were two endings so that Japanese and American audiences each got to see the home-town-favourite monster win. In this case, they'd just distribute different endings to red and blue states.
Or maybe in today's confused world, the line between good and bad is sort of arbitrary. Afterall, the next big event in the DC Cinematic Universe is Suicide Squad, in which a collection of bad guys are the protagonists. So the good guys fight each other, the bad guys are doing good, Jesse Eisenberg is Lex Luthor; nothing makes sense anymore. And we have already had a few enemies/anti-heroes fighting each other in movies: there was the aforementioned Godzilla Vs. King Kong, plus Alien Vs. Predator and Freddy Vs. Jason.
Thursday, April 7, 2016
Locked In The Trunk Of A Car
When it comes to cars, there's a whole lot of fakery just to keep people comfortable. I realized this as a child, at a time when vinyl roofs were still popular. They made no sense to me: why would you pay extra for a feature that had no purpose and couldn't even survive the monkey enclosure at African Lion Safari?
In time, I found out that these began as fake convertible tops. Some of them even have a chrome decoration behind the window which is derived from the metal frame supporting the top. Faking that your possessions are more expensive than reality is pretty silly, especially since most convertibles look pretty bad when the top is up, so you're making your car look ugly, but more expensive. Same with the fake-wood paneling that often came on station wagons then. They looked silly to me, but appealed to people who could remember when wood was a legitimate automotive material. But for my generation, the idea of wood vehicles was no more than the premise for those humorous "Packin' a Woodie" T-shirts that I didn't understand until years later.
We're seeing something similar with trunks now. If you're not up on the issue, about twenty years ago, Americans decided that hatchbacks were a humiliating symbol of irredeemable poverty, to be avoided at all costs. However, the rest of the world still likes them, valuing the layout for its utility. So in our globalized world, car companies have to jump through hoops to deal with these different tastes. Some mangle language to convince customers the car isn't what it seems. It's not a hatchback, it's a "sport wagon."
But often, the car maker will design a small car to be a hatchback for most of the world, but then make a special American version with a trunk awkwardly tacked on to the back. This creates a car that is both weird looking and inefficient. I've got to ask, which makes you look poorer: a product associated with poverty, or a product whose whole purpose is convincing people that it isn't associated with poverty.
But now we've seen the beginning of the end for another common car part: the radiator grille. Engines get hot, and to cool them, the radiator needs exposure to incoming air. So we've all gotten used to cars having a big black & chrome opening on the front, forming either the "mouth" or the "nose" in the car's "face."
But modern radiators don't need as much air as they once did, and for aerodynamic reasons, it makes sense for the opening to be as small as possible. Thus, if you look closely, you see that large parts of modern grilles are actually fake. Some of the grille may be closed, or blocked by the bumper. And chrome accents may take up much of the space, as on recent Acuras.
But the real change is with electric cars. They don't need radiators because their motors don't get nearly as hot. The front of the car just needs a few small openings for air to cool the battery and brakes. That leaves electric car designers with a dilemma about what to put at the front of the car. The Tesla Model S has a black grille, but on closer inspection, it's just exposed bumper, a flat hood ornament, and some black plastic. The follow-up Model X just has the hood ornament. And now the newly introduced Model 3 just has a blank space. Clearly they've been trying to wean us off the need to see something between the headlights.
Personally, I don't think it's worked. It still looks weird to me. I hate myself for feeling that way, because I know I'm just the modern equivalent of those guys who bought the ugly fake-wood-paneled K-cars.
In time, I found out that these began as fake convertible tops. Some of them even have a chrome decoration behind the window which is derived from the metal frame supporting the top. Faking that your possessions are more expensive than reality is pretty silly, especially since most convertibles look pretty bad when the top is up, so you're making your car look ugly, but more expensive. Same with the fake-wood paneling that often came on station wagons then. They looked silly to me, but appealed to people who could remember when wood was a legitimate automotive material. But for my generation, the idea of wood vehicles was no more than the premise for those humorous "Packin' a Woodie" T-shirts that I didn't understand until years later.
We're seeing something similar with trunks now. If you're not up on the issue, about twenty years ago, Americans decided that hatchbacks were a humiliating symbol of irredeemable poverty, to be avoided at all costs. However, the rest of the world still likes them, valuing the layout for its utility. So in our globalized world, car companies have to jump through hoops to deal with these different tastes. Some mangle language to convince customers the car isn't what it seems. It's not a hatchback, it's a "sport wagon."
But often, the car maker will design a small car to be a hatchback for most of the world, but then make a special American version with a trunk awkwardly tacked on to the back. This creates a car that is both weird looking and inefficient. I've got to ask, which makes you look poorer: a product associated with poverty, or a product whose whole purpose is convincing people that it isn't associated with poverty.
But now we've seen the beginning of the end for another common car part: the radiator grille. Engines get hot, and to cool them, the radiator needs exposure to incoming air. So we've all gotten used to cars having a big black & chrome opening on the front, forming either the "mouth" or the "nose" in the car's "face."
But modern radiators don't need as much air as they once did, and for aerodynamic reasons, it makes sense for the opening to be as small as possible. Thus, if you look closely, you see that large parts of modern grilles are actually fake. Some of the grille may be closed, or blocked by the bumper. And chrome accents may take up much of the space, as on recent Acuras.
But the real change is with electric cars. They don't need radiators because their motors don't get nearly as hot. The front of the car just needs a few small openings for air to cool the battery and brakes. That leaves electric car designers with a dilemma about what to put at the front of the car. The Tesla Model S has a black grille, but on closer inspection, it's just exposed bumper, a flat hood ornament, and some black plastic. The follow-up Model X just has the hood ornament. And now the newly introduced Model 3 just has a blank space. Clearly they've been trying to wean us off the need to see something between the headlights.
Personally, I don't think it's worked. It still looks weird to me. I hate myself for feeling that way, because I know I'm just the modern equivalent of those guys who bought the ugly fake-wood-paneled K-cars.
Tuesday, April 5, 2016
Sub(stantial Con)fusion
Many people have observed that whenever someone starts a sentence with, "This isn't racist, but..." then you know that the rest of the sentence is going to be totally racist. But I'm hoping to be the first person to start a sentence that way and not be racist. Here it goes:
This isn't racist, but I've noticed that a lot of Subway® franchises are run by people of Indian heritage, or elsewhere in Southern Asia. What's up with that? Again, to emphasize: not racist, since I have no problem with anyone running a Subway. I'm just curious, since it seems surprising.
Of course, it's common for immigrants to set up a restaurant; it makes sense, since you come to a new land, and you don't know much about the customs and traditions. So you take advantage of what you do know, which is your own culture. That's a win-win, because they get established in their new home, and everyone around them gets to experience a new culture. But subs? Don't get me wrong; I enjoy both Subway and Indian food. But you've got to admit that on the spectrum of human food, they're at opposite ends. So I'm wondering how people say, "Let's introduce people to our marvelous culinary culture, with its elaborate language of spices... Nah, on second thought, let's make sandwiches with cold cuts."
I had always hoped this would lead to Indian influence in the subs, and at last, we have a butter chicken sub. So I rushed out and bought one. But I hadn't considered that of course this means I'm likely ordering it from someone intimately familiar with Indian culture, so I'm going to look like the Ignorant White Cultural Appropriator. Or at the very least, I'm going to break her heart when she realizes my sandwich will be such a mangled version of her culture. I mean, what appropriate toppings can you choose for a butter chicken sub out of what's available at Subway? You can't just put mayo on it. Raita isn't available as a sauce, so I chose Ranch dressing as the closest thing, and then felt very guilty over it (though it did go surprisingly well; I recommend it.) So it was weird, but we survived, both I and the Indian Subcontinent. I'll now feel confident ordering the butter chicken sub in the future, whoever makes it.
However it's become obvious that this is the direction that popular food is taking, where each culture is represented by one dish which becomes internationally famous. Then we think of that food as being the representative of its entire culinary culture. Don't sample all of Thai food, just try Pad Thai. And then we pick and choose combinations of those things and create new cosmopolitan abominations. For India, the dish is butter chicken. Sorry vindaloo, you're out of luck. For Canada, poutine is emerging as our representative. Want to put them together? Bam! There you go.
This isn't racist, but I've noticed that a lot of Subway® franchises are run by people of Indian heritage, or elsewhere in Southern Asia. What's up with that? Again, to emphasize: not racist, since I have no problem with anyone running a Subway. I'm just curious, since it seems surprising.
Of course, it's common for immigrants to set up a restaurant; it makes sense, since you come to a new land, and you don't know much about the customs and traditions. So you take advantage of what you do know, which is your own culture. That's a win-win, because they get established in their new home, and everyone around them gets to experience a new culture. But subs? Don't get me wrong; I enjoy both Subway and Indian food. But you've got to admit that on the spectrum of human food, they're at opposite ends. So I'm wondering how people say, "Let's introduce people to our marvelous culinary culture, with its elaborate language of spices... Nah, on second thought, let's make sandwiches with cold cuts."
I had always hoped this would lead to Indian influence in the subs, and at last, we have a butter chicken sub. So I rushed out and bought one. But I hadn't considered that of course this means I'm likely ordering it from someone intimately familiar with Indian culture, so I'm going to look like the Ignorant White Cultural Appropriator. Or at the very least, I'm going to break her heart when she realizes my sandwich will be such a mangled version of her culture. I mean, what appropriate toppings can you choose for a butter chicken sub out of what's available at Subway? You can't just put mayo on it. Raita isn't available as a sauce, so I chose Ranch dressing as the closest thing, and then felt very guilty over it (though it did go surprisingly well; I recommend it.) So it was weird, but we survived, both I and the Indian Subcontinent. I'll now feel confident ordering the butter chicken sub in the future, whoever makes it.
However it's become obvious that this is the direction that popular food is taking, where each culture is represented by one dish which becomes internationally famous. Then we think of that food as being the representative of its entire culinary culture. Don't sample all of Thai food, just try Pad Thai. And then we pick and choose combinations of those things and create new cosmopolitan abominations. For India, the dish is butter chicken. Sorry vindaloo, you're out of luck. For Canada, poutine is emerging as our representative. Want to put them together? Bam! There you go.
Sunday, April 3, 2016
Close The Pod Bay Doors
A few months back, I wrote about efforts to make new living arrangements that are more communal than the Western World's usual apartments-or-suburbs models. Well now there's a new contender that takes communal living to new levels. It's called PodShare
Everyone lives in one big room, in bunks - oh, I'm sorry: "pods." The bunks are open on the side, so they're even less private than Japan's infamous coffin hotels. In fact, the beds fold up to become desks in the day, meaning that: (a) you don't even have a place to retreat to during the day, and (b) you'll be working together with the same people you're living with.
One tweet described it as being like something out of Douglas Coupland's nightmares. That's a good description, but my first reaction was that it's like something from the grim near-future of cyberpunk, which often features people living in less-than-glamourous surroundings. So it was fiting that I read that Coupland comment when it was forwarded by William Gibson. So basically this place is a general nightmare for all of Canada's postmodern authors. could we work some sexism in too so Margaret Atwood can get involved? Well, they have banned sex in the pods, but the community is expected to police itself, which is a recipe for disaster if you ask me.
So you're living as close to your fellow humans as possible, but without having sex with them. Could it get any worse? Sure: it's in Los Angeles, so it's $900 a month, yet it may still be the only thing some people can afford.
The defenders are calling this an antidote to loneliness. That sounds noble, but it's not a real good solution to that problem. I've done a lot of research into loneliness, and I don't think the polar opposite is the answer. See, we all need a little bit of solitude, and a little bit of connection to others, but we each want different amounts of each. In my experience, people suffering from loneliness are more towards the "solitude" end of the spectrum. But, circumstances have given them more solitude than even they want. A person who's looking for a cure for loneliness would find this hyper-connected situation even worse. At best, this is a solution for people who are really close to the other end of the spectrum, and find that normal Western Society doesn't given them what they want.
Everyone lives in one big room, in bunks - oh, I'm sorry: "pods." The bunks are open on the side, so they're even less private than Japan's infamous coffin hotels. In fact, the beds fold up to become desks in the day, meaning that: (a) you don't even have a place to retreat to during the day, and (b) you'll be working together with the same people you're living with.
One tweet described it as being like something out of Douglas Coupland's nightmares. That's a good description, but my first reaction was that it's like something from the grim near-future of cyberpunk, which often features people living in less-than-glamourous surroundings. So it was fiting that I read that Coupland comment when it was forwarded by William Gibson. So basically this place is a general nightmare for all of Canada's postmodern authors. could we work some sexism in too so Margaret Atwood can get involved? Well, they have banned sex in the pods, but the community is expected to police itself, which is a recipe for disaster if you ask me.
So you're living as close to your fellow humans as possible, but without having sex with them. Could it get any worse? Sure: it's in Los Angeles, so it's $900 a month, yet it may still be the only thing some people can afford.
The defenders are calling this an antidote to loneliness. That sounds noble, but it's not a real good solution to that problem. I've done a lot of research into loneliness, and I don't think the polar opposite is the answer. See, we all need a little bit of solitude, and a little bit of connection to others, but we each want different amounts of each. In my experience, people suffering from loneliness are more towards the "solitude" end of the spectrum. But, circumstances have given them more solitude than even they want. A person who's looking for a cure for loneliness would find this hyper-connected situation even worse. At best, this is a solution for people who are really close to the other end of the spectrum, and find that normal Western Society doesn't given them what they want.
Friday, April 1, 2016
What A Fool Believes
A lot of people seem to hate April Fools day. Today I saw many people on social media lamenting its arrival, and the many half-assed jokes they'd be dodging over the next 24 hours. But personally, I enjoy it. True, many of the hoaxes and pranks are bad. But in a world where goofy broad comedy rules, it's nice to have a premise that forces everyone to use a deadpan delivery that we normally don't see outside of The Onion.
But today I realized that there is a modern problem with April Fools. I realized when reading an article about a Japanese Virtual Reality simulation of trying to save a cat on a plank: I couldn't figure out if it was a joke. Yes, it sounds like a joke. But then, we live in a world where there's a game called Goat Simulator. It started out as a joke, but then became quite popular. There's also a game where you play a slice of bread trying to get toasted. That wasn't even a joke. So when products are so light-hearted, how can we even tell which are real?
We already passed the point of Saturday Night Live commercials becoming real products, now April Fools pranks too. The trouble is that it's so easy to make things that we can now make them on a whim.
Surprisingly, for all my musings on the future, I never suspected this. Sure, people have speculated about what would happen if we perfected nanobots, microscopic robots that could do incredible work in their teeming millions. Even if that didn't lead to an apocalypse of nanobots consuming all resources as they endlessly reproduce themselves, giving everyone god-like powers of creation could be devastating. I wouldn't be surprised if some people used the new technology to carve entire mountains into sculptures of their own genitals, but that would just be one aspect of a bigger disaster. What I didn't expect was a long period of time where advanced humans leisurely produce one odd creation after another. But that looks like where we're going.
This is yet another way Star Trek lied to us. Their replicators and holodecks have the characters incredible powers of creation, yet only ever used them tastefully. Sure, we all speculated about what was in Riker's secret holodeck files, but generally everyone used their powers responsibly. Of course, I can see how unrealistic that is now. If you had the power to make a giant pink rhinoceros when you feel like it, you probably will.
At least this answers one question I have had about the future: if humanity does survive for millennia, what are we going to do with all that time? I mean, once we've cured all the diseases and figured out all of science. I guess we're just going to fill out time doing weird, frivolous stuff. And I guess writing an article about April Fools Day that somehow links to the destiny of the human race is a good start.
But today I realized that there is a modern problem with April Fools. I realized when reading an article about a Japanese Virtual Reality simulation of trying to save a cat on a plank: I couldn't figure out if it was a joke. Yes, it sounds like a joke. But then, we live in a world where there's a game called Goat Simulator. It started out as a joke, but then became quite popular. There's also a game where you play a slice of bread trying to get toasted. That wasn't even a joke. So when products are so light-hearted, how can we even tell which are real?
We already passed the point of Saturday Night Live commercials becoming real products, now April Fools pranks too. The trouble is that it's so easy to make things that we can now make them on a whim.
Surprisingly, for all my musings on the future, I never suspected this. Sure, people have speculated about what would happen if we perfected nanobots, microscopic robots that could do incredible work in their teeming millions. Even if that didn't lead to an apocalypse of nanobots consuming all resources as they endlessly reproduce themselves, giving everyone god-like powers of creation could be devastating. I wouldn't be surprised if some people used the new technology to carve entire mountains into sculptures of their own genitals, but that would just be one aspect of a bigger disaster. What I didn't expect was a long period of time where advanced humans leisurely produce one odd creation after another. But that looks like where we're going.
This is yet another way Star Trek lied to us. Their replicators and holodecks have the characters incredible powers of creation, yet only ever used them tastefully. Sure, we all speculated about what was in Riker's secret holodeck files, but generally everyone used their powers responsibly. Of course, I can see how unrealistic that is now. If you had the power to make a giant pink rhinoceros when you feel like it, you probably will.
At least this answers one question I have had about the future: if humanity does survive for millennia, what are we going to do with all that time? I mean, once we've cured all the diseases and figured out all of science. I guess we're just going to fill out time doing weird, frivolous stuff. And I guess writing an article about April Fools Day that somehow links to the destiny of the human race is a good start.
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