Where I’m Coming From

Just before the World Cup started, I was trying to make small-talk, and mentioned that I have an English background, so that will explain why I may be in a bad mood for the next month. Bringing up that topic, I had assumed that others would chime in with their own reasons for cheering for a particular country. This being KW, I would expect that several people would smugly announce German heritage. Possibly one or two would just burst into tears, and I would assume they are Italian.

But instead, everyone seemed unsure. Rather than proudly state the allegiance, they were non-committal. People would say, yeah, I guess I have English roots so I could shout for them.

To be clear, I wasn’t expecting that everyone would be a fanatic for the source of their DNA. But I did expect that there was an understanding that in sports, particularly out-of-the-ordinary events, you pick someone to cheer for, and put on the die-hard fan act. Getting behind the home of your maternal grandfather for a month fits the bill. But no one I talked to looked at it that way. Having temporary allegiance to a country you have a flimsy connection to is a, well, a foreign concept.

Ethnicity is a weird thing here in Canada. You’ve got some people who are wrapped up in their family’s country of origin. But others have been here for generations, and don’t think of themselves as having any connection to other lands. I first noticed this in school when we were given an assignment to find out about our personal heritage. We had to list an ethnicity for each of our four grandparents. For me, the assignment was trivial: I just wrote “England” four times and handed the paper in.

Of course, I realized that most Canadians have a more diverse background. But I hadn’t realized that it would be much more difficult for others. The teacher had to encourage the students to ask around their families. He also had to explain — like he’d been through this before — that you can’t just write down “Canadian,” however far you have to go back to find something else.

I get the same sense watching all these commercials for genealogy services and genetic testing. They promote it as discovering your roots, with examples of people who have no idea what their heritage is. Sure, I had been shown that young kids were often pretty clueless about their origins, but I had naively assumed that by the time people got to adulthood, they had been filled in on their ethnic background. But apparently it’s enough of a mystery that people will pay good money to find out.

Of course, there’s a flip side to this: many people who take their heritage as a major part of their personal definition, often to the point of displacing their Canadian identity. Again, soccer is a place where we often see this. For years we’ve seen national flags on car windows during every World Cup. This year, I noticed that a kiosk in a mall was also selling hood flags. That is, a flag that wraps across the hood of your car, so you can show your allegiance even more forcefully, with the added benefit of not compromising your aerodynamics. I wasn’t sure if this idea would take off, but I’ve been seeing more of them over the course of the World Cup.

Canada’s national soccer teams — at least on the men’s side — are notorious for having difficulty getting home teams to cheer for them. Fans often cheer for the team of their ethnic origins, rather than the country they’re currently living in. That’s a situation that’s been debated to death in the past, so I won’t do it here. Instead, I’ll just point out how this illustrates Canadians’ diverse ways of dealing with ethnic affiliations. Some of us have completely lost touch with our roots, while others hold onto them no matter what.

I’m not sure what this means, or where it’s going to go in the future. I feel like Canada’s sense of identity is slowly getting stronger, despite the persistence of strong connections to other countries. Clearly it’s more complex than I had assumed.

Good Whill Hunting

In a recent interview, George Lucas revealed some of his plans for the third Star Wars trilogy, had he been the one to make it. He didn't make it, of course, having sold the franchise to Disney. And after hearing his plans, people are thinking that’s a good thing.

He revealed that the third trilogy would have gone into the microscopic world, looking more in depth at the midi-chlorians that no one liked from The Phantom Menace. He would have introduced another bunch of microbes, the Whills, who really control The Force and the universe.

At this point, I have to say that I’m not entirely sure that Lucas is being honest with us. Part of me believes that either:

1. He’s so tired of people criticizing the prequel trilogy that he’s trolling us by taking what people didn’t like about them and then expanding on that. If we discover that one of the Whills is a whiny teenager having an unconvincing romance with an older Whill royal, then you’ll know I’m right.
2. Like any decent Star Wars fan, he’s alarmed by the bigoted criticism the new trilogy is getting, so he’s running interference by putting out truly bad ideas for how it might have gone. Racist “fans” will be quicker to accept non-white-male stars when they realize that they could have gotten microbe stars.

But assuming that Lucas’ ideas were genuine, this stands as the most extreme example of a principle I heard once about why sci-fi/fantasy franchises often disappoint over time: that the creators probably have different ideas of what the story is about than the fans do. Unfortunately, I can’t remember who said that, but I think it was someone on a Battlestar Galactica after-show. That was another show that deviated from expectations as it went along. It became a convoluted origin story for the human race, rather than the parable of post-9/11 America that attracted many fans.

The midi-chlorians were a good example of this. It struck a false note with fans because:

1. The concept of The Force had seemed like a statement of mind over matter. The idea that great power could come from patience and understanding was an inspiring meek-shall-inherit-the-galaxy idea. The 98-pound weakling could watch the movies to escape from a world where he gets beat up by the school bully. But by introducing the midi-chlorians, it made it seem like just another genetic lottery. Now the 98-pound weakling realizes that in the movies’ universe, he’d just end up getting force-choked by the school bully.
2. Although Star Wars has always played fast and loose with science, at least it avoided using technobable as an cop-out story device, unlike a certain other Sci-Fi franchise.

Supposedly Lucas had the midi-chlorians in mind right from the start, so he perhaps didn't realize that the fans were building up a different mental image of the story's world than he had.

Ironically, another example of this is the aforementioned bigot fan contingent. A variety of incidents have exposed the fact that there are a lot of alt-right crossover in the sci-fi community. That’s a surprise to many, since Star Wars and Star Trek have, in their own way, made morality into a key ingredient. How that could possibly be compatible with tormenting a person for being of a different race is a mystery to most of us. And yet, these folks evidently have a great deal of passion for a franchise, despite not sharing some of its key values.

I guess you could make the argument that we all pick and choose what we want from a media property. After all, a lot of people are fans of Star Wars without being a fan of, you know, wars. We can absorb the story’s themes while glossing over the message that comes from the movies’ action, perhaps because action and violence are so ubiquitous in our media. There’s a similar concept in video games called Ludonarrative Dissonance, which is when the gameplay and the story have different messages, such as a violent game that tries to have a pro-peace moral. And I guess this can be a solution to my long-standing question of why far-right politicians often listen to music with a liberal message. Lefty lyrics often come with aggressive delivery, so you might well absorb one while ignoring the other.

That’s not to say that everyone has a right to get what they want out of our favourite media. We simply can’t all expect to get something out of it when we each see such different things in it. And if your experience is very different from either the creator or the rest of the audience, then you’ll be disappointed.

Dougie Jekyll And Gordie McHyde

Canada has entered a spat with the United States. Of course, it’s not a common thing for us to be in a spat with anyone. Yes, we've had plenty of disputes with the US, but they’re usually esoteric trade issues that get fought in a court. National leaders taking shots at each other? Not our style.

People sometimes bring up our territorial dispute with Denmark over Hans Island. The Canadian government says it should be ours because it is part of the Northern Archipelago which was claimed by Britain and inherited by Canada. The Danes say it should be theirs because it is closer to Greenland, which they own. This “dispute” amuses others because of the comically low-key way that it is fought. That is, it’s “fought” by each nation occasionally sending a ship to the island to take down the other country’s flag and put up their own.

It may surprise outsiders, but there are those in Canada who don't like our low key approach. I'm not talking politicians - those in government who want a more active role are still confined by the limited tax base of a country that won't put up with the military taking up half our budget. So their get-tough attitude comes out as a commitment to buy 7 destroyers instead of the 6 that those wimpy liberals would have bought.

No, I'm thinking of the talk of average people, in coffee shops, living rooms, and online. Most Canadians appreciate our civility, but you occasionally come across folks who think we need to be more forceful, that we should go in to Hans Island guns blazing and set up a Tim Hortons.

But here's what makes this week's American dispute interesting: the subsection of Canadians that longs for aggression overlaps with populist conservatives who generally love the United States and would like us to be closer to them. Of course, most of the time this correlation works out fine; The US is the poster child for aggressive foreign policy, and the easiest way for us Canadians to get more aggressive would be to tag along on their latest adventure.

So what are they supposed to do when we're having a tiff with their beloved American role models? I swear I could hear heads exploding all over the country as they tried to solve that puzzle . It's made worse by the fact that the attack on the Great White North was entirely the creation of Donald Trump, a great aggressive role model.

I was kind of worried what I might see online: so often these days, political sides trump all else, so I wondered how many conservative Canadians might take Trump's side in all this. In the past I've been disappointed that many politically naive Canadians have assumed that their mild distaste for a pretty-boy PM is the equal of the ideological diametric opposite in the White House. But to my surprise, people have been coming out in support of Trudeau. Even self-professed Trump admirer Doug Ford took Trudeau's side.

So maybe this is one of those cases where the political sides are going to start realigning. If a Republican president can be anti-trade, maybe Canadian conservatives will start being anti-American.  It might be good for us if the urge to be nationally assertive could work with the desire to have a separate identity. Watch out, Denmark.

Blinded With Science

In the past, I’ve seen many discussions on the ethics of inventions and scientific breakthroughs. In our society, we’ve generally gone with the assumption that progress is good, and it’s just expected that new ideas are going to keep coming. But sometimes someone suggests that we’d be better off without certain inventions. In the past, that’s been big things, like nuclear weapons, say. But these days, we’re more likely to be questioning the value of social networks, or modern applications of AI.

I always thought there was an aspect of this discussion that was missed. When people rue the very existence of inventions, the anger is usually pointed at the inventor. It often isn’t explicitly stated, but the feeling is that the inventor should have thought twice about whether the world is really better off with the invention before telling anyone else about it. There’s an implicit assumption that this world-changing decision should be made by the inventor. I see a couple of big problems with this.

One is that this difficult ethical decision will be made by someone who probably doesn’t have a lot of knowledge of ethics. No, I don’t want to dredge up stereotypes of scientists being unfeeling or uncaring, I’m just saying that we should probably have people with more experience and representation to make such wide-reaching decisions.

The second — and I’d say bigger — problem is that the inventor of a technology is the least objective judge of the new technology that there can be. If it is up to them to decide the fate of their new invention, then we’re asking them to make a rational decision between two options without being swayed by the fact that one option gives them fame and fortune, while the other gives them nothing but the satisfaction that they did the right thing in a circumstance they can’t even tell anyone about. And in modem "publish or perish" academia, they may have to make a major career sacrifice to do the right thing.

So I'm thinking about this because we're starting to see the down side of many of our recent innovations. A lot of people were concerned by Google recently showing off its assistant making a call on your behalf to make an appointment.

That’s technically impressive, though it’s another example of us solving a problem with unnecessarily complex technology. The claim is that you could use this to set up appointments for you when you don’t have time. But a less difficult way to do that would be some sort of shared calendar, like what Google and Microsoft Outlook already offer. But making one that everyone can use would require different companies to agree on a universal standard so that you can use your iPhone to make an appointment with your dentist that uses Google. That won’t happen, so we’ll have a future where your computer calls the dentist’s computer, and they each use cutting-edge AI so that they can talk English to each other.

But the other complaint is that it's not hard to imagine how this tech could be harmful: A human-sounding computer could be great for scams, and it would put telemarketing within reach of any company, not just those that can afford a third-world call-centre.

And what further concerned many wasn’t just the technology, but the universally warm welcome it received from the tech-conference crowd. That was in sharp contrast with the discomfort that was most people’s reaction, and it seemed to show off the industry's disconnect. While much of the outside world is still sore from Facebook's many betrayals of our privacy, it's still business as usual in Silicon Valley.

So that's what reminded me of my concern with who polices innovation. In the modern case, you can replace my hypothetical inventor with a company, but the same principle applies: we expect an entity to fall on its sword for the good of society.

Traditionally, this is where government would step in and do what's right for society. But the other shocking thing from the Facebook scandals was how unprepared the U.S. government was at dealing with technology. The Facebook hearings often seemed like a parody. In "defence" of the politicians, I would point out that a lot of their apparent ignorance was really just playing to ignorant voters. From what I saw of the hearings, the interviewers ignored the actual problems to focus on points that were minor or irrelevant, but easier to understand. But still, we can’t realistically expect judgement of inventions from politicians who are either ignorant, bought-and-paid-for, or terrified of being seen as an over-regulating commie pinko.

I don't really have a solution to all this. I'm just pointing out that we're right back to where we started, assuming that innovation is going to keep coming.

Have You Invested In Ford Lately?

Ford is getting out of the car business. Okay, not completely: they're keeping the Mustang around. But for the most part, they're just gong to sell trucks and SUV's. Chrysler has essentially done the same thing; their only cars are some stagnant Dodge sedans and the Fiat 500.

Even if SUV's are big sellers, I'm still skeptical. As many have been pointing out, the SUV craze may only live as far as low oil prices, and that won't be forever.

This could lead to a bigger version of what happened with the recession in the 2000's, where Americans suddenly wanted fuel efficiency, but American manufacturers had let their small cars fall behind the competition. This time it could be worse, because they wouldn't even have those cars available.

And word is that the biggest reason for this is not Americans' preference for trucks and SUV's, but profitability. SUV's are more expensive, and fewer people base their purchases on price, so there isn't as much pressure to keep the prices down. Thus, manufacturers make a lot on each sale, and the corporate books look good, even if market share suffers.

That's unusual, because market share has traditionally been the big indicator of success in the American car biz. So this move is showing us how much influence Wall Street has on even the biggest companies. But investors don't always have concern for a company's long-term health.

That brings up my main concern when American manufacturers start ignoring the low end of the market: that strategy sets it up so that most people buy their first car from one of the imported brands. In an industry where brand loyalty is a big deal, that sounds like a disastrous strategy, at least in the long-term.

And it gets worse when you combine it with another big trend in the car business: really long loans. It used to be that car loans were in the four year range, but now car makers are happily pushing 84 month financing. If they're going to be relying on more expensive products now, you can expect the long loan trend to accelerate.

But the flip side to this SUV trend is that although they may be replacing cars, SUVs are also becoming more car-like. The Toyota C-HR (SUV) is 1,565 mm tall while the Mazda 3 (car) is 1,455mm tall. So the difference between a car and an SUV is a mere 11 cm (about 4"). Seeing them parked beside each other, they don't look that different. I guess this isn't really that surprising: Although people want SUV's, they still want things cars are better at providing, like efficiency and maneuverability, which is forcing SUV's to get more car-like. So I’m suspecting that a decade or so from now, We’ll be right back to where we’ve always been, driving cars, but we’ll be calling our vehicles "SUVs" instead of "cars."