Get The Parity Started

It’s amazing how the colour of a product makes such a difference in price. In our world where there’s often not much differentiating one product from another, the colour can make all the difference. Of course, I’m going to use examples from cars and technology, but you can find examples everywhere.

That’s the reason why cars have taken a turn for the gray in recent decades. It’s affected by what car buyers desire in their own cars, but also their concern for resale value. So they’ll prefer an inoffensive gray car that they can easily flip a few years later, not the green one that might turn off other buyers. I suspect it’s also that car companies know people are very choosy, and colour won’t win them many sales unless it’s absolutely perfect, but an offensive colour will lose them many, so they stay neutral. Personally, I think that’s a shame; I like colours, but I’m not married to any in particular. So I’d like to have a nice colour for the sake of some colour in my life, even if it’s not my favourite. But I seem to be in the minority on that, so gray it is.

I’ve also seen the colours having an effect on prices in the technology business. I’ve been looking for an external hard drive, and Samsung makes their external drives in traditional black, but also in blue and red. I’ve noticed that one colour is sometimes on sale, but not the others. They’re identical other than the colours, so I’m assuming that when one falls behind in sales, some algorithm somewhere decides it’s time for a discount. It’s hard to believe that colour can have that kind of effect on the purchase of something few others are going to see, but apparently it does.

But then I went looking for a game controller. They’re traditionally gray or black, but often available in other colours. So after my experience with the hard drives, I wasn’t surprised to find that the red XBox controller was five dollars less than the original black. I was set to order it and congratulate myself on my colourful frugality, but then I saw it: A pink controller, for fifteen dollars less than the original.

That’s ironic, because of this concept called, the “Pink Tax.” That’s the phenomenon where products aimed at women are more expensive than similar products aimed at men, even though they hardly differ. Often, the only difference is that they’re pink, hence the name. They aren’t really more expensive because they’re pink. After all, pink paint and dye is not particularly expensive. Instead, it’s factors like how much consumers want and need products. I’m assuming that because women are under more pressure to look good, their hygiene products are more expensive because of higher demand.

So in other contexts, pink might cost more, but the roles have been reversed here. You might be surprised to see them even trying to sell something pink in the world of video games, but let me remind you: 

1. Surveys show female gamers are now close to 50% of the market.
2. We are just coming out of The Year Of Barbie. 

Having said that, it appears things weren’t working out the way Microsoft marketing wanted, and the pink controllers were deeply discounted. I don’t know, maybe the Barbie-gaming crossover wasn’t as much as they’d hoped. But I suspect the real reason is that female gamers may choose the black or the pink, while the males will only buy the black.

(And if you’re wondering, I only saw one colour that was more expensive than the original black controller: a dark purple. Purple seems to be having a moment right now.)

For me, even when I put aside traditional symbols of masculinity, pink is not one of my favourite colours. I don’t mind it, as long as it’s taken in reasonable quantities. You know, less than the Barbie-aisle-at-Toys-R-Us levels. And whatever need I have to reaffirm my masculinity is tiny compared to my desire not to over-spend on electronics, so: I ordered the pink controller.

It’s not much of a consolation for high-priced women’s products, but there are times when the Pink Tax turns into, let’s say, the Pink Subsidy. And I’m pleased to be gaming with both confidence in my masculinity, and an extra fifteen dollars in my pocket.

Game Stop

In video games, there’s this concept called the “rage quit.” That’s when a player ends the game early in a fit of anger. Often, it’s referring to an online game, where a player quits in a moment of emotion, and is seen as bad sportsmanship. But it can also refer to quitting a single-player game in a fit of frustration, often to never return.

I think “rage quit” is a very useful phrase, because it’s a phenomenon we’ve all experienced, even if we’ve never played video games. I hope it gets broadened to use in all facets of life. Plenty of people rage quit jobs, but you can also use it in less-dramatic circumstances. You can talk about how you tried to learn piano, but rage quit while practicing the B-minor scale.

But back to gaming. Sometimes, I would rage quit online StarCraft games back in my university days (“Damnit, we agreed, no grunt rushes!”) And more recently, single-player games that mistook frustration for challenge (hello, Mirror’s Edge.) But it seems to me that there’s another type of game-quitting that needs a name. This would be something like “Apathy Quit.” You aren't angry, you've just run out of enthusiasm. maybe you don't even make a conscious choice to stop playing; you just don’t come back to a game. Actually, “apathy” isn’t the right word, because it implies that you don’t care about the game. Sometimes I don’t come back to a game that I do care about. I’ve just kind of, had enough.

For instance, I “had-enough quit” Hollow Knight. That might be a surprise, since it’s a widely-beloved indie game. And indeed, I loved playing it, and have no regrets about buying it. But, having explored pretty much everything in the game, the only thing left was to defeat the last few bosses, but that would mean hours of bashing my head against the wall, failing again and again, and I just didn’t have the enthusiasm for it. So I just stopped playing.

Another game I didn’t come back to was Mass Effect: Andromeda. I mentioned being a fan of the Mass Effect series before, And I’m enough of a fan that I was willing to slog through the much-unloved fourth instalment in the series. Indeed, it has all the flaws people have complained about: terrible animation, an awkward user interface, and a general whiff of budget cuts. But I found it had enough of what made the original trilogy successful that it was still enjoyable despite its flaws. So I played most of the way through it, and then…stopped.

That was particularly odd, because it was right around the start of the Covid lockdowns, when escape into another world would be a welcome thing. But I had — once again — had enough. Another complaint about Andromeda was that its length was padded-out by repetitiveness rather than genuinely new story, and I think that added to the feeling of apathy.

So, why this walk down Gaming Apathy Boulevard? Well, I don’t have a big hard drive, and I have these unfinished games just sitting there, taking up space, so I decided to go back and try to finish them. Hollow Knight looks like it will be a tough task to beat the last bosses, so I may leave it unfinished. But Andromeda is close enough to the shooter template that I feel like I can finish up the last few side-quests, then bumble through the final battle with the Kett or the Revenant or Angora or whoever the bad guys were.

What have I learned from the experience?

• This is the closest I'm going to come to the trope of the thief/detective/superhero coming out of retirement for one last job. Everything around me seems familiar, but I'm still a step slow, and feeling unprepared, and just generally feeling “too old for this shit.”
• Games are complicated. You don’t realize while playing them normally, because they’ve purposely dropped new concepts on you one-at-a-time, slowly adding to your knowledge of the various systems and tools available to you. But coming back and playing mostly-complete games is tough because you’ve already reached maximum complexity, and now there’s nothing here to remind you how it all works.
• It’s weird that no time has passed in the game. Other characters are referring to things that just happened within the game, but I don’t remember them, because they were four years ago. Maybe in the future, games will be so sophisticated that they’ll notice when you’ve been away for a while and update you appropriately, reintroducing you to characters and reminding you what’s been going on. But until then, I’m a reverse Rip Van Winkle.
• It’s sort of like riding a bicycle. I didn’t go straight back to feeling completely comfortable, but it didn’t take long. Of course, it helps that these games are just variations on popular themes, so using the controls is just a matter of remembering which buttons do what. 
• Come to think of it, it’s been a while since I rode a bicycle, so I could test that old saying too.

Small Town Slow Down

Apparently, small villages are really concerned about people speeding through town. I'm seeing more and more of those speed readouts that tell you your speed, using colours and flashing appropriate to how much you've exceeded the limit. Those things are an interesting piece of psychology: they don't tell you anything you don't already know from your own speedometer, but telling it to you in public, you'll react differently, even though there's probably no one around to see how fast you're going; after all, this is a village with fifty people and no sidewalks.

I also find it amusing when a village has that sign as you enter, asking you to keep to the speed limit. Around here, that sign is usually in quotes. I’m not sure why they do that, but it makes it sound like it's the village motto or something. So it's like:

Paris: "The City of Lights" 
Las Vegas: “What Happens in Vegas, Stays in Vegas”
Wheatville: "Please Drive at 50 km/h Speed Limit."

It's better if they go another step, and post a sign saying, "The Children of Wheatville Ask You To Drive at the 50km/h Speed Limit." Nice guilt trip, but I have to say:

1. There's like ten houses here and I've never seen anyone but seniors in this village.
2. Am I really supposed to believe that kids living by a highway want the cars to slow down?

If anything, it should be, "The Children of Wheatville ask you to really floor it past their place." or, "The Children of Wheatville Ask Semis to Blow the Horn on the Way By."

And now a few towns are even putting up signs with life-size cut-outs of kids asking you to slow down. Again, interesting psychology, since it's not telling you anything you didn't already know; it’s just making you confront the reality of your actions. But it makes me wonder how far this is going. An electronic signboard showing kids about to dart into traffic maybe? Holographic kids popping up in the street? Maybe on your way out of town a sign tells you how many virtual kids you hit?

It’s one thing when it's a village on a long, straight, smooth road. But I don't understand Haysville, near KW, which has one of those our-children-ask-you-to-slow-down signs, but the road through it is not only hilly and twisty, but it doesn't appear to have been repaved in my lifetime. Why do you need the sign? I'd need a Group B Rally Car just to get to the speed limit.

I have to point out that I don't blame anyone for their speeding concerns; lots of people barely slow down passing through a little hamlet, particularly if there's no stop sign or traffic light. It’s just unfortunate that you go through these little communities so fast that they only have time to show you one thing that distinguishes them from other villages. It’s a shame if that one thing they communicate to you is, “we hate you for speeding.” And since so many of them just give you that same message, it makes you feel like that’s the only thing rural people care about. That one village where one guy carved a statue of Iron Man out of the dead tree on his lawn seems full of personality by comparison, even if they do have weird priorities.

Tomorrow I'll Be Perfect

I once read one of the What Color Is Your Parachute books. In trying to explain how to find your ideal career, the author related an incident where he was advising a client. He asked the client to find three things he really enjoyed, and the three he chose were psychology, gardening and carpentry. A little research showed that there is a branch of psychology that deals with plant therapy, thus combining the client's top two interests. The author then points out the need for wooden shelves to hold the plants.

When I read that, I wasn't sure if that was the dumbest or most brilliant thing I'd ever seen. I mean, surely you could combine those interests in a less literal way. Like if you're interested in carpentry, it's probably not just exposure to wood that you're looking for; it's probably a more abstract working with spatial ideas, or honing a craft. Surely you could find those things in some other, less contrived career.

But at the same time, I secretly was jealous. I mean, wouldn't we all love to be working in a job that combined our favourite things? Doing something you love would be great, but this would be better, since you could never get bored, or come to resent that one activity. Curse you, modern economy, for not providing a job that combines political punditry, driving, and watching sports!

And strangely, it was watching sports that made me think of this passage from the book. During a baseball game, the commentators informed us that the Dodgers' Cody Belanger was the only player in the Major Leagues to hit a home run in every possible count this season. That is, there are twelve possible counts of balls and strikes, and he had hit at least one homer while in each of them.

At this point, I asked the question every modern sports fan asks from time to time: how the hell do they come up with these stats?

But between my knowledge of sports and computers, I can understand it. If a person has a strong knowledge of both sports statistics and databases I think it would be pretty believable that they could come up with oddball facts like that. You have an inkling about a possible statistical point of interest, compose it into a database query and check it out.

Of course, that means having a great interest and expertise in two different areas. But if you do happen to fit the qualifications, then it's your perfect job. Those are some pretty specific requirements, but then, there won't be many openings for it either, so this occupational serendipity is pretty rare. That's unfortunate; wouldn't you love a world where everyone got to work in a job so perfectly tailored to them? I'm still looking, so I'll have to go back to the book.

To Be Yourself Is All That You Can Do

The New York Times ran an op-ed piece saying that "be yourself" is actually bad advice. The reasoning is that if you are truly being yourself - rather than what others expect you to be - it will cause you to act on all sorts of impulses that will not be considered acceptable to others. Want to eat Cocoa Puffs in the bath right now, even though you’re hosting a dinner party? If you’re being yourself, you’ll do what you want to do.

The problem with this concept is that it considers your urges to be "you" while the judgement that stops you from acting on those urges is not you. To put it in Freudian terms, the id is your actual self, but not your ego or superego. Our to put it in Looney Tunes terms, the devil on your shoulder is you, but the angel on your other shoulder is not.

This seems to be a common way of looking at ourselves. We identify with our desires, while assuming our judgement is foreign. I’m not sure why we do that; after all, our judgement is something we have to work to craft out of our experience and values, while our desires just come from out of nowhere. But now that we can identify that “nowhere” as being genes bred for archaic tasks, you’d think that we’d start to cast a more skeptical eye on base urges, and see them as meaningless.

I guess the reason that we see self-constraint as foreign is that we generally get those principles from our families, teachers or spiritual leaders. So often, that voice at the back of our head sounds like someone else’s voice, rather than our own conscience.

I hope we can change this. I mean, I’m glad that the author of the article is against wildly inappropriate impulsiveness. But I think that we need to start taking ownership of our impulse control, and being proud of it. To put it another way, be yourself, as long as the “yourself” in question is not an unsupervised child.

The Dog Of Small Things

I've mentioned that I'm not a dog person. But I have learned some interesting things about dogs. I've always found it interesting that we created all the breeds, and wonder what that says about us. It's also interesting that in some cases the breeds have become so extreme that they're causing medical problems. Some kennel clubs have gone as far as changing what they look for as the ideal in breeds to try to discourage the creation of unhealthy animals, and avoiding a future where shar peis are just a big pile of folded skin.

But it's worse than that. The selective breeding that creates and maintains breeds is essentially inbreeding on a huge scale, and they cause all kinds of invisible health problems. Well now one dog owner has a controversial solution: genetic engineering. That may seem extreme, but preventing a dog's suceptability to disease could be a simple as flipping a few genes, and the new CRISPR process makes it much easier.

This stood out to me for a couple of reasons. One is that this could be the onset of a gene-hacking culture. I'd heard lots of predicitons that genetics would be the next area that would see a fast, semi-chaotic string of innovations the way computing has for the last couple of generations. I'd always been skeptical of that simply because computer and software innovation has been fuelled by the low cost of entry; you can start a company in your garage, while genetics can only move at the speed of Big Pharma. But if a guy is hacking his Dalmatian in his garage, then it's next stop mutantville.

The other aspect that caught my attention is the quote that I saw passed around social media. It's the dog-hacker's main arguement in favour of allowing genetic manipulation of dogs: “I think it will be easier to teach dog breeders CRISPR than it will be to teach dog breeders why pure breeding is a bad thing.” It may be extreme, but I'm sure he's correct. But more importantly, that seems to sum up our entire age: astounding technology is easy; convincing people to use it responsibly is not. So we just hope we can invent our way out of problems faster than they arise.

Of course, the statement isn't entirely true. Teaching dog breeders about the dangers of pure breeding isn't difficult. After all, I learned it, and I don't know anything about dogs. But really, in this case my lack of connection to dogs is, paradoxically, an advantage to understanding this. Not being a dog person, I don't have any vested interest either way. But if you have preconcieved ideas about dogs, you'll be reluctant to change your mind. Really, it's convincing owners that's the problem. Or, just convincing them that the health of the animals they claim to love is more important than their pursuit of arbitrary and often quite silly ideals. And again, that's a symbol of our times. Spreading information around is very easy, but conveying the importance of things is next to impossible.

Always On My Mind

You sometimes hear a person praised for always saying what's on their mind.

I don't know why this is such a good thing. I'm far more concerned with what a person has on their minds, rather than whether they say it. After all, a quick look at social media verifies that opinions are not rare, but thought is. I have to wonder why you never hear this said about people who have a lot of interesting things on their mind.

“This is Sue; she always says what's on her mind.”
“Pleased to meet you. Do you think a person can feel in control of their life without blaming themselves for their failings?”

I don't know, maybe people are like this if they’re in a more intellectual setting. Say, in a physics institute, they do describe one another that way.

“This is Dr. McNeil, she always says what's on her mind.”
“Hi, I believe quantum chromodynamics can be modified to explain the weak interactions of nucleons.”

Really, if we're honest about what is actually on our minds most of the time, we'd admit that it's good that people don't usually say what's on their mind.

“This is Bob; he always says what's on his mind.”
“How are you doing? I have to get bread on the way home.”

Of course, for myself and others, we've noticed the says-what's-on-our-mind compliment is just a polite way of saying that someone is an asshole.

How is it that we only say that about assholes? You'd think there are some nice people out there who say what's on their mind, and it's always something nice. Okay, for that sort of person, we'd probably just say that they're nice. And that further shows how say-what’s-on-your-mind is calling you an asshole: for most people who say what's on their mind, we just describe what they are like. Dr. McNeil up there is a physicist, not someone who says what’s on her mind, and it’s usually about physics. If we don't want to mention what they usually talk about, we praise them for talking.

But that's weird: I think most of us would agree that assholes would be better if they spoke less.

“Here's Joe. He never says what's on his mind.”
“…”
“That's too bad.”
“No no, Joe’s an asshole, so it's better this way.”

But here’s what's really perplexing about this: if saying someone always-says-what’s-on-their-mind is really another way of saying a person is an asshole, then the people saying this are not practicing what they preach. If you really believe that saying what you're thinking is more important than being polite or respected, then just say it: that’s Barb, she's an asshole, and I like that.

Wiikipedia

Well, that's it, I've finished reading Wikipedia. Yeah, I'm one of those people: look up something simple, see a link to something interesting, and then five hours later I'm reading about the history of Armenia and can't remember how I got there. After years of doing that, I've read the whole thing.

I may be exaggerating a bit. If I had read all of Wikipedia, I'd go on Jeopardy before telling anyone about it. And if you're interested, I did once look up how long it would take to read all of Wikipedia, and the answer is: you could never finish it, because people are adding to it faster than a person could read.

Wikipedia has been a great thing for looking up answers quickly. As I've mentioned before: I'm a great proponent of the idea that the Internet is better for curing ignorance than displaying it. But there's still a lot we could do to reduce the world's ignorance.

Okay, reading that last sentence over, I realize it's painfully obvious. I mean, even if we write-off people who don't notice or don't care about their ignorance. It would be nice if there were more tools like Wikipedia that are useful for our tiny minority that wants to learn.

For instance, Wikipedia is great for answering the who, what, where, and when, but we also need something to answer the why.

Right now, what I'd like to answer is: why are people so excited by the new Nintendo Switch? Yes, I know, it's a game console that's got a portable screen so you can play it anywhere. But that's just like Nintendo's Wii U, which was a sales disaster.

It would be great if there was a Whykipedia where you could look up the Nintendo Switch and it would tell you why it's happening, and why people think it will work this time. But there is no such thing right now, so I tried googling, "What's the difference between the Nintendo Switch and the Wii U" and I got a few articles comparing them. All I really got out of it is that it comes down to the idea that they've thought it through better this time.

I realize, for the generation that makes up most of tech journalism today, they grew up with Nintendo, so they have warm fuzzy feelings towards it that I don't truly understand. But there seems to be a general problem with technology, that we keep falling for the same ideas that don't work. I mentioned this with Microsoft and their continuous effort to make a smooth transition from the Windows interface to the Surface that hardly anyone uses to the Windows phone interface that no one uses.

So in a world where even the smart people in the tech world are unpredictably nonsensical, there's no way to understand people's motivations. A wiki repository of explanations would be really useful. I wonder why no one has done that yet.

Now I Wonder How Whatsername Has Been

After today was mostly over, I discovered that it was National Unfriend Day. As you can guess, it's a day in which you are encouraged to unfriend people on social media, particularly Facebook. Apparently this was started by Jimmy Kimmel.  (Though the story about it on the evening news didn't mention that part, so as a viral marketing tool, it didn't work that well.) According to the Facebook page, you should use the following criteria:

• If you wouldn’t loan someone 50 dollars, unfriend them.
• If you wouldn’t invite them to your birthday party, unfriend them.
• If you wouldn’t cry if they got hit by a bus, unfriend them.

I'm not sure about those rules: I've never had large parties, and I would cry for a number of people I wouldn't loan fifty bucks to. But maybe I'm just emotional. After all, I don't really get the concern some people have over friendship being so broadly defined on social media.

Sure, there are plenty of practical concerns about how many friends you have. You can only keep up with so many people, you don't want to share your personal information with someone you just met, and some people post way too much stuff.  Or they post things that make you angry, which is another odd thing about this day: why have Unfriend Day right after American election day?  We've just gone through months of unfriending, with no promotion needed.

Beyond those problems, I don't see why there's a problem with having too many friends.  Unfriend Day's page says it's to "protect the sacred nature of friendship," but I don't think that's a problem.  My close friendships are not harmed just because my friend is also friends with someone they met at night school eight years ago, or the woman in HR he can't remember the last name of.

I'm not just targeting Kimmel here: Others have tried to put down social media friends over the years, portraying them as meaningless things that are little more than acquaintances.  I've always thought that feeling was misguided; there's a lot to be said for those lighter friendships.  I'm not pretending that they are the equivalent of the people you share a close connection with.  But they are a big part of your life. After all, since those relationships include most of your co-workers, and many people you socialize with, you probably spend half your waking hours with them.  They have a big impact on whether you gave good days or bad, and a person who has a positive effect on you can make a big difference in your life.

And the fact is, you don't know when you may have to depend on a sort-of friend.  You don't know when misfortune may strike, and you might need to rely on your acquaintances.  You may find that when push comes to shove, they care more than you expected.  Maybe they'll even loan you fifty dollars.

So don't unfriend your less-close friends.  Instead, be glad that we have technology to maintain connections with so many people. And you could reflect on how so many people have affected your life. Or at least, wonder why anyone would look at this world and decide the problem is that there are too many friends.

I Know You Are But What Am I

Okay, there's a million unbelievable things that have happened in this election, so I'm just going to look at the most unbelievable, at least to me.

Melania Trump has announced that she wants to fight bullying, particularly cyber-bullying. Okay, that's weird to begin with, but not the unbelievable thing that I'm getting to. Sure, a First Lady usually picks a cause to promote, so nice of her to consider that. Aside from the fact that it's a bit presumptuous to be anouncing that before the election, there's the huge problem that she's married to someone who is basically bullying personified.

But there is precedent for this sort of thing. I've written about bullying-hypocrisy before. And Laureen Harper, wife of PM Stephen, tried to promote an anti-bullying strategy, also oblivious to the fact that she was married to Exhibit A. I'd like to think that they, on some level, they understand that their husbands are part of the problem. Remember how Barabara Bush, first lady to Bush Sr., promoted literacy. And then we met her son. And her other son. And her nephew.

Melania fighting bullying is strange, but wouldn't even make the top hundred strange things in this campaign. But here's the thing that I haven't been able to understand right from the start: Trump's a bully, and a candidate bullying his way almost all the way to the presidency doesn't surprise me. But, Trump is so bad at being a bully.

I mean, he's definitely got some abilities: in the primaries he showed a talent for someone's weakness and attaching a label that would stick. Low-energy Jeb, little Marco Rubio, that showed some real evil social skills. But there have also been so many blatantly obvious, grasping at straws moments. "No puppet, no puppet...You're the puppet" Really? Seven-year-olds on a playground would laugh at someone who tried to deflect an insult so desperately.

Countless people have noticed the pattern that he keeps insulting people by accusing others of his own faults, like some sort of ready-made psychoanalysis. It's comical, but it also displays his own weaknesses for all to see. Again, on any playground, that sort of thing would be exploited by everyone around him.

And then there's his common tactic of avoiding questions by spouting a meandering stream of diversions, vague descriptions and promises without details. Of course, polilticians have verbally dodged questions forever, but he is, once again, incredibly bad at it. Rather than distract us from bad news - as most politicians would - he transparently displays that he has no knowledge or plans on the topic he was asked about. Some people have compared this technique to that of a child giving a book report and hoping the teacher won't figure out he hasn't read the book. But a different metaphor is that of a kid trying to fit in, exaggerate his experience, tell everyone he's drank beer, kissed a girl, or kicked someone's ass.

So I don't get it. Bullying is part of everyone's past, and I can understand that the amoral or the authoritarian might be taken-in as adults by someone who displays the traits of a bully as proof of strength. But surely anyone who displays that agression as clumsily as Trump does would end up seeming like a wannabe, and perceived as just another weakling.

You Say You're Not Really That Keen On A Revolution

Most people think of politics as a spectrum. That is, you're not just "left" or "right;" there are different degrees from one extreme to the other. As such, you'd think that people's allegiance would be based on distance on the scale, not just which side you're on. As an analogy, a six-foot-tall man might be called "tall," as is a seven-footer. But really, the six-footer's life is less like the seven-footer, and more like a five-foot-six guy, even though the latter is considered "short." Similarly, centre-right and centre-left politicians have more in common with each other than they do with the extreme voices in their own party.

At least, you'd think so. In practice, I find that people usually find a kinship with others in their own side, even if their views are very different.

An example is when people observe politics in other countries. In the US, all of politics is shifted to the right compared to much of the Western world, such that conservative politicians from other places have policies similar to American liberals. Yet, you still see international conservatives supporting American conservatives, even if the latter is far from the ideals of the former.

Obviously, this whole discussion is motivated by Donald Trump and the cavalcade of Republicans who have knuckled under and agreed to support him. In many cases, this is even after heavily criticising him. And it's even more perplexing when you consider that the Democrats have nominated a business-friendly centrist who would seem to be about as tempting a nominee as they're likely to get.

It all makes you wonder if everyone is, at heart, an extremist. Maybe we only differ in how pragmatic we are in our pursuit of those ideals. That seems especially likely when we look at the other American party's experience in the primary season. On the surface, the battle between the centrist Clinton and the socialist Sanders is a pretty wide divide. Clinton is unofficially running for Obama's third term, while Sanders was calling for revolutionary changes.

But the view changes when you try comparing politicians' actual beliefs, rather than their policies. You never know whether a moderate politician truly believes their moderate policies are the best, or merely think the moderate policies are all they are able to get accepted. Of course, we can never know the answer to this question, as a pragmatic moderate wouldn't want to let on that they secretly want more extreme policies. But the point is that you don't know for certain what a moderate really wants; they could be ideologically the same as any extremist.

So maybe Hillary Clinton is as socialist as Bernie Sanders, and moderate Republicans have always secretly wanted a Donald Trump type figure. Though that does beg the question: does anyone want moderate policies? In most facets of life, the majority doesn't want extremism. Modern music is not just death metal and ambient electronic, so you don't expect politics to just be communism and fascism.

My guess is the explanation is about comfort. Going back to the idea of the political spectrum: we may all have an idea of the best place on the spectrum to be, but we also have a side we'd like to err on. Political people seem to only be afraid of attacks from one side. For instance, a moderate liberal may not want abolish tradition, but they aren't really afraid of or bothered by it the same way a conservative would be.

If we're not scared of the extremists on our own end of the spectrum, we might choose them over a relatively close candidate on the other side. It comes down to the things we value. You may disagree with an extremist's methods and the degrees they go to, but you may still share their priorities. And thus, you'll know that they won't harm the things you hold most sacred.

This Is On You

I think Hugh Laurie summed up the U.S. election recently when he appeared on Colbert. Most news focussed on Dr. House diagnosing Donald Trump. But that's not what I'm talking about - after all, do we really need one more person trying to explain what's wrong with him at this point? No, what I thought was insightful was his confusion at people's attitude to Hillary Clinton. As he put it:

The people who hate Hillary hate her so much...I feel as if I've missed the first reel of the film where she burned down the orphanage or something.

That's been my attitude all along. And it's fitting that I saw my views spelled out so clearly on a talk show, because I also had another moment of clarity about Hillary Clinton while watching a talk show.

It was back during the 2008 election campaign, when Bill Maher was on Leno. He happened to mention her name, provoking a few boos from the crowd. Rather than use that as a springboard to take easy shots at her, he challenged the booers, saying,

If you hate Hillary Clinton, that is so on you. She's a bland centrist. If you hate her, those are your issues. You were molested by a real estate lady or something.

Ironically, I could only find the exact text of that quote at a right-wing blog. But back to the issue. Maher has got a point. Centrist Democrats are the vanilla of politics: not everyone will like it, but no one will really hate it. When you actually look at what Hillary stands for and does, you can certainly explain why Republicans will not be won over, or why the far left won't be excited about her. But there's really no explanation for hatred.

But the understanding of Hillary hatred gets more difficult when you look back at her long-term popularity as a poltician. Sady Doyle points out that she's actually been quite popular once she has a job. Her highest popularity was only a few years ago when she was Secretary of State, but her approval ratings plummet when she runs for President. Of course, you can expect a politician to lose some popularity when exposed to political campaigns, but even that can't explain the night-and-day difference in how she's been seen over the past eight years.

People grasp at different explanations, like a lack of charisma. But I don't remember anything this antagonistic against Mitt Romney or Al Gore. But a bland poltician who gets instantly hated when she shows career aspirations? Let's face it: it's all about gender. We've reached a point where we're okay with women in positions of power, but we still haven't accepted women being assertive or striving to achieve.

Armed with that perspective, you can also understand everyone's sudden love affair with Michelle Obama. She's campaigning for Clinton, essentially saying the same things, and getting heaps of praise for it. And people are saying - with varying degrees of subtlety - how much better it would be if she was the one running against Trump. But that's naive. Of course we love her; she's not running for president.  Give her the nomination and the knives will come out.

One of the most disappointing aspects of this problem is how the prejudice is perpetrated by both genders. Throughout the campaign, I've seen so many women express the same vague-but-strong dislike of Hillary Clinton. There'll be talk of attitude, mannerisms, maybe a comparison to a disliked woman you knew in the past.

I know, as a man, I'm not normally in position to school women on sexism. But as a straight-white-able-bodied-cis-male, if there's one thing I do know, it's prejudice. So let me tell you: prejudice doesn't feel wrong. In fact, it doesn't feel like anything. It feels like you, your feelings. When you hate someone but there's no logical reason why. Or when you're okay with Group X, you just don't like this particular member of Group X. That's what it feels like, and you have to challenge yourself on that. It's something we all have to learn to do.

In Your Dreams Team

Sports can be entertaining, in providing action, intrigue or suspense, but the emotional content comes from living vicariously through your favourite athletes or teams. You share in their experience of accomplishment or disappointment, based on their success or failure.  It's a silly thing to do,  but it's enjoyable, and I think it's not harmful, as long as it's done in moderation.  For instance today I feel good,  because I'm writing this after seeing my Blue Jays win.  In psychology, they call this Basking in Reflected Glory.

And this is why I think that one of the basic rules of sports fandom is that you have to pick a favourite and stick with him/her/them through thick and thin. Cherry-picking the best competitors of the era is a way of childishly trying to avoid the negatives of life.  That's why I've always looked down on:

• Yankees fans with no connection to New York,  
• people who get into European soccer and decide to support Manchester United, Real Madrid, Juventus etc. 
• anyone wearing clothing of a winning team based on the other side of the continent. 

But at least those fans follow the basic premise of living vicariously.  What I don't get at all are the fans that Bask in Reflected Glory of competitors they aren't even cheering for.  I first noticed the phenomena in high school when Michael Jordan was reaching his prime. Many of my classmates seemed to draw tremendous emotional energy from seeing his successes.  Keep in mind that this is small-town Ontario, so we not only had no connection to Chicago, but little connection to basketball.

But nevertheless, here were these teenagers getting pumped up watching a guy they didn't know dominate a sport they didn't care about. From time to time I still see it happen, say with interviewers more concerned with palling-around with the athletes they interview, or commentators who seem to get untold joy from gushing about the opposing team's star.

The reason I'm bringing this up is to give a warning to my fellow Canadians: There's basically no way a non-American can cheer for the US men's basketball team without sounding like an asshole. It's difficult enough for an American; but at least they can claim a connection. Sure, it may sound arrogant to the rest of us, but Americans do have as much right as anyone to cheer for their athletes.  Though if they’re going to be polite about it, they should follow up any boasts by emphasizing that they’d rather have a silver and no Trump.

For anyone else to joyfully revel in famous millionaires from another country humiliating anonymous semi-pros from a different country, you just sound cruel and a little desperate. Sure, you can appreciate when players from your favourite NBA team play well;  and I think that's the excuse for many Canadians, that Raptors' stars Kyle Lowry and DeMar Derozan are playing prominent roles.  Well then I'd better see you cheer just as much when Jonas Valančiūnas leads Lithuania to a narrow win.

A Sudden Sense Of Liberty

One mystery in the Donald Trump phenomena is his appeal to evangelical Christians. After all, Trump hasn't exactly led a pious life: even if you don't find his politics abhorrent to Christian principles, he is a casino magnate on marriage number three. And he runs a beauty pageant.

The cynical might argue that America's conservative Christians have become so focused on their few chosen issues (abortion, gay marriage, trans bathrooms) that they'll enthusiastically support anyone who can forcefully push those issues, whatever their other faults. But even that argument didn't add up. In that area, his religious bona fides turn out to be, well, not all that bona. In his acceptance speech, he spoke positively on gay rights, albeit as a pretense to demonize immigrants. He defended a trans woman's tight to be in a beauty pageant. And he's another in the long line of Republican politicians who had a pro-life revelation conveniently before a national run.

I'm not saying evangelicals wouldn't support him, I just thought they'd fall in love with a more hard-core social conservative like Ted Cruz first, then reluctantly back Trump a la Bernie to Hillary supporters. So why are they so enthusiastic?

It hit me recently that the appeal could be faith. Faith is, of course, kind of important in religion. But for many people today, their religious faith is somewhat amorphous and tinged with doubt. For instance, they won't think of the Bible as literally true. And that attitude is not unlike how most people look at politics: they have basic values, but acknowledge that the world is complicated and politics will always be an inexact science.

But if you're used to a religious belief based on absolutes, politics won't deliver the certainty you're used to. And that's where Trump comes in: The one thing he does have in common with American evangelicals is a lack of ambiguities. So that's my explanation,  that Trump presents a message of certainty that youcan have faith in.

Diss and That

A few years ago,  some sports shows tried to get involved in social media by scrolling viewers' tweets across the bottom of the screen. I assume that idea came about because some exec threw together some buzzwords, but it was also an idea with potential.  You could get people discussing issues,  feeling involved, giving feedback.

Instead, it was mostly fans of different teams trading insults, which I assume is why they don't have the audience participation scrolls anymore. Or maybe they realized that it makes no sense to have TV shows catering to people who have moved on to other media.

But what got me was how baseless and generic the insults were. You'd expect them to be based on actual events on the sports field, with team success giving an advantage to some fans. Say, the Leaf fans take a low profile, while the then-successful Habs remind everyone who's winning. But no, they just threw one unoriginal insult after another at the other side. It was the linguistic equivalent of the Calvin peeing truck window decals.

Speaking of which, I see the same phenomena around vehicles, with Ford and Chevy fans going after each other. Again. you'd think an entire car company would offer ample ammunition to anyone looking to insult the other side. How do you Chevy folk see out them little side windows on the new Camaro? It's bad enough our manufacturing jobs are going to Mexico, did you have to name a car "Fiesta" too?

Heck, even if they can't come up with material themselves, the Chevy commercials I've belaboured in the past give plenty of cues. And yet, the insults are just playground taunts so meaningless that you could reverse the names and they'd make just as much sense.

What’s really strange is that Ford vs. Chevy is far from their biggest battle.  They’re in a fight for their lives against the imports, and they’re both fighting poor perception of American cars.  If the auto industry were a superhero franchise, we’d be in the movie where the Good Guys and Bad Guys have to band together to fight some greater threat.  In other words, these competitors have more similarities than differences.

But maybe it’s that sameness that causes the rivalry.  They say that the businesses in which branding is most important are the ones where the competitors are essentially the same. So these insults are no different from ad campaigns selling you soap.

Whistlin' Yankee

In politics, there's a concept called a "Dog Whistle." That's when a politician says something that most people will take little notice of, but one particular group will interpret positively. An example that I heard once was that when George W Bush talked about abortion, he liked to say that we need to encourage "a culture of life." To most people, this just sounds like flowery rhetoric. But staunch Catholics would recognize it as a phrase then-Pope John-Paul II used. Thus, Catholics felt like Bush was catering to them, but no one else realized it, so no one freaked out that he was following the Vatican's agenda.

And that's how Dog Whistles work: they allow a politician to lobby a particular group, even if it would normally be damaging to be seen appealing to that group. Like actual dog whistles, only the intended audience hears the message. If others hear the message, that can cause problems. In Canada's last federal election, the Conservatives pushed their religious abuse hotline, hoping racists would see it as anti-Islamic, while others would just interpret it as a civil-rights issue. Unfortunately for them, lots of people took the racial interpretation, with disastrous electoral consequences.

But we might be seeing the end of the concept. One of the defining characteristics of the Trump campaign is that he doesn't use Dog Whistles. If he wants to score points with voters who believe socially-unacceptable things, he just says them. This seems to work for him because it energizes enough voters to more than makes up for the ones he loses with the controversial remark. Plus there are a lot of voters who admire his boldness so much that they can forgive him for any unpopular quotes.

At least, that's what it seems. On closer inspection, he does use Dog Whistles, they just don't work the way you might expect. That's the thesis in a recent article from Trump's latest bogeyman, The Washington Post. They point out that Trump often seems to imply strange things going on that no one knows about, using phrases like "What's going on there?" Such questions seem out of character for him, since he usually portrays himself as the smart guy wth all the answers. But what that phrase does is allow supporters to insert whatever conspiracy they want. That's not to say that all Trump supporters are conspiracy buffs (though I dare say he has that market cornered too.) But he does appeal to people who feel powerless in a world that is fixed to favour the powerful.

That also helps to explain Trump's latest I-can't-believe-he-said-that moment. He implied that soldiers in Iraq profited off of America's rebuilding of the country. (To be fair, Trump claimed he was refering to Iraqi soldiers, rather than Americans.) Normally it would be unthinkable for a Republican to criticize the U.S. military. But in this case, he's appealing to people who feel like those with more power are pulling a fast one on them. That anger can be aimed at companies, government, and apparently even the military.

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 fitting 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.

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.

Colbert Is Still On The Right

Stephen Colbert has been hosting The Late Show for a couple of weeks now. It's been a little slow, but you have to have patience. I had heard that he was trying to break with tradition by arranging his studio the opposite of Letterman's, with the band on the right, and the desk/sofa where the interviews take place on the left.

That brings up a question I've had for a while about talk shows: while he was willing to change much of the stage set-up, there was one thing he didn't mess with: keeping the guests on the left side of the screen, and the host on the right. Carson, Letterman, Leno, Conan, Stewart, Fallon, Kimmel, Meyers, Ellen, Latifah, O'Donnell, Hall: it's the same with all of them. Apparently even Steve Allen and Jack Paar sat on the right. Larry King's show on CNN was the other way around, but we all know he's immune to the rules that limit us mortals.

I looked it up on the Internet and people had detailed explanations, often revolving around the fact that we read from left to right. You'd think that would put it the other way round, with the person asking questions on the left and the answerer on the right, but whatever. Apparently this is the explanation for well-established theatre traditions, and the talk show set up is only the latest manifestation of it. I assume talk shows in the Arab world have the seating reversed. And in China, the host sits on stage and interviews celebrities in the balcony.

But there's a problem with this explanation: the one exception of today is James Corden, on after Colbert. He not only sits on the left, but he doesn't have a desk, and brings out all his guests at once instead of one at a time. None of this is because he's some sort of talk show maverick, but because he's British, and that's the way they do it over there. That punctures any ideas that it's about the way we think or the way we read. If anything, it could only be related to the way we drive.  And now that I look it up, I find that Egyptian talk show host Bassem Youssef used the traditional American way too; and the Arab world drives on the right.

This apparently meaningless tradition also calls into question other psycho-lateral explanations for behaviour. There's a popular idea that you can tell a person is lying if they look to the right, even though that's provably false. There's also a lot of reasoning I've heard about how things are placed in stores to make them more appealing by making people approach them from more favourable sides. Like they'd prefer to have you walk past display so the merchandise is on your right, so a right-hander is more likely to pick it up, and thus more likely to buy it. While subtle things can make a difference, I've always been skeptical of this ideas that people are like toddlers at the grabby stage, whom we can manipulate into zombie-like automatic purchases. I suspect all of it is pseudo-science driven by people's desperation for easy explanations to complex situations, combined with self-appointed experts using the Emperor's New Clothes to maintain their air of authority.

Short Films

Occasionally you see guerrilla marketing, where the intent is to get people talking about the ad itself, thereby creating a groundswell of word-of-mouth.  I try not to get involved in this, since I'd rather not be a part of someone's cut-rate marketing campaign.

But yesterday, I saw an element of guerrilla marketing, and thought it was both unusual and clever, but didn't mention it online to avoid being a pawn of advertisers.  But then I found myself wondering if I'd actually seen it, or just dreamt it up.  So I had to go online to reassure myself of my own sanity. 

If you are in the same boat, let me reassure you.  Yes, that was a tiny little billboard advertising the new Ant-Man movie.  It seems the campaign started a while back, but they must have ramped it up with the release in just over a week.  So no, I hadn't somehow forgotten that I'd taken a large dose of psychoactive drugs. 

So, an ant-sized billboard for a movie about a tiny superhero.  That is pretty funny, I have to admit.  It makes me sorry that this is probably the movie that will prove that Marvel can't be successful with all their characters.  But please do me a favour, and don't talk about this with anyone so I won't feel like a marketing tool.