Welcome Back, Victoria

This is Victoria Day weekend. I'm not sure how to explain this to non-Canadians. Obviously, it's a day celebrating Queen Victoria, who was the British monarch at the time of Confederation. As a few modern Canadians have pointed out, Nineteenth-Century Canadians had an unhealthy obsession with her, as you can see from the sheer number of places in Canada that have a Victoria Park. Or, just look at this inscription on a statue of her in a Victoria park near my home.

Suddenly the adoration of Elizabeth II seems tame by comparison. So it's not too surprising that those folks wanted to celebrate her with a major holiday. 

But now, Victoriamania has worn off, so we're left with a holiday with no meaning behind it. It's kind of appropriate that we often refer to it as the Two Four weekend as a wink to the amount of beer that each person consumes, and which has become the true focus of the weekend. 

Anyway, aside from beer and lapsed monarchism, the weekend is also known for fireworks. And it's a chance for me to reflect on the changing place of fireworks in our society. 

When I was a child, there were official, professional fireworks displays for major holidays, but personal fireworks were banned. Of course, that changed, and pop-up fireworks stores became a feature of summer long weekends. But now many cities are banning personal fireworks within the city limits. So I've now seen an entire cycle of changing legislative attitude. It goes like this:

• Start with a ban that seemed a little pedantic
• Ban is lifted, is a seemingly sensible move
• There's a brief interlude of reasonable use of fireworks
• One group of people realizes that there's nothing stopping them from going overboard, and another group of people realizes there's a lot of money to be made selling to that first group of people. 
• People get tired of hearing fireworks each night of the week leading up to a holiday
• Cities start banning fireworks.

Presumably this will be followed by a slow shift to enforce the ban. And then it's right back to square one. I'm kind of curious how long it will take to forget the reason for the ban and legalize fireworks again. I suddenly have sympathy for the banned and legalized things over the years. Next time you’re wondering what the Prohibitionists were thinking, just remember fireworks.

Protesting Proverbs

You know that proverb: “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” Is it though? When was the last hellish thing that started with good intentions? Sure, we can all come up with examples of trying to do something good and it went wrong. But the saying isn't, "The road to mild unpleasantness is paved with good intentions." — that's a statement I could get behind. No, it's the road to hell, where you're headed straight to Satan but you couldn't afford the same toll as AC/DC. How often do truly hellish things happen because of good intentions? There's a few, but probably not enough to act as a practical paving surface. 

The other problem with the saying is that it doesn't consider that the road to heaven is probably paved even more completely with good intentions. You know, not often that heavenly things begin with bad intentions. Okay, continuing the metaphor of second-rate versions of religious rock allegories, it would be the ladder to heaven because you couldn't find the stairway. See, even if good intentions sometimes result in a little satanic asphalt, it's far more likely to actually do some good.

Really, this saying just exists as an excuse to be an asshole. You know, i'd like to help, but this saying tells me that it would only result in our eternal damnation. Sorry, my hands are tied.

And good thing your hands are tied, because Idle Hands are the Devil's Plaything. Or the Devil’s Playground, though that sounds more like a documentary on pre-safety-code city parks. Either way, it’s another convenient-religious-excuse saying. First, have you seen idle hands? The fidgeting is annoying, but if that's what the devil is working on these days, then humanity has nothing to worry about. Secondly, if you have to keep your hands occupied to keep from doing evil, you're either in a really low-rent horror movie, or you're not that good to begin with. In that case I'd rather you stay idle. Just get yourself a nice fidget spinner.

Fairweather Cynicism

Social media algorithms are a big part of our lives, and determine a lot of what we see. Often, they do a good job — my Facebook feed has long been dominated by Star Wars memes and baby animals. Though it occasionally makes inexplicable choices. Facebook has gone through phases of trying to get me interested in Polish history, the Miami Dolphins, and radical pan-Africanism. (Not jokes, actual examples.) In times like that, I wish I could just tell it that it’s got the wrong idea, and it would be best for it, me, and the company’s bottom line, if it just realized that I’m not interested in, say, Tennessee Williams quotes, so stop showing them to me. (Again, actual example.)

Lately, the thing I’d like to tell the algorithm is that yes, I’m a left-leaning person, but I don’t lean far enough to rejoice in the deaths of billionaires, however extravagant and symbolic their deaths may be. So no, I’d rather not see memes of gleeful schadenfreude at imminent and unpleasant death of wealthy people.

Here’s the thing I don’t get about this situation: If you’re the sort of person who won’t buy coffee without personally negotiating the fair-trade contract, then fine, I’m not surprised that your hatred of the economic order is so great that you would celebrate the death of the rich. But if your idea of supporting worker rights is hitting the 18% tip button on the debit machine at Subway, then I have a hard time reconciling that with your sudden bloodlust for the elites. 

I had a similar reaction last year when the Queen died. Again, I’m not a fan of the idea of royalty, but I wasn’t about to celebrate the death of someone because they occupy a position I don’t think should exist. But I was surprised at how many people suddenly developed deep passions about the crimes of the British Empire. I mean, the United Kingdom still plays a big part in the world’s culture, so you’d think that such a deep hatred would have come out by now. I’m not demanding a boycott of all things British, I’m just saying I would think you would occasionally mention such anger. Go ahead and love The Beatles, but sometimes mention that it’s too bad their success was enabled by national wealth built on the ashes of a world-spanning empire.

In both cases, pretending to have a radical stance on the issue is just a convenient excuse for behaviour. It’s easier to temporarily adopt a radical opinion than it is to show compassion. And it’s definitely easier than wrestling with the philosophical dilemmas brought on by the death of someone you have negative feelings towards. And there’s the bonus that your radical position will win you credibility with some people, as long as they don’t notice that your commitment to the cause just intermittent.

I covered something like this a few years ago, when I noticed the weirdness of people who thought McDonald’s steals from their Ronald McDonald House charity. These people still felt safe eating at McDonald’s, seemingly proving that they had far more confidence in the Golden Arches’ morality than they claimed. To be clear, I’m not saying that you aren’t allowed to criticize a system you participate in — a point of view ridiculed in a popular meme — just don’t pretend to be the nihilistic rebel that you clearly aren’t.

Wake Up, You Need To Make Money

I read this interesting article about why the current generation of kids is so stressed. The main reason is that they have so much pressure to plan for their career. Teachers and parents make them keenly aware of how big a difference a career makes in the current environment. So from an early age, they know that their education is a make-or-break situation.

I can kind of relate to this feeling myself. When I was in high school, Teachers worked hard to communicate the idea that we were building our future. I remember one correcting people who talked about the world outside of school as “the real world.” He reminded us that school is part of the real world, since our actions in class would have real consequences.

But it was clear that our elders were fighting an ingrained perception that we’d be alright no matter what. I think everyone understood that life would be better if you got more education, but there wasn’t a sense of disaster if you failed to get it. But by the time I was in university, the manufacturing sector was shrinking, and people were really getting the idea that there wasn’t much of a Plan-B. That’s when the Millennials were starting to go through high school and college, so I’m assuming that was the message most of them were given as they grew up.

But a point from the article is that while Gen-X’ers and Millennials may have been exposed to threats of failure, we were at least promised a payoff. The message of study-or-you’ll-always-work-at-McDonald’s might have been stressful, but we were also assured that we could have a good life and feel good about Making A Difference if we got a good job and worked hard. In contrast, the article says that we no longer give that carrot along with the stick. Now we just present the message that you have to get everything just right or you’ll face disaster. So kids are growing up with the idea that you have to work hard just to get a middling existence, with any sort of good life out of the question.

This follows on a popular article in Buzzfeed (cited in the above article) about burnout among millennials. My reaction to that was to ask for some respect: we Gen-X’ers invented early burnout. This multigenerational freak-out is just confirming something I’ve suspected for a while: Though the media may talk about the different generations as though they are different, we really don’t have distinct generations anymore. It’s now just a slowly-changing set of circumstances. So we divide ourselves into Generation X, the Millennials, and Generation-Hurry-Up-And-Get-A-Name-Already, but really it’s just one long spectrum of angst. It seems like we’re having this societal conversation that goes like this:

Millennials: We sure hate adulting. We made a meme about it and everything.
Generation X: We hated adulting first! But seriously, great word, “adulting.” Wish we’d thought of that.
Post-Millennials: Adulting sounds terrible! We’re never leaving home!
Baby Boomers: The millennials are such wimps that they can’t stand adulting. And they keep inventing stupid words.

See, the media keeps telling us that the millennials are completely alien and can’t be understood, but really it’s the boomers are the only generation that don’t fit in and don’t make sense to the others. Indeed, it’s been them that have been the primary drivers behind making society as unforgiving as possible. And that brings us back to the central problem that the exceptional make plenty of money, but for everyone else, the effort-to-outcomes ratio doesn't seem very promising. It would be nice if there was something to reward the average person who works hard, even if they aren't a superstar.

But you know what they call a reward for doing your job even if you’re not the best? A participation trophy. Yes, the concept that's come to symbolize millennial-bashing, and the general point of view that we’re too forgiving of our young people. But if we were too nice to young people, we’d all be less stressed. Really, we've got it all backwards. We're so obsessed with the fear of rewarding people for doing nothing that we've created a world where almost nothing gets rewarded. As much as the world portrayed in the article seems alien to us, we also have to admit that it's the world we've spent the last four decades crafting: one in which there is as little help as possible.

Cold Comfort

Recently we've had controversy because some radio stations have banned the song, "Baby, It's Cold Outside" for its connotations of date rape. While you might think that this is a result of oversensitivity in the age of #MeToo, I have to point out that people were finding it kind of creepy for years before. I also have to point out that others claim the song was originally intended quite differently: the idea was that the young lady wants to spend the night with the man, but social mores of the time prevent it, so the two of them are trying to build up the idea of the bad weather to give her an acceptable excuse to stay.

I'm no expert on the moral nuances of the 1940's so I can't say which interpretation is correct, but there's one thing I do know: The Anti-PC crowd has been so distracted by this that I haven't had to endure a single It's-Merry-Christmas-not-Happy-Holidays rant. Wow, all it took was sacrificing a song that lots of people hated anyway. We should do this every year.

The other big story that's been getting the goat of the Politically Incorrect is that People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals has demanded that we stop using phrases involving the disrespect of animals, such as "getting your goat." As I've observed before, PETA has a strange random targetting pattern, where they make proclamations as it occurs to them, not caring what the reaction to them.

As a liberal with an interest in political strategy, that's the sort of action that costs me patches of hair and years off my life: So many people and organizations just act on what ever they feel like, without asking if this is the battle we really need to be fighting right now, or if it will lead to a backlash that does more harm than good. And PETA is clearly the worst for this, regularly picking fights that make its whole cause a laughingstock for no gain at all.

And yet, part of me admires that bold disregard for consequences. I think we all admire audacity, and PETA has it in spades, even if it doesn't come with much guidance. Hey, you know who else likes people who act without considering the consequences? The Anti-PC crowd. Once again, the extremes have a lot in common.

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.

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.

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.

Weighty Ghost

I'm often seeing memes on Facebook reminising sarcastically about the past, saying something like, "When I was a kid, I rode a bike without a helmet and somehow I survived."

Well of course you did. If you didn't survive, you wouldn't be on Facebook to talk about it, now would you? I'd like to believe that somewhere out there is a Ghostbook, where dead people network, and they have their own memes. "When I was a kid, I rode a bike without a helmet, and I suffered a fatal brain injury."

I've since discovered that this is called Survivorship Bias. And ironically I learned that from a Facebook meme.

Any sort of protecting-our-kids-too-much issue is really frustrating. I mean even more than your average Facebook-based politico-philosophocal discussion. It's bad enough when you have an issue that has an intellectually-justified side and an emotionally-justified side and they just argue past each other. But in this case, both sides have a big emotional component. I didn't need a helmet, so today's kids shouldn't wear them, statistics be damned. My kid was in an accident, so all kids should wear a helmet, balancing of public safety and individual freedom be damned.

So whenever I see someone simplistically make one of these arguments, I wish I could steer them towards one of the people making simplistic arguments the other way. You guys just yell slogans and throw memes at each other.  We'll be over here talking it over like adults.

On The Offensive

There's a perception in the world today that people are too easily offended; you can't mention anything without someone complaining about it. Personally, I don't share this view, but that's not what I'm here to argue about. Instead, I'd like to open people's minds to the possibility that some good can come from people being offended. No, no, not that harmony and mutual respect and all that crap. I mean we can use it as a weapon to get rid of bad pop-culture.

This is the aspect of Political Correctness that gets lost in the debate: A lot of politically-incorrect media isn't that good to begin with. Stereotypes are many things, but at their heart, they're cliches. That's why I'm always perplexed when a comedian laments all the humour prevented by political correctness: I can understand why you might want to fight for the principle, but I wouldn't think you'd actually want to tell decades-old jokes.

I'm thinking about this because of the new movie Split, which seems to be the usual kidnapping/murder horror movie, where the twist is that the antagonist has multiple personalities. Of course, people are complaining about the portrayal of people with the condition, or as it's properly known, Dissociative Identity Disorder. You might assume that I saw an article about how people are angry about the movie, so I wrote this post. But no, I hadn't seen anything about the movie other than the TV spots for it every ten minutes. I just assumed there'd be complaints based on how the condition is being used as an easy story device.

It really doesn't look like a great movie. I'm not a horror fan, so I'm not the best to judge, but it looks transparently manipulative. And it's from critical punching-bag, M. Night Shyamalan. And it's being released in the movie graveyard of late January. And the plot is disturbingly similar to the terrible film-within-a-film that Charlie Kaufman's brother writes in Adaptation.

So putting aside the principles, I think you'd have to root for the folks targetting the movie. Letting them drive this movie out of the theatres isn't going to start a slippery slope to newspeak. So how about you spend this month arguing for freedom of speech in the abstract, and look the other way while activists run this flick into the ground. Let's use the power of offense to benefit us all.

(I swear, they just ran another ad for Split as I was finishing this post.)

Peace Offering

Sunday night, a Republican campaign office in North Carolina was firebombed. We don't yet know who did it, but graffiti at the scene showed it to be a targetted act. Even in this particularly bitter campaign, that is taking things to a scary new level. Some Democrats were also troubled this, so they set up a crowd funding campaign to raise $10,000 to fix the office. News of the campaign spread quickly, and the money was raised within hours.

That funding campaign seemed like a nice thing to do. After all, no civilized person wants to win because of violence, whoever committed it. So offering a helping hand goes a little way to revelling the playing field. But I've found a number of left-leaning people on the Internet didn't like it. Certainly, no one endorsed the bombing, but the fact is that the gesture is just symbolic, since the Republicans presumably have insurance.  And of course, it's an expensive gesture; ten grand may seem like a drop in the bucket in billion-dollar campaigns, but it still could have made a big difference for individuals.  And much as we'd all like to view political opponents as honourable and respectable, the fact is that Trump's Republicans have caused real harm to large numbers of people.  And this is North Carolina, where state republicans pushed through anti-LGBT legislation earlier this year.

So was it a good idea to give money to someone who's actively working to make many people's lives worse?  To me, it still seems intuitively like it is.  Though I have to point out that, in the tiny sample size of people I read on line, the people in favour were generally straight-white-able-bodied-cis-males like myself. Those who had problems with the monetary gift usually had one or more traits that put them in the Republicans' crosshairs.  So perhaps I'd see it differently from that perspective.

It would be nice to believe that we could do something that would ease the reconciliation after the election.  I know, that sounds naive, but at some point, people have to get along. I'd like to think that a gift like this would help the process, though I realize it may not work out. Playing up the bombing will reinforce Trump's us-against-the-world narrative, and his supporters will probably never hear about it on conservative media.  Still, I hope it made an impression on someone that there was an effort to restore a little fairness.

Jesus Built My Hotrod

There are a lot of situations where different people have very different attitudes and actions. Take speeding. Lots of people go over the speed limit. On highways, here in Canada, it's the vast majority. But even there, there's a lot of variations. Some just go a little over the limit. Some act as though there is no limit. Most, I think, are like me: pick the maximum speed that won't get you a ticket, and treat that as the limit. And actually feel guilty when you realize you've gone over this pseudo-limit even though it's actually well beyond the posted limit.

But the important point is that even though we all have such different attitudes to speeding, we all know that we have all these different attitudes. That's for the simple reason that we drive in public, so we can all see the general approaches we take. I may not like people who drive as fast as they can, and I may feel morally superior for staying at an arbitrary but still-illegal speed. But I'm not surprised that some people drive like that. My world view includes people who think the laws don't apply to them, both the laws of the road and the laws of physics.

Other aspects of life are not like this. Alcohol is a good one. Other than a drink with dinner in a restaurant, we mostly drink in private. Yes, there are bars, but the only people seeing you drink in bars are other people drinking in bars. The point is that people with vastly different attitudes to alcohol won't see you, and thus, may not know just how much alcohol gets drunk there. Some people drink little or nothing, some drink every day, some binge drink. But if you've only spent your life in one of those types of households, you may not know that the other types exist. Or at least, you may not know how many there are.

Of course, you may not have this problem, depending on what type of person you are. Do you talk to other people? Even people with different backgrounds? Do you listen to them? Okay, do you at least read? Or watch meaningful movies and TV? If so, you may break out of this problem. For instance, I've always lived in low-alcohol environments, but, well, I've noticed that not everyone is like that. So I'm not shocked by people at any extreme of the alcohol spectrum. But I still run into people who are shocked to find that the alcohol experiences of them and their families is not the rule.

And then there's religion. Like alcohol, it's something we do in private, or surrounded by people with the same experience. But there's also the taboo against even talking about it in public, and we tend to live around people with similar religions. So even more so than alcohol, we often have no idea that other people in our society may have very different beliefs. And that's made worse by the fact that no matter your beliefs (or lack thereof) there's people in your religious circles who are misrepresenting others.

I'm constantly amazed at what people don't know about other religious beliefs. People greatly over- or underestimate how much different religions have in common. I see theists think atheists are anything from immoral to depressed. And there are atheists think that all religious people believe the same things. In these cases, we not only suffer from not seeing how each other live, we also have people within our own communities spreading falshoods about other groups. And without the opportunity to see for ourselves, we come to believe those things. The only way out is to start getting to know others with an open mind. Only then can we make religion more like speeding and less like drinking.

Suppose They Gave A Brawl And Nobody Watched

This weekend, the Toronto Blue Jays found themselves at the centre of attention of the baseball world.  Combined with their playoff run last fall, that's twice in the last year.  Or twice in the last twenty years, if we're being honest.  Only this time, the team wouldn't be nearly as happy with what got them the attention. To review:

• In last year's playoffs, the Jays' Jose Bautista hit a decisive home run, leading the team to a comeback win against the Texas Rangers.  After hitting the home run, he watched the ball go, then flipped his bat away emphatically before beginning the ceremonial jog around the bases.  Though the batflip has been celebrated among Jays fans, other baseball fans thought it was a violation of the sport's etiquette.
• On Sunday, the Blue Jays were playing in Texas, and by a foible of the schedule, it was the last time the two teams would play this season. When Bautista batted late in the game, he was hit by the pitch, seemingly in retribution.
• Miffed at this, Bautista took out his frustration a few batters later by sliding hard into second base, trying to upend second baseman Rougned Odor.  Odor took issue with this, the two started arguing, and Odor punched Bautista hard in the face.  This led to a bench-clearing brawl.

And the funny part is that all this happened during the fourth quarter of the Toronto Raptors' game seven against Miami, so hardly any Jays fans saw this happen.

So since then, the sports world in these parts has been debating the ethics of sports fighting and vengeance.  Actually, people have been discussing it since the original bat flip.  Some baseball old-timers criticized the flip, though many have been defending it on the grounds that:

• This was a big emotional moment, and you have to judge it by the context (keep in mind that the home run capped-off a bizarre inning that included errors, lead-changes, obscure rules, arguments, and nearly a riot.
• You have to change with the times, people are more showy than they once were.  You know, hip-hop and all that.

To me, this is another example of how sports has weird ideas about what is and is not acceptable.  I remember a psychology prof pointing this out once: in hockey, fighting is acceptable, and even celebrated.  But try spitting on someone in a hockey game and it's crimes against humanity.

Baseball, as the sport that's been professional the longest, seems to have far stranger and more arbitrary rules of behaviour. If someone hits a home run, and then jogs around the bases a little too slowly, there'll be hell to pay, since it might hurt someone's feelings. But it's also accepted that the pitcher may hit the next batter out of frustration.

Normally I hold up hockey as the ultimate example of a sport with strange and nonsensical accepted behaviours, but Baseball has plenty of foibles that could do with some revisiting too.  Hard slides and batter-hitting and other physically-dangerous actions are being equated with actions considered offensive just because someone in the 1800's didn't like it.  And strangely, anyone questioning the morality of the fighting and other physical actions is told to suck it up, it's a man's game etc. You essentially have to suppress your emotions, except in things like bat flips, which people probably wouldn't be angered by if they weren't told to be angered by it.

We Can't Build Our Dreams On Suspicious Minds

Baseball has a weird relationship with steroids. On the one hand, it's clear that association with performance enhancing drugs have a huge effect on a player's reputation. We've seen Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa go from hero to pariah. And we've seen Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, and Alex Rodriguez go from hated for their personality to hated for cheating.

But A-Rod is an interesting case, since he's still playing in the aftermath of steroids revelations. It seems that he is treated very differently depending on the circumstance: journalists and fans continue to treat him as persona non grata, while commentators in-game fawn over him as though nothing happened. That's especially odd when they they fawn while the audience boos. And apparently directors are on the anti-A-Rod side, since they always arrange to show fans holding up asterisk signs to put the brakes on the announcers' praise.

Further, there seems to be an undercurrent of journalists looking to forgive the steroid users. I've heard a few say that young fans and young and up-and-coming journalists don't share the anger at the cheats, and will eventually let them into the Hall of Fame. I'm not sure I buy that. I'm not sure I even buy that there are many young baseball journalists. This claim of young, forgiving journalists may be real, or it may be a subset of the media depictions of millennials. You know, the one where you not only depict them as completely different from previous generations, but also conveniently in line with what you want to happen.

On top of all this, there's the lingering doubts around many high achievers in the game. Jeff Bagwell has never been implicated in cheating, yet is kept out of the Hall Of Fame in large part because of suspicion based on statistics alone. And now, accusations are being made against pitcher Jake Arrieta, based on nothing more than the fact that he's on one of the great hot streaks of all time right now.

So to summarize: some people in baseball will consider you reprehensible if you are merely successful enough that you might have used drugs. Others will forgive you even if you've been caught red-handed.

Cruz In For A Bruisin'

A while back, I wrote a post in which I admitted that Ted Cruz was right about something. It was one particular aspect of one particular issue, and it was in ways he probably never intended much less understood. But it was still quite shocking for me to admit. Well, now I've got something even more unexpected to admit:

I feel sorry for Ted Cruz.

I'm sure I wasn't the only one who was sorry to see his campaign end, if only because he was the slightly-lesser of two evils. But beyond that, I can't help but feel bad for him and the way he's been treated. That treatment reached new levels of clarity in that final few days, with those much-publicised encounters he had with Trump supporters. Those folks treated him pretty much according to Trump supporter stereotypes, with ridicule and playground-level arguments.

This was made worse by the way satirists seemed to take the Trump supporters' side, pulling-on Cruz rather than acknowledging the awful behaviour of his tormentors. This might be because Cruz is - according to nearly everyone he isn't related to - an rather unpleasant person. Though I fear that it's because Trump's behaviour has been so constant that is just fading into the background.

I've noticed a disturbing trend where Trump's rivals criticize him, then the ridicule seems to be scattershot, with no consideration for the possibility that one side might be far more deserving of attack than the other.  For instance, when the Pope criticized Trump's border wall proposal, I saw several people on TV and the Internet point out that the Vatican has a wall around it.  Yes, it's an easy joke, but is that really the aspect of the story that needs the satire here?

On the other hand, if people target Cruz because of disdain for him as a person, that's quite disturbing too. Politics is becoming more and more like the social world of a school; that became obvious to me in George W Bush's election wins against Al Gore and John Kerry, which was essentially the frat boy using his social status to beat the nerds. Though I suppose in retrospect, Bill Clinton's victories had a Big Man On Campus vibe, so maybe it's been going on for a while.

Extending this analogy, Cruz is the creepy kid that no one likes. But the thing about that kid is, if you have a shred of humanity, you feel sorry for him because you know that even he doesn't deserve the universal scorn he gets.  And that's how I'm looking at Cruz right now.  I don't like him any more than most do.  But when the school bully picks on someone, you have to take the victim's side, whoever he is.

I Still Get Paid The Same As I Normally Do, Right?

You remember clip shows?  That's where a TV show makes an episode out of clips from previous episodes, usually set up by the characters reminiscing about the past. They don't seem as popular as they once were, and I imagine that in the Netflix era they'll completely disappear.  After all, if the viewers want to relive past episodes, they can just relive past episodes.

But why not do the same thing for blogs?  I could put together a post that's made up of links to past entries.  I got the idea for this because in the last week I've often found myself thinking, "I should write about that - oh, wait, I already did, history is just repeating itself again."

I see OK Go has made another memorable video that's getting viral attention.  Once again, they're surprisingly comfortable with that set up.  But I believe I mentioned that before...(Imagine blurry dream-sequence effect then click here.)

Stephen Fry was criticized for joking during the BAFTA awards that a certain recipient looked like a "bag lady." That he would take flak for that is significant, since he's complained in the past that people in today's society are too fast to take offense.  After receiving the criticism, he quit Twitter.  Boy, for a guy who expects everyone to accept jokes and insults without offense, he sure gets offended easily.  Didn't I say that once before?...(click here.)

Hey, there's more news about the supposed Apple car.  There's a company in California that is believed to be owned by Apple, and neighbours are complaining about "motor noises" coming from one of their buildings.  That same company has bought an oddball classic car, possibly as design inspiration. There's talk that internally, Apple execs are worried that the project is draining too much time and attention from the company's other businesses.  I could have sworn I heard someone say that building a car would be much too large an undertaking...(Cut to a much younger version of myself typing away at a keyboard and click here.) 

Having said that, Jason Torchinsky from Jalopnik has an unusual but intriguing theory about the nature of the project.  He thinks Apple is building a fully-autonomous vehicle for goods only, not human passengers.  Order something on line and your car will automatically go out and pick it up.  That's essentially flipping the script on e-commerce as usual: instead of Amazon using mail, couriers and drones to get things to your door, you take responsibility for going and getting them.  I'm not sure that's any more efficient, but making a vehicle not meant for people would relieve Apple of a lot of the difficulties of car design, like crashworthiness standards.

Apologies for that bit of original thought at the end of an otherwise repetitive article. But I see the flimsy excuse to have all our characters sit around talking about the past has cleared up, so we can go on with our lives.  See you for original adventures next week.

You Underestimate The Power Of The Gray Side

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

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

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

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

(Warning! Severe topic change ahead!)

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

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

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

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

Ich Bin Ein Ausländer

There's a lot of talk about the refugee crisis in Europe. The now famous photograph of a three-year-old child who drowned trying to get to Greece is being haled as a turning point in people's attitudes. I've mentioned before how pictures change people's perceptions in relation to violence against women, but in international aid, it makes an amazing difference. I've heard aid workers in the past despair that we can't be proactive about famine because of the power of pictures. Famines aren’t surprising; we can see the problem coming. But we can't do anything until it starts, because the West won’t give money until they’ve seen the pictures of the starving African kids. That makes me wonder how much effort there is going to be to get that photo at future crises. Never mind Doctors Without Borders, we need Photographers Without Borders.

Of course, in today’s polarized world, public opinion doesn’t completely change, it just alters the spin and moves the goalposts. We’re already seeing the adaptation by the nationalist politicians (which in Europe, is really big.) The talking point of choice seems to be to emphasize that there is a difference between refugees fleeing conflict, and economic migrants, who are looking for better opportunities. So remember, there is a difference between people whose fear of violence drives them to take a dangerous journey to a foreign land, and people whose fear of starvation drives them to take a dangerous journey to a foreign land.

I’m actually pleasantly surprised by Europe’s reaction. I’d started to think of even mainstream Europe as kind of racist, But now we’ve seen some public and widespread expressions of tolerance. I mean, who expected that when foreigners with a different religion needed help, it would be the Germans who were most enthusiastic about taking them in. But on the other hand: Hungary? Who knew they were Europe’s Arizona? Hungary’s hardline reaction seems out-of-proportion for something that’s mostly going to trouble the rich countries the refugees are trying to get to. Though the Czechs also get a dishonourable mention for writing identification numbers on migrants’ arms, up to the point someone pointed out that such practices have a really bad precedent in that part of the world.

I can understand why the Hungarians would feel at least a little hard done by. Countries that migrants pass through do incur costs and inconveniences. Whatever benefits these people will give, it will go to their destination, not countries en route. So it is unfair. Not quite dust-off-the-fascist-practises unfair, but a little unfair. The best example of this problem is how the Italian navy spends a lot of time rescuing migrants in the Mediterranean, even though the migrants are trying to get to Northern Europe. Journalist Gwynne Dyer pointed to a creative solution to this: Italy could just give all the migrants automatic citizenship. It would be no trouble to the Italians: thanks to the European Union’s laws, such citizens would then be free to travel and work in any part of Europe. So they’d just go to Germany or the UK, and Italy would never see them again, and it would no longer be their problem.

So if the Hungarians were smarter and less angry, that’s something they could try: give free citizenship to anyone who asks for it. Rich Europe would be flooded with Syrian-Hungarians, and thus be forced to do something about the problem. Something surely more effective and humane than just building a wall.

Schrödinger's Quarterback

The NFL season started tonight. The game was preceded by a show that was a strange cross between sports talk and mass-market entertainment.  I realize it must be hard to book this concert: like the Superbowl halftime show, you have to entertain all of America, but unlike the Superbowl halftime show, you don't have the money or audience to lure A-list musicians.  But still, I'd love to know what calculation led to booking Ellie Goulding and Train to perform in between football talking heads.

But it wasn't just the entertainment that was awkward, there was also the talk about the Patriots' deflated-ball scandal.  In the same way their victory in the Superbowl made it impossible for the league to sweep the whole deal under the carpet, their presence in the opener (and another victory) keeps people talking about it.  Here's the problem:

• Probably, they're guilty.  But...
• It was a relatively inconsequential rule.  But...
• It was a distinct, conscious effort to cheat.  But...
• It probably didn't make any difference to the outcome.  But...
• These are the Superbowl champions, so you can't really ignore it.  But...
• We don't have a smoking gun, so we can't prove anything.  But...
• We love to worship the victors, and now we can't, because there's questions hanging over them.  But...
• We also kind of hint that cheating is okay.  But...
• This isn't a player who's carved out a bad-boy reputation, this is the Golden Boy Tom Brady.  But...
• There's always someone looking to knock down the super successful; it's easy to dismiss this as the claims of sore losers. But...
• The Patriots have a reputation for bending the rules, thus making the claims compelling.

So all the usual ways our society deals with controversy won't work. It's too big to forget, there's too little evidence for us to jump to a conclusion, and there's no way for us to twist morals to make a wrong look like a right.  We're just going to have to live with ambiguity hanging over this season and this team.

Still Waiting For My Blogging Trophy

Football player James Harrison has been in the news because he gave back his kids' participation trophies from sports, saying he believes such rewards should be earned. So, does the guy who gets paid millions of dollars a year regardless of whether he wins or losses have a point? It's made a lot of people angry, and earned praise from those who agree with his philosophy.

I think this is one of those cases where a few extreme incidents have pushed people to overreact. We get a few shock stories about kids' sports where everyone gets the same trophy or they only allow cooperative sports, and suddenly everyone demands no participation trophies at all. Really? You're saying that I shouldn't have gotten the three-inch participation trophy for minor soccer at age eight? Getting handed that little trinket just before the top scorer on the team got a giant trophy? That ruined my perspective forever?

But I also have another perspective on the rewards-for-achievement debate that I've never heard before, and that is, um, why? Look, I received very few trophies for sports, but plenty of the rewards for academic achievement (whether awards or high marks) so I've seen it from both sides, and I have to ask what good are either of them? Sure there are some awards that are difficult to win, and indicate genuine achievement. But we're not talking about the Superbowl or Nobel Prize here, we're talking about kids. Most of their awards are just the strongest kid getting a trophy, or the smartest kid getting an A. All those awards do is tell everyone who the strongest and smartest kids are. But everyone already knows that, so what's the point?  So unless we're talking about very high-level athletics/academics, those genetically blessed kids are getting their recognition for doing little more than showing up.  Essentially, they're just receiving their own participation trophies.