Tragedy Of The Cut-Ins

Today I was driving through a construction zone. Okay, I guess that was redundant. It's August in Canada; I just had to say, "today I was driving."

Anyway, there was a point where two lanes narrowed to one. I was in the lane that continued, and the lane to the right merged into mine. Whenever that happens, I try to be a nice guy and let someone in, but not be a pushover and get caught letting everyone in. I figure it's a good policy for each car to let one vehicle from the other lane in, then proceed. Similarly, if I'm the one cutting in, I won't try to force my way on front of someone who's already let someone in.

But today, I hung back to let a car in, and a second car squeezed in right behind. Of course, that ticked me off since that's abusing this gentlemen's agreement between drivers that exists in my mind.

It bugs me because this is such a silly little thing to try and get an advantage. Yeah, you're a big man cause you got one car-length ahead. That made me want to pull forward and try to block him from getting in. Of course, he'd probably curse me: oh, you're a really big man cause you can't stand me getting one car-length ahead.

What do you call that sort of situation? Person A does something cheap and childish, person B resents this and thus tries to stop person A, even though the consequences of the original action are minor. It does happen a lot. Like if a person always had to get on the last word, so you follow up everything they say with your own comment. You think you're teaching them a lesson, but really, it just leads to an endless conversation in which both sides look equally silly. And of course, there are countless political examples around the world. Really, the only way out is not to put any value on such unimportant concepts, and satisfy yourself with laughing internally at those who do.

But most importantly if you are going to cut in front of me in a vortex of psycho-philosophical game theory issues, you could at least wave thank you.

Dog And Big Pony Show

In one of my High School English classes we had a unit on media literacy.  It was a pretty forward-thinking move for the time, but now I realize it was just a mangled summary of Marshal McLuhan's theories.  And of course the media has grown more complex, ubiquitous, and devious since then.  Teaching kids to consider the message of advertising seems quaint now.

Certainly, I've found that I have to reach far beyond that unit to make sense of today's advertising. And even then a lot of it makes no sense.  We were taught that commercials portray an unrealistic ideal of the customer.  That is, you sell beer by showing a good-looking successful person drinking the beer.  But now, most beer ads show losers you wouldn't want to associate with.  The only one with an idealized drinker is the Dos Equis "Most Interesting Man In The World" campaign, and they use the ploy in an ironically obvious way.

And there's this Ralph Lauren ad:

I'm still trying to understand who this is aimed at. It's apparently appealing to a man who likes the following:

• The sport of polo
• Tiny vintage sports cars
• Bright colours
• The music of OneRepublic
• The professional sports being shown when this ad runs
• Yachting
• Skydiving
• Football
• Hanging out with black people
• Women
• Dressing as a comically stereotypical rich person
• Shopping at mainstream department stores.

I'm not sure these people exist.

Hold That Tiger (Still For A Second)

Tiger selfies have been declared illegal in the state of New York. See, there's supposedly a trend for men to take pictures of themselves with dangerous animals as an eye-catching profile picture on dating sites.  I don't know; I don't browse men's dating site profiles, so I can't confirm the existence of this trend.  I can only hear about it, and say, yep, that sounds like humanity.  But it's no longer legal in New York.

I don't think the law was a good move. Sure, I like to protect vulnerable animal populations as much as anyone. But a tiger is hardly threatened by a dudebro with a phone. It makes sense to protect animals when they can't protect themselves, such as against poachers or pollution. But when animals can protect themselves, the law doesn't need to get involved.

But what's particularly great about tiger selfies is the circumstances. Like many others, I've often cynically wished that people doing stupid things would just remove themselves from the gene pool. But the problem with that idea is that many people risking their own lives have already reproduced.  Thus their offspring will ensure that stupidity survives for another generation. But tiger selfies are being used to get an impressive picture for dating sites. That works out perfectly! People are risking their lives in the attempt to procreate. Now we just need to encourage the women to have risky dating photos too. What animal would be stereotypically feminine but still dangerous? Perhaps cuddle up, teddy bear style, with an actual bear?

Training Camp

A while back I was discussing throwback uniforms in sports, and I made a throw-away suggestion that teams should make up fake throwback outfits, rather than some of the ugly or forgettable uniforms they use now.  I didn't expand on that idea, but I was also thinking that some of the newer teams should create their own fake old-fashioned uniforms. It turns out that the Tampa Bay Rays have done exactly that: they've created outfits that are a pretty convincing example of what the team would have worn around 1980, if not for the fact that the team was actually created in 1998. Better still, these uniforms have become known as "fauxbacks" which should ensure it will become a trend.

Good for them. I award them one free exemption from my cursing them for either their ugly stadium, or continually defeating my Blue Jays. Speaking of which, that's kind of who I was expecting would start the trend: a team like the Jays, founded in the sixties or seventies, creating fake uniforms from the twenties and thirties since those are regarded as the game's golden age (by white people.)

So now I predict the next trend: the really famous, iconic teams - the Yankees and Celtics of the world that never change their uniforms - will have throwbacks to the uniforms they might have had in previous eras. They'll show what they would have worn to chase the trends, if they weren't "better" than all that.  Here are a couple of suggestions:

Since these are fake uniforms that are indulging in the tackiness of the past, I dub them "fauxtacks." I look forward to all the expensive players in this kitschy clothing.

Choosy Moms Choose Portable Network Graphics

There's been an explosion of GIFs lately. There are times when the motion capabilities of a GIF are useful. But really, those are few and far between. Most ideas that don't require a video of any appreciable length can be depicted perfectly well in a static picture. The number of things that can be depicted well in a clip measured in seconds is small.

You see, you can depict motion in a still picture.  Take a look at this Cheetah chasing a gazelle:

"Cheetah chasing Thompsons gazelle crop" by Original uploader was Profberger at en.wikipedia - Transferred from en.wikipedia; transferred to Commons by User:Richard001 using CommonsHelper.. Licensed under CC BY 2.5 via Wikimedia Commons.

Wow, that looks fast.  See, we don't assume that the cheetah and the gazelle are standing still just because we can't see them moving.  It's actually pretty amazing how we can imply movement.  Take a look at Umberto Boccioni's Dynamism of a Soccer Player:

"WLA moma Umberto Boccioni Dynamism of a Soccer Player 1913" by Wikipedia Loves Art participant "shooting_brooklyn" - Uploaded from the Wikipedia Loves Art photo pool on Flickr. Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

It's not even a picture of anything, except the movement.  My point is that we aren't living in Harry Potter's world where everyone expects every picture to move.

Sometimes movement can be useful.  There's that GIF of the ice-cream-sandwich machine which is fun to watch, and the occasional blooper or cat video. But now people are using GIFs to show moving clips of things that don't really require it. If I see a picture of a great white shark, I get it, I don't need to see it biting something to get the full effect that one gets from a picture of a shark with its huge, toothy, mouth open. But worse, now you see clips of people talking in movies even though GIFs don't have sound.

I'm not complaining about GIFs because they're new technology (for one thing, they aren't) but rather because they, like most technologies come with a price that needs to be weighed. In this case, it's the bandwidth needed to send the GIFs. Video is, after all, a series of pictures. And unlike other forms of video, GIFs don't have a way of conserving memory by reusing the data for parts of the image that don't change from frame to frame. So adding a moving GIF to your blog or web page is like adding dozens of similarly sized pictures. That's fine if you have a fast Internet connection, but if you're like many of us - particularly in rural areas - a page decked out in gratuitous moving GIFs take forever to load, with little payoff.

The sad part is that this problem is just repeating the same problems the web had always had: too many people treat web design as an attention-getting collage, with no consideration for the consequences, both technical and psychological. Moving GIF are just the latest incarnation of the blink tag, Java applets, frames, and Flash.

A Sting That Smarts

I've been seeing ads for a new show this fall called Scorpion. It's about a team of geniuses who ... I'm not sure, solve crimes or something. It's brought back a pet peeve of mine about how movies and TV depict smart people.  After years at the University of Waterloo, and working in software, I've spent a lot of time around smart people, and the popular depictions of them aren't very realistic.

Among the standard fallacies:

• A person who is smart in one area will be smart in all areas.  If they can do math, they'll also be good at interpreting literature.
• Intelligence trumps knowledge and experience.  It's fine to show a smart kid beating a grandmaster at chess, because we can assume the child deduced centuries of accumulated knowledge of chess strategy on his own.
• Smart thinking is always quick.  Unique insights never require contemplation.
• Non-mathematical intelligence manifests itself as magic control over people.  A person gifted in psychology will have a svengali-like influence on others.
• Genius can come up with a solution regardless of the resources available. Any problems you see in the world are apparently just a result of lack of intelligence.

It's kind of weird because geek culture has unprecedented acceptance, and our economy depends on innovation more than ever. Smart people are a more important part of society than ever, yet pop-culture still struggles to understand intelligence itself.

Things the Teenage Me Would Never Have Believed About Life In The Future, #17

Mr. Big's "To Be With You" will be used in an ad, to sell burgers. Okay, that's not so surprising, but it will feature a woman singing to her hamburger bun. Oh, and Wendy's - the "where's the beef" people are using a bun as their main selling point.