What's Invisible And Read All Over?

Everybody is talking about this week's issue of Charlie Hebdo.  And no one is showing it.  I'm trying to think of something that has been as talked in the media without being shown in the media.  The only other things I can think of are celebrity sex tapes.  Even they usually show a few brief clips.  No one is daring to even show part of the Mohammed cartoon on the cover.

On the one hand, I can't blame them.  During the Danish Cartoon Controversy, a lot of smaller or more ideologically-motivated publications published the cartoons as a matter of principle.  I didn't really agree with that: I don't think you need to help spread people's message in order to defend their right to speak. 

To put it another way: they say the test of your commitment to free speech is defending the right to speak even for a speaker you disagree with or are offended by.  Thus, it's entirely possible that you would want to support a person's right to speak while not wanting to help them speak (or listen to them.) From that perspective, I would think it was appropriate not to reproduce the cartoons, since many publications would support the right to publish them while not supporting the sentiments expressed in them.

In this case, it just seems strange.  People are talking about this magazine that is mysteriously absent from the reports about it.  It got really weird when one reporter held up some of the inside pages for the camera, even though they were careful not to allow even a glimpse of the cover.  So the usual images you would expect from a story about a magazine (like showing it on a newsstand) are suspiciously absent.  At this point it's getting pretty silly: we're worried the extremists are going to go after every news outlet in the world for catching view, in the background, of a cartoon drawing of Mohammed.

Red China, Blue Planet

I was surprised to hear a TV commercial bragging of "Red China's Best Country Radio."  I didn't know country was big in China.  And I don't know why you'd be advertising it here.  Or in English.  But I quickly realized that it was actually "Regina's Best Country Radio."  See, I was watching one of the Sportsnet channels, and when they're all showing the same thing, I don't bother tuning in to the one intended for Ontario.  So I often end up watching refreshing new ads for local products and services in places far from here.

I'd never really noticed that similarity in pronunciation before.  Probably because Regina has another, far more famous similarity to an English word.  So I'm wondering: do people from Regina purposely pronounce their city name so that it won't be mistaken for "vagina?"  I'm thinking that different cadence was what made me think it was "Red China."

Hopefully we can learn from Reginans (Reginians?  Reginites?) and avoid other embarrassing puns and misunderstandings.  For instance, whenever I have to mention the name of the seventh planet, I try to put the emphasis on the first syllable (UR-in-us) to avoid that stale juvenile pun.  But it's not really catching on.  Maybe we'll have to wait until people live there, and they can change the pronunciation out of embarrassment.

A Presence I Have Not Felt Since...

While I recover from my cold, I'll continue my series of brain-optional musings:

A few years ago, a Danish company introduced a new sports car, called the Zenvo ST1:

Photo by G. Patkar, used via Creative Commons

As I looked at pictures of the car, I kept thinking that it looked strangely familiar.  Have you ever seen a car that just makes you think of someone?  Well I eventually recognized who this car reminded me of:

Detail of a photo by Thomas Geersing, used via Creative Commons

That didn't seem like a good inspiration, the expendable troops who can't shoot straight.  Well leave it to Toyota to get it right.  Here's the 2015 Yaris:

And here, I believe, is its inspiration:

Gutting It Out

I'm sick, and having trouble coming up with ideas to write about, but I'll try my best.

When did "gut" become a scientific term?  I can understand people using a term like "gut bacteria" trying to make the topic seem more accessible.  But now even scientific types are using it. 

I remember a kid in about grade two using the word "gut" to describe the stomach, and the teacher tried in vain to make him say something more sophisticated.  And now authorities are telling me to be concerned with my gut health.

On the other hand, the dancing bacteria on the American Express ad gets to go by its scientific name, Campylobacter jejuni.  And according to the Wikipedia article, it doesn't even look like the cartoon, grass skirt or not.  I was kind of disappointed in the article; often Wikipedia articles will have a section with a title like, "in popular culture," where they will list all the times the subject has been mentioned in books, TV, etc.  For instance, the entry on Albuquerque, New Mexico, solemnly tells you about Bugs Bunny's frequent references to it. So I was hoping that the otherwise esoteric entry on c. jejuni would have such a note about the ad, but no.

Glacial Change

I was just reading this article about an underground complex of tunnels being carved out of a glacier in Iceland.  They're trying to make it into a tourist attraction, putting in shops and exhibits.  I'm sure it's only a matter of time before it is turned into an ice hotel.

Once again, I'm amazed that Canadians are failing to make the big cold-weather adaptations.  It was bad enough that the Swedes beat us to making ice hotels. Now Iceland beats us to the idea of building things out of glaciers, even though we have far more people, more industry, and more ice.  Worse, the same article points out that the Americans built a secret base in the ice of Greenland.  Is there any crazy winter ideas that other cold-weather countries haven't beat us to?

Okay, Molson made that ice rink in the mountains that they're always talking about on their commercials.  But that's not really on the same scale.  Here's an idea: don't just make an ice rink; carve an entire arena out of the glacier.  Make a big pit, put the rink at the bottom, and shape the sides into rows of seats.

It's Square To Be Hip

Once again, I find myself hearing invective directed at hipsters.

I've heard others make the point, and I think it's a good one: it's not really clear who hipsters are. It's not like Mods vs Rockers where everyone hates the other group but both sides are well defined and admit to who they are. In this case, no one really admits to being a hipster, and has only a vague collection of stereotypes to identify them. Yet all are absolutely sure that they hate these people.

It reminds me of my high school years, where there was a great deal of anger directed at "preps" even though my small-town high school didn't really have anyone that would qualify as truly preppy. Some students were better dressed than others, but hardly qualified on the global scale of preppiness.

I've occasionally referred to myself as a hipster, though that is, at best, just a joking shoot at my less-than-mainstream tastes, and, at worst, ironic. Of course, hipsters themselves are ironic, so ironically calling yourself a hipster makes you a hipster, surely. And they also hate to belong to groups, so if you hate hipsters, that also makes you a hipster. So one way or another, we're all hipsters. But that just makes it more confusing that we all hate them.

So what do we hate about hipsters? Some don't like the prospect of being judged. Hipsters have, at their most basic, defined what is and is not hip, and the assumption is that the standards are rather high and inaccessible.

There's also the sense of pretension. Certainly on the few times I've looked down on people for being hipsters, it's because they had a very artificial appearance that seemed to be working too hard to attain a particular image.

But here's the nonsensical part of those worries: they're no different from our everyday social concerns. Worried your cultural choices won't live up to hipsters' standards? That's what we all go through all the time: following other people's ideas of what to wear, watch, and listen to. As for the idea that hipsters are pretentious and artificial, you've surely noticed that all trends are just as fake, but we can't see it when we're inside the trend.

Of course, none of this justifies whatever negative behaviour you might have seen from people you identified as hipsters. But realize that they are no worse than anyone else. If anything, they deserve credit for choosing their own culture instead of just accepting the one that was thrust upon us. I'd like to think of them as chickens coming home to roost: they are to our culture what our culture is to us.

Five-Pin Bowling

This year, for the first time, the champion of American college football will be decided by a tournament. Okay, it's only three games between the top four out of over 100 teams. But compared to the old Rube Goldberg scheme of polls and formulas, it's a big change. Of course, in Canada, we've had a straightforward tournament deciding our university football champion for years.

That's meant that we've generally had an undisputed winner, but the anachronistic system down south has some advantages. One is what we've seen played out in front of us over the last few weeks: the bowls. A lot of people hate the bowls, or at least, hate the huge number of bowls that mean even mediocre teams get to play in the limelight. But I actually like that. One thing I've complained about in sports is when there's a hegemony of teams that are constantly at the top. I've advocated for changes to level the playing field, but I guess another possibility is to throw a bone to the lesser teams that have at least played the best with the hand they were dealt.

Why not have bowls in Canada? True, we already have much greater parity in Canadian university football, and you occasionally see a Windsor or Waterloo rise from a joke to a contender. But for much of the time, Laval and Western games are as predictable as Alabama or Oregon facing a lesser team. So if, say, York overachieves and has a winning season, why not let them end their season with a moment in the sun by beating Guelph in the Petro Canada Poutine Bowl?

Okay, there is the problem that "bowl" games are named after the Rose Bowl, which is named for the shape of the stadium. But Canadian football stadiums favour seats on the sides, with open ends. So we'll need a new word. Instead of the Maple Syrup Bowl, it'll have to be the Maple Syrup Half-Pipe.

While we're at it, let's also adopt the conference concept. American college teams organize themselves into conferences based on location or ability. There are good and bad aspects to it, but a good thing is that big, athletically-successful schools can compete amongst themselves in the Big 10 or SEC, while lesser schools can compete in Mountain West, or Mid-America Conference.

So let's have the top teams beat up each other in the Big Prairie or East 10 conferences, and give the lesser teams their own space. Maybe some more schools would participate in football if they knew there wasn't a requirement of a yearly execution against Western. Put Waterloo in the Great Lakes East conference with Brock and Trent, and maybe we'd have a chance.