Box Set

How did we get to the point where we have to connect boxes to our TVs?  It wasn't that long ago when the TV plugged into a cable in the wall.  But now, you've got the cable box.  (Or satellite box, or Phone Company acting like a cable company box.)  I mean, how would you explain this to someone from fifty-years ago?

Our TVs are bigger and wider!  But they're really flat!  And we get hundreds of chanels!
Wow! You just connect to the cable system and you get that many chanels?
Well, no.  We have to connect the TV to this box, and then it connects to the cable.
Oh.  What's in the box?
I dunno, some kind of electronics.
I see.  It must be dangerous to put electronics in the TV itself.
No, it's full of electronics too.

So why is this?  Is it just because companies couldn't agree on digital standards?  Or they couldn't think of another way to make us rent PVRs?  The need to rent them is bad enough, but I find the biggest annoyance is the need to turn it on.

Having two devices that need to be on for me to watch TV is really aggrevating.  I know on some systems, you turn on the TV, and see a message telling you to turn on the box.  That begs the question of how the box is telling you to turn it on if it's off.  But that's just part of our modern world where "off" has become a relative term.

On my system it's even more confusing, since the box appears to be on all the time, but still requires me to turn it on to use it.  That is, I turn on the TV, it starts showing beautiful colour TV programing, just like I expect TVs to do.  But after a few seconds, the screen goes blank and is replaced by a message telling me to hit "Select" on the remote if I want to watch TV.  To that I feel like pointing out that I just was watching TV a second ago, why do I need to press a button. 

Apparently the cable box just sits there all day long broadcasting to my TV, but as soon as it notices that I've turned on the television, it stops.  I have no idea how this makes sense to anyone, other than to make sure I'm paying attention.  I'd hypothesize that this behaviour grows out of the "inactivity" feature cable boxes seem to have, where they turn off (or threaten to turn off) if no one has changed chanels in several hours. 

I guess it says something about our current media behaviours that they assume no one will watch the same chanel for three hours straight.  Is that a good thing, that we don't spend as much time watching TV now, or a result of lowered attention-spans, that they assume we're going to jump from one chanel to another.  Certainly there are still reasons why we might become traditional couch potatoes again.  I found my cable box went blank and anounced it was about to turn off due to inactivity - I swear I'm not making this up - with one out to go in the Jays' deciding game against Texas in this year's playoffs.

So please, electronics companies and cable providers, get this sorted out so we can just have a one-piece TV.  I'd rather have that than a TV that has a Twitter app.  Or 3D.  Or 4K.

Requiem For A McDonald's

Our local McDonald's is closing. Of course, this being downtown Kitchener, it's not a conventional McDonald's; it's in Market Square. That's an urban mall that has its own depressing story, but suffice to say it's yet another Canadian downtown mall that hasn't done well in recent decades. It's largely empty, even though most of it has been repurposed for other uses.

But thanks to office workers' lunch needs, the second floor food court has hung on to life, much longer than it has any right to. There are local food vendors that have come and gone, a Tim Hortons that was replaced by a Subway, and a Chinese place that I don't think anyone has noticed isn't Manchu Wok. But the McDonald's has been consistently popular.

As I say, it's not an ordinary McDonald's. For one thing, the mall's attempt to reinvent itself has meant that this is one of the few fast food places directly outside a health club.  (I've always wondered which of them benefits from that arrangement.) And being a mere counter, it doesn't even carry the full menu. Really, I think the whole place would fit in the ball pit at a suburban McDonald's Play Place.

But it's also unusual in its clientele. In an urban setting, the average wealth of the customers is probably a lot lower than your average. I've noticed that orders tend to be pretty small, many go for the free refills, and people pick and choose from the menu looking to stretch their cash. That gets pushed in your face when you're waiting for your order, and realizing customers have become experts in maximizing value.

Manager: I have three double cheeseburgers and an apple pie! Here you go sir. Who else is still waiting for their order? You sir, what are you waiting for?
Me: A Big Mac combo
Manager, to kitchen: Do we have a Big Mac meal for Mr. Big Spender here?

I guess that's a big part of why it's closing. Supposedly fast food places make their money in certain very specific items, like drinks, so I can image this place doesn't make much money. But I do worry about the many people who have been regulars. I know, as a lefty I'm supposed to blame McDonald's for exploiting the poor, but I don't see many locally-owned fair-trade artisan restaurants selling anything you could call a meal for just pocket change.

New York Solitudes

Lots of people are weighing-in on a recent New York Times article declaring that Canada is now "hip." This is based in part on the election of Justin Trudeau, but also on a selection of Canadians. Not surprisingly it includes Drake, The Weeknd, and Justin Bieber. I was surprised to see Sarah Polley, since it seems like she's been around forever. But she is only a couple of years older than Ryan Gosling (also on the list.) But there were also lots of non-obvious selections; nice to see them recognizing Grimes.

But this isn't the only time Canada has made a prominent appearance in a New York newspaper.  The New York Post had a notable cover attacking Ted Cruz. In the latest Republican debate, Cruz had attacked "New York values" as an indirect way of attaching Donald Trump. So the Post - which is living proof that some New Yorkers have values in common with Cruz - showed a cartoon of The Statue of Liberty giving the finger. That was pretty appropriate, but what bothered me was the comment that Cruz should "Go back to Canada." (Cruz was born in Canada.)

Aside from the fact that we don't want him back, there's the obvious point that Canadian values have a lot more in common with New York values than with the extreme social conservatism Cruz is selling. But this is part of a trend: I've seen many Americans associate Cruz with Canada without appreciating the irony, and in some cases actually thinking Cruz is somehow an example of Canadians.

So I'm not sure what New Yorkers must think of us: some see us as cool, in part because of a liberal politician, while others find us an appropriate dumping ground for a politician who's conservative even by American standards.

California Here We Come...

...right back where we started from. That refers to the St. Louis Rams moving back to Los Angeles. Yes, I realize that's not totally accurate, because the franchise started in Cleveland, but the point is that it's spent most of its existence in Los Angeles.

As a fan of the team, I have mixed emotions. I don't like seeing a team move, but this does bring them back to where I've always known them. Oh, by the way Mom and Dad, I'll be by soon to dig all my "Los Angeles Rams" stuff out of your basement.

It's also good to see that the yet-to-be-built stadium will be privately funded, which is a rarity in modern sports. It had appeared that if the team stayed in St. Louis, it would have been in a blackmail-funded stadium. I know that may seem like weak compensation for losing your team, people of St. Louis, but at least you don't have to pay for a stadium.

The funny/sad part of the story is that there were three teams wanting to move to L.A. The Rams were given first dibs, the San Diego Chargers can move in to the same stadium next year if they wish. And if they don't, the Oakland Raiders will get the opportunity. And among the further layers of irony:

• All three teams have already been based in Los Angeles before.
• The Rams and Raiders both left in 1994, allowing America's second-largest city to go from two teams directly to none. Then, after two decades of the league operating perfectly well with no team there, three teams want to move to L.A. as soon as possible.

Most people seem to be hoping that the Chargers stay in San Diego. Aside from the fact that they've been in the city for a half-century, it appears that their desire to move is not just the greed of getting a new stadium, but the greed of wanting part of the big L.A. market, rather than be satisfied with the adequate San Diego market.

If they don't move, Oakland certainly will. Their owner, Mark Davis, has the odd distinction of being the least-wealthy NFL owner. That may not sound like much, but it means he is one one the few owners who honestly does need government help to build a new stadium.

And as an aside: women, I know you hate it when your accomplishments are ignored and you are discussed and judged on your appearance. So I invite you to luxuriate in the criticism directed at Davis for his awful haircut. Sure, it doesn't make up for the millennia of superficial judgement you've suffered, but take a minute to enjoy it.

But I wonder if the Los Angeles market is as good as these owners think it is. It wasn't too supportive of the Rams in the past. Admittedly those were a lot of mediocre teams, but note that none of the city's three suitors is particularly strong right now.

Also, there's a parallel with the disappointing series of Buffalo Bills games in Toronto. In that case, there seemed to be an assumption that because there are a lot of people in Canada who follow the NFL, there'd be a lot of enthusiasm for games involving the nearest team. But that didn't work out, because many Canadian NFL fans arbitrarily cheer on some far-off team with whom they have no real connection. I'm a great example: I'm writing this article on a team I chose at age eight because I thought their helmets looked cool. So I wonder, after the city of Los Angeles had gone a generation with no local team, how many people have developed attachments to other teams. Possibly the Rams will face a few years of crowds with divided loyalties. And that could be worse if there are two local teams diluting civic pride.

But still, I'll be cheering for them, even if locals don't. Now if you'll excuse me, I have I have an Eric Dickerson jersey to look for.

The Musical South Pacific

The BBC has an interesting page allowing you to find your city's "musical twin. " Here's the premise: someone's analyzed the information from Shazam, the music recognition app. Specifically, they've found which songs are most commonly accessed in each city. Then they've gone through all the cities, trying to find cities that look up the same songs. So now you can look up your city, and find another city somewhere else in the world that seems to have the same taste in music as your home.

So I looked up Kitchener, and I was surprised to find that out musical twin is Muar, Malaysia. It's a similarly sized city, about halfway between Kuala Lumpur and Singapore. So there's an interesting but useless bit of trivia. Just to compare, I looked up other cities around southern Ontario. Toronto got Beer Sheva, Israel. But then London, Ontario got Sandakan, Malaysia. It's at the other end of Malaysia, but still, that's weird. So I looked up other cities nearby that were in the database.  Windsor, Buffalo, Niagara Falls, NY, and Detroit were all paired with Johor Bahru, Malaysia, which is near Muar. Erie, PA was partnered with Malaysia's capital, Kuala Lumpur.

So what's going on? I was beginning to suspect that this study was a fraud, and they just put in a bunch of random cities from Malaysia because that would sound exotic and impressive. I tried cities from other parts of the U.S. and Canada, and there were still lots of Malaysian results, though not as completely as in this part of the world. And I tried some British cities, but they were mostly pairing with New Zealand.

So I have no idea what to make of this. Apparently we have a strange musical connection with people on the other side of the world. I'm sure you could come up with some impressive pseudoscience to explain it, involving the magnetic field of the earth's core to transmit our thoughts. And after you've explained that, try explaining why people all over the world need an app to recognize Adele's "Hello." Seriously, it was number one everywhere, probably even Malaysia.

Virtual Insanity

You may have seen a posting passed around social media in the past couple of days: someone says that if we just divide the $1.3 billion Powerball jackpot among the 300 million or so Americans, everyone would get a million dollars. Of course, they are mistaken in a way that's hard to comprehend. I can accept that many people are not good calculating with large numbers. But putting the math aside, they apparently think that after we've amassed a big pile of money by having many Americans pitch in a few dollars at a time, you can then divide that pile among all Americans and get millions a piece.

The first time I saw it, it was just a screen capture of a Facebook status making this case. But then I saw the idea expressed again, this time as a nice, neat graphic, complete with a Twitter handle, presumably of the creator. That made me a little suspicious: someone went through the trouble of putting together a graphic of an obviously-ridiculous idea? I realize some people have unexpected combinations of skills and ways to apply intelligence, but I still can't believe that this idea passed through the hands of someone with computer graphic design skills without its failings being revealed. And the prominent Twitter handle? You'd go out of your way to take credit for this?

I sensed fakery, so I went looking for the Twitter user's page. It turned out to be a musician using this as an odd sort of viral marketing scheme. They either came up with the idea independently, or copied it from the original post, made it into a nice graphic, and added the Twitter handler. That was a bit of a relief - I had guessed it was an attempt to publicly shame someone by signing their name to something so stupid it would go viral. Nevertheless, the posting has attracted a large number of people attempting to correct the calculations, using varying levels of politeness. Indeed, several were using older viral memes, such as the Batman-slapping-Robin graphic, to make fun of it.

I think this is some sort of stupidity Inception. You have a clever person pretending to be stupid. Smart people correct him, but they aren't as smart as they think they are, because they can't recognize the difference between real and fake stupidity. They're even using old memes to make fun of something that has become a new meme. And after explaining all this, I feel stupider.

At The Centre Of It All

You probably heard about David Bowie's death today. I won't try to eulogize him - as a late-gen-x'er I missed much of his career. But I do appreciate that I was an "indirect fan," since many of the musicians I liked were influenced by him.

So today the news was all-Bowie-all-the-time. I know, that happens every time a major celebrity dies. But given his position in society and the arts, it seems particularly inappropriate. Aside from the fact that he probably wouldn't want the world fawning over him, there is his final album, released last week; it's now acknowledged by his manager that it was recorded knowing it would be good last. That's very fortunate for an artist to get to say goodbye in their own terms. So surely the best way to pay tribute is not to listen to an anchorman reaching for words, but to listen to the music. (Doing that as I type; it's really good.)

But more to a point, the remembrance today has seemed incongruous with our society. For instance, when Michael Jackson died, there was a big deal made about it, and that was understandable. For good or bad, we're living in a Michael Jackson world. But really, if David Bowie had so many fans, then how do you explain this <points at Western Civilization>? A guy who prided himself in eclecticism and reinvention was a major inspiration in a world that keeps repeating itself?

I know, you're probably expecting me to call out non-fans for jumping on the posthumous bandwagon. But I'm going to be a bit more optimistic: I think all these people really do care about Bowie, and they've just lost their way. So everybody, take time to read the quotes and compliments orbiting social media right now and learn from them.