Actually, Performance Reviews Are Usually More Awkward Than That

Of course, the day after I write a post about election ads, I see a new one.  And this appears to be the start of that NDP surge in advertising. But it was also notable because it was a spoof of the Conservatives' job application ads that I made fun of.

It was a nice comeuppance for a series of ads that - regardless of your political beliefs - you've go to be getting tired of by now. I can even forgive them for glossing over the fact that Mulcair's experience in "cabinet" is at the provincial level.  And as I suspected, the NDP somehow attracted far better acting talent despite their more modest budget.

The one part that does bother me about it is the language describing Mulcair as "ready" and "up for the job."  Although Trudeau isn't mentioned, it's clearly a shot at him.  Further, it's attempting to build on the psychological work done by the Conservatives, emphasizing the concept that the election is all about experience, and that politicians must achieve some magic threshold of readiness.  In that sense, this ad is hypocritical: it's making fun of the Conservative ad, while also using the same ideas.

So to summarize: the party on the right made an ad attacking the party in the centre, and ignoring the party on the left.  The party in the centre only mentioned the ad in passing, but the party on the left rebutted the ad, with their own ad.  It attacked the party on the right, while ignoring the party in the centre, though indirectly putting them down.

I Don't Approve This Message

Is it just me, or are there fewer campaign commercials in this year's federal election? I mean, they're on TV a lot, but there's only a few actual ads that they're repeating over and over. It could be that they've had to conserve money on this eight-month campaign. The NDP is really holding back; I fear they're just fattening the war chest so they can carpet-bomb the airwaves in the final days before the election.

The Liberals are just repeating one ad over and over. Like a lot of their recent material, the message seems to be that they're in favour of the middle class, so they've got policies that are great for the middle class, because they're the party of the middle class. That seems an odd strategy: their competitors are focused on target demographics, while they have the reputation as Canada's Natural Governing Party, so surely they would benefit from portrayal as the party that serves everyone.

Other than that, the ad is good, though I have the feeling that some spin doctor at Liberal Headquarters is panicking over the fact that Canada's picture of the Liberal leader is of a man going up the down escalator.

The Conservatives have, in recent years, been highly focused in their marketing. That is, they choose the people they are most likely to win over, and concentrate on them instead of wasting time on broad appeals to everyone. That leads to some strange-looking commercials, like that one where people are talking about why they're voting Conservative, and all the featured voters are either seniors or farmers.

But there hasn't been anything as surreal in this campaign, as their "job application" ads. The concept is actually kind of clever, but like a lot of political advertising, it suffers because a smart, slightly humourous premise gets played for viciousness rather than comedy.

It also suffers from limitations unique to the circumstance. For a while now, the Conservatives have been the best party at fundraising, and thus has more money to play with than the other parties (which is why they run ads even between elections.) But even with all the money in the world, you still have the problem of finding actors and other creative people willing to work for the Tories.

But that Conservative targeting also makes it weirder than it should be. It's a surreal idea to begin with, a small office HR committee hiring a Prime Minister. But worse, it has to take place in the parallel universe where Conservative wedge issues are people's main concerns. You know, a place where it's just assumed that you make your vote based primarily on the candidate's response to ISIS. So it may ring a false note to most of us, but it's all careful calculation by the Tory brain trust. At least I'm assuming: they've had to modify it to add a "Justin Trudeau: Just Not Ready" banner across the bottom of the screen, apparently concerned that spot is a little too subtle.

But the funny part is that in ridiculing Trudeau for being soft on terror, they mention his plan to send winter jackets to Syria. That probably sounded like a withering insult at the time the commercial first started airing (2007, if memory serves.) But now that the plight of Syrian refugees has become a global concern, sending winter coats to Syria actually sounds like a good idea. It will probably appeal to more people than sending troops over, so the Liberals should thank the Conservatives for publicizing the policy for them.

Clinch-22

The Blue Jays have clinched a playoff spot.  This will be the first time they've been in the post season since their last World Series win in 1993 How long ago was 1993?

Here’s what happened:

• Czechoslovakia broke up
• Deep Space Nine debuted (Next Generation was in season six)
• Bill Clinton was inaugurated
• Brian Mulroney is succeeded by Kim Campbell, who later lost the election to Jean Chretien
• The first Pentium chips went on sale
• R.A. Dickey was drafted
• Magic: The Gathering first goes on sale
• The Maastricht Treaty establishes the European Union
• Doom is released
• LaTroy Hawkins completes his second season in the minors
• NAFTA passes
• The original Jurassic Park was released
• Trainspotting and The Virgin Suicides were released.  The books, not the movies.

People born in 1993:

• Anthony Davis
• Ryan Nugent-Hopkins
• Miranda Cosgrove
• Ariana Grande
• Meghan Trainor
• 60% of One Direction's original line-up

Not yet born:

• Roberto Osuna

Not yet built:

• Two-thirds of current Major League ballparks, including Turner Field in Atlanta, whose replacement is already under construction.

What A Load Of Fahrvergnügen

Volkswagen - not to mention its subsidiaries like Audi - is on the hot seat for faking emissions tests on its diesel cars. It's quite a black-eye for Volkswagen: aside from the dishonesty, they've invested a lot on developing and marketing diesel. But that dishonesty is shocking: the (direct) death-toll here may not be like GM's ignition scandal, but somehow it seems worse because it was blatant and premeditated. We expect companies to panic and cover up their errors, but we don't expect them to make conscious decisions to deceive everyone over the course of years.

How bad is this going to be for VW? It's hard to say. With the ignition scandal, I predicted that it would be disastrous, because it fit the stereotypes of American car companies so well that it would just confirm customers' worst suspicions. But that didn't happen; it really had little impact on sales. Now that could be for one of a couple of reasons: It could be that most people simply didn't hear about the problem, or it could be that people just have highly negative opinions of American car companies already, so further bad news didn't change anything.

If it is because the public doesn't hear about these scandals, then Volkswagen won't be hurt, though we'll be entering a dark age of automotive quality that will have Ralph Nader feeling like he's wasted his life. If it's the latter reason, then VW is in trouble because this will puncture their reputation. Their cars always seem pricey, so if customers don't think the price is worth it, then they're in trouble.

Of course, that's assuming this is as far as the scandal goes. It says something about our perception of the car biz that people almost immediately started speculating that other car makers are just as guilty.  If it does become larger, and other manufacturers are implicated, then Volkswagen might come out of it looking alright.  People will get angry and swear that they'll try to live car-free:   But as with politicians, even if our opinions of all the competitors are low, we still have to choose the least-bad.  At least in voting, spoiling your ballot doesn't require using public transit.

!!!

It's National Punctuation Day!  Can you believe that‽ 

My apologies if the punctuation at the end of that last sentence didn't come through: it's an interrobang: a combination of the exclamation mark and the question mark that can be used to express incredulity. Sure, you could just type both an exclamation mark and a question mark, but who has time for that⸮  

And that sentence had an irony mark at the end.  It was proposed in the 16th century, though I've seen many people suggest that we need irony punctuation now in the internet era when irony is often misunderstood.

⁂

These and other obscure punctuation marks are described at Mental Floss magazine.

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There are a couple of punctuation-related notions I'd like to mention. One is the question of how many spaces are after the period. I was always told to add two  spaces, but many people consider this to be a crime against humanity.  I don't have strong feelings either way, and I am pretty inconsistent about it.  So if you are offended by it, I'm sorry.  But you should really blame my Grade 9 typing teacher.

⁂

The other is to point out just how often punctuation in computer text goes wrong in today's world.  Just today I saw an item on the BBC World news scroll about the Pope’s trip to America. 

The typo is frustrating because, for one thing, I know what's going wrong.  As I mentioned recently, text files are just numbers representing letters (and punctuation marks.)  Unfortunately, there's more than one standard code for representing letters, and things go wrong when a program is expecting one way of representing characters, and it gets a different way.  Here's a page that explains it in more depth.

But it's doubly frustrating because no one seems to care.  The news scroll went by several times with the error, and I've seen similar problems several times before.  Newspapers puke meaningless characters all the time, reminding us just how few proofreaders they can afford.  You know, the ampersand (&) is a deformation of the handwritten Latin word et. Perhaps centuries from now, their apostrophe will be based on the ’ characters. 

Who knows what Victor Borge would do with that.

Leaving The Neutral Zone

Wayne Gretzky recently threw his support behind Stephen Harper and the Conservatives in Canada's election.  The endorsement is purely symbolic, since Gretzky - a dual American/Canadian citizen - lives in the U.S., and that means he can't vote, due to recent law changes by...Stephen Harper's Conservatives.

It's a bit of a surprise, because hockey has its own political spectrum, in which Gretzky would be the Bernie Sanders to Don Cherry's Donald Trump.  But I suppose you have to include demographics: men, whites, rich people and Eastern Europeans are more likely to be conservative, so one would assume that the hockey world in general would prefer Harper.

Not surprisingly, there's been sharply divergent reaction to this.  When a public figure suddenly supports a politician, I wonder what motivates it.  Obviously, it could be that the public figure is really passionate about the politician and the issues at stake in the election.  But the other likely explanation is the complete opposite: they don't know or care much about politics, they're taking a stand without realizing how controversial it will be. 

If it's a celebrity that has a history of taking a stand, you know it's the former.  If it's someone new to the public eye, you'll also assume it's the former: it's probably someone with a passion for politics who will be making this a part of their persona for as long as they are famous.  But in a case like Gretzky's, you have to wonder why a guy who's been famous for decades would only take a stand now.  It's entirely possible that he didn't realize many people would turn on him.

I'm not saying you should feel sorry for him or anyone else who wades into politics and suddenly becomes controversial.  While I appreciate people taking a stand, that's because political issues have real consequences.  As such, it's irresponsible to get involved in an important discussion you don't understand. So always get informed before wading into politics.  People will still hate you for it, but at least you'll be sure you're right and they're wrong.

Reasons To Cheer For The Blue Jays This Year

• Not the Yankees
• If they can win by battering their opponents with excessive offence, image the hilarious teams that will be assembled over the coming years.
• "Longest playoff drought in pro sports" title will get passed to the Buffalo Bills.
• Remember when Dan Quayle predicted the Braves would win in ‘92? Well there’s plenty of opportunity for that to happen again.
• Also, not the Red Sox.
• If Toronto FC can hold on too, the Leafs would be the only T.O. team that misses the playoffs this year.
• Definitely a non-zero chance that this will open a portal to the early nineties, allowing us to go back and correct the mistakes of the last twenty years.
• Expansion teams with long and interesting histories really annoy baseball traditionalists.
• As in 92/93, playoff run coincides with an election, resulting in lots of audience signs that Americans will never understand
• Marines have just about got that upside-down flag thing figured out.
• Fanatic support for Jays and Raptors may finally convince Canadian sports media that we care about more than one sport.
• If all their success comes with the traditional uniform/logo, you’ll never have to live with another cartoony rebranding
• The longer they play, the chance for Expedia to make more ads with Ace going through customs. They haven’t even shown him with the TSA agents yet. Think of potential for a "No Fly List" joke.
• There aren’t any Muslim baseball players, so a Canadian team winning the World Series is about the only way to piss-off Curt Schilling.
• Stuffed parrot sales haven't been this high since the heyday of Monty Python.
• If the Jays win the World Series this year, you won't have to listen to fans complain about the game's unfair economics for at least another decade.