Yesterday my friend Rich mentioned that there's some kind of organization that determines world wide standards for what I would have called emoticons - those smiley and frowny faces, those little thumbs up and thumbs down images that you put onto texts, unless you have educated, hip, intolerant friends. Well, I do, but I use those little guys all the time. Probably makes my friends a little sick to their stomachs.
Anyway, the idea that there are groups of serious people whose whole jobs probably consist of making stern rulings on which new emojis and which changes to existing ones would be "allowed", whatever that meant, kind of floored me, and struck me as very funny. I was so taken with the thought that I did something this blog is dead set against - I looked into it, even just a little.
The first thing I learned, or almost learned I think, was that emoticons are the clever little micro pictures people type using keyboards and typing parentheses, colons, semi-colons, brackets, letters...Emojis are the ones that are all there for you and you just select them, like little mini cartoons, coloured, expressive, often corny as anything. They're the ones people really use a lot on portable devices, primarily cell phones.
The second thing kind of blurs together with a lot of other things. There are something like 750 emojis defined and approved by this group. All cell phones use something called Unicode as their underlying programming language. The emojis available to you in your cell phone are selected by your phone's manufacturer from that big set of 750. They periodically need to be updated. There's a lengthy process for getting new ones and changes approved, potentially involving meeting with the council to talk about the emoji you've presented for approval, and presenting your case complete with research showing that the emoticon version of it is already in somewhat widespread use, or that cell phone manufacturers are clamouring for it. It goes on and on. These frivolous little smiley faces, with silly names and attributes, are clearly serious business, and not only that, they probably need to be, given their popularity and the fact that their presence on your phone probably plays a part in its longevity, given that they're code and that they need to be updated occasionally.
(I'm still not sure why cell phones magically become nearly useless right around the same time as my contract with the carrier is coming to an end, but my current theory is that it has to do with not being able to keep the phone's software up to date, the same way desktop machines eventually have to be replaced because nothing will run on them anymore...but I'm not sure. For all I know it could just be that Those Guys, Down in Marketing (Chem Trails reference) have convinced me I just need a new one, against my weak, helpless will. I tend to think my first theory is generally right, which then gives rise to awestruck speculation about how manufacturers estimate the length of time it will be before their customers load up their cells with so much junk that they can longer run well, how they build the cell so that its capacities will be exceeded by the average user in just about the same length of time as the average cell carrier contract lasts.)
The website for the council seems to have been written by Mr. Spock's science teacher, and is highly technical and well thought out and pretty convincing - I didn't find myself laughing at it at all, which was surprising and yet strangely not disappointing.
There are whole groups of people actively engaged in reviewing and commenting on the changes and additions that do get approved and rejected - witness, as a recent example, the controversy over the announcement of the new coloured hand emoji. I tend to think of those of us who actually use emojis without blushing as the peasants outside the cloistered halls of the Unicode Academy, or whatever it's called. Outside in the street, there's a raucous and occasionally violent debate about whether a poop emoji means the end of the moral structure keeping the world in orbit, and what Oprah had to say about it. Inside, someone in either a business suit or a lab coat is being asked to explain how much code it will take to make the poop image steam versus remaining a static image, and whether they have data on the relative demand for the steaming and non-steaming versions, and what the market share of the new Hilarious Lucky Phone Company in mainland China is expected to be over the next two years.
I find myself wondering whether there are whole groups of developers who specialize in emoji coding, and what their business cards say, and whether there's hot competition to hire them among phone manufacturers, specialized courses, and so on. ("Hey, you see that guy over there eating ramen and reading that comic book? You know who that is? That's Phil Chang, the guy who made the poop steam with less than 20 lines of code! Yeah, that's him, THE Phil Chang...").
Before I give you the link to the Unicode website so you can find out the extent to which I have distorted and misunderstood this whole topic, I'll just add that I have a nephew who almost certainly knows alllll about this stuff. Nathan, if you're reading this, remember that I'm fundamentally a decent person in spite of my towering ignorance and glib talk.
Okay, go nuts: http://www.unicode.org
For even more fun, check this out: it's a site that provides weekly popularity rankings for emojis, along with speculation and insight about why this one or that one is being used more or less than last week (as an aside, when I look at this site it seems clear that there's no debate at all about the poop emoji - it's a huge success):
http://ca.complex.com/pop-culture/2013/11/emoji-power-rankings/crystal-ball
Even the August New York Times is interested:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/08/opinion/sunday/turn-emojis-red-white-and-blue.html?_r=0
Sunday 29 March 2015
Tuesday 24 March 2015
Driving Thoughts
Quick question: when you take your driving test, and you have to back into a parking space, is there a time limit on getting it done? It occurred to me while in an underground parking lot today that if someone is able to accomplish the feat but takes too long doing it, there should be condition on their Licence forbidding them to ever back into a space.
This concept has very limited application, probably. I can only think of one other immediately: maybe if you're always slow during your test, even if you're not TOO slow, you should have a condition of licence forbidding you to be in the fast lane. If we're really looking at ticketing people who go too slow in the fast lane, maybe we should make it so they don't get those tickets by not allowing them to be there in the first place.
My other brilliant thought here was that if we do go with tickets for slowpokes, they should call it the Goldilocks law. You can get a ticket for going too fast, and a ticket for going too slow, but you won't get one if you go ju-u-u-st the right speed.
Okay, one more thought: if we're going with all these forms of vehicular revenue generation, how long til black boxes that phone Big Brother are mandatory? You'd have it in your car, it would be aware of your location and of the posted limits for that location, and you'd just get your bill in the mail every month for all the speed-related infractions you'd committed. Kind of like how bridge tolling is done here for the Golden Ears and Port Mann bridges.
Hmm...in Chem Trails mode, maybe all the increasing regulation and cost of driving a car is being driven by the Autonomous Car Cabal so that everyone would rather just throw up their hands and let a robot do it than walk the tight rope between legal and not legal every day. Yeah, that's it. I should find the website that discusses all this, it surely exists already...
This concept has very limited application, probably. I can only think of one other immediately: maybe if you're always slow during your test, even if you're not TOO slow, you should have a condition of licence forbidding you to be in the fast lane. If we're really looking at ticketing people who go too slow in the fast lane, maybe we should make it so they don't get those tickets by not allowing them to be there in the first place.
My other brilliant thought here was that if we do go with tickets for slowpokes, they should call it the Goldilocks law. You can get a ticket for going too fast, and a ticket for going too slow, but you won't get one if you go ju-u-u-st the right speed.
Okay, one more thought: if we're going with all these forms of vehicular revenue generation, how long til black boxes that phone Big Brother are mandatory? You'd have it in your car, it would be aware of your location and of the posted limits for that location, and you'd just get your bill in the mail every month for all the speed-related infractions you'd committed. Kind of like how bridge tolling is done here for the Golden Ears and Port Mann bridges.
Hmm...in Chem Trails mode, maybe all the increasing regulation and cost of driving a car is being driven by the Autonomous Car Cabal so that everyone would rather just throw up their hands and let a robot do it than walk the tight rope between legal and not legal every day. Yeah, that's it. I should find the website that discusses all this, it surely exists already...
Wednesday 18 March 2015
Transit Trouble
You know, I promised myself I would not enter into conversation here about things that may really get people seriously wound up, but I appear to be having trouble with that. In fact, I feel like warning you that today's post is longer and closer to apoplectic even than usual. It's not like I have thousands of avid readers who will be at the gates with torches and pitchforks, or even sending hostile emails, but still...I told myself I wouldn't, I just am going to goof around on here, I told myself. Mostly that's so I don't have to think too much, try too hard, and do bothersome things like find out facts.
That last bit is really what's going to hurt me here, because there has been a ton of coverage about the transit referendum here in the Lower Mainland, and I've done my manful best to ignore all of it. I know that usually means one should just shut up about a topic, if they haven't even bothered to listen to the arguments, but hey, this is my blog and I can be a nitwit If I want.
What's got me going seems like I must be wrong about it because it seems screamingly obvious...the Yes and No camps seem to be having a heated argument about two completely different things.
I don't know where the money for all the advertising that's currently going on comes from, but it feels like the Yes side has really turned up the volume lately - polling seems to show the petulant public is going to stamp its little feet and say No. Ad after poll after post that talk about the many benefits, the win win for drivers and riders, the positive results of prior investments in transit, the tiny incremental cost to each resident...I have no doubt whatsoever that spending the money now is absolutely the right decision. Think back to all the trouble the Canada Line caused, and find someone now who will say they wish it hadn't been built. It all seems pretty obvious.
Yet, the polls say the vote will be No. Why, why, why, I axe you.
I only saw one or two things from the No side, and they tended to reinforce the theory I was working on when I started the Chem Trails et Al post - that the weaker a given case is, the more poorly developed and laid out the website supporting it will be. The argument I saw seemed to have to do with exorbitant salaries for the people that run Translink. Really?! This is where I think I'm missing it more than anywhere else along this shaky trail, which is saying something.
I think it's way more complicated than that, and also way more straightforward: it's a trust thing. There's the provincial governments' long and terrible records of financial mismanagement and deception, going back as far as the fast ferries, (or maybe even the federal income tax promise, or GST, or or or). There are Translink's own problems (it just can't be helping to have thousands and thousands of people walk twice a day or more past all those inert Speedpass gates that have been sitting there for more than a year at the same time as about every month someone publishes some statistics on the enormous revenue loss they're suffering on fare evasion along with a remark about how ICBC (a much more reviled organization even than Translink) is now working with them on refusing to issue licences to those who owe fines for fare evasion). Finally, there's the general feeling that every time you turn on the TV in the lower mainland you're going to hear about how some organization is going to take more of your money and/or about how this is one of the most expensive places in the world to live. People are just absolutely exhausted and have no faith in any level of government or Crown corporation or whatever to manage anything successfully. They're mad as hell and they're not going to take it anymore. I can't believe that's not the slogan of the No campaign, in fact, now that I think of it - it's vague and catchy at the same time. I digress...again...
So, okay...let's just assume I'm reading this right, since this is my blog and no one ever comments on the site about anything I write anyway (except Rich - rock solid work, there, RJ). If I were a Yes man, and I am, what would I then do about this campaign?
For sure I think we can stop with the "benefits of transit investment" thing. Sold, done, we're convinced...but it feels a lot like the kid who has to take castor oil, or eat liver, or finish their homework, or any number of other disagreeable things we have to do simply because someone ostensibly higher up the food chain than us says it's good for us. I bet everybody knows we better spend this money now or it's going to cost a whole pile more when we eventually have to do it a little further down the road...but so far the whole thing feels like being made an offer you can't refuse.
I'd seek to assure the public that this money and the exhausting list of things it's supposed to be applied to were going to be managed right. Rather than going on and on about benefits, I think I'd start in on accountability, and I'd go Full Draconian. I'd get Christie Clark onside (because, face it, the link between Translink and the provincial government is a big part of the problem here, as it is with each Crown) and put up big billboards covered with those excellent head shots of the executive of Translink that appear in the annual reports (the ones that probably cost about $1,000 each to have taken, where there's a sleek and smiling face above a name and title) and it would say "If you vote Yes, and Translink does not deliver on these goals by this date, these people will all be fired, with cause, and therefore without severance packages. Between this group and your provincial government, we are going to deliver or get new jobs."
I'd probably try to imagine some kind of special legislation that would make this true, because it would probably be hard to make anyone believe that was really going to happen. There would be trouble with defining in simple terms what the exact goals are, too, but then again that's probably a large part of the problem - what on earth are they going to do with this money, exactly? Are they just going to pass it on to the provincial government the way ICBC does with optional "profit" while raising rates on basic? Providing that clarity is largely what I thought executives were paid to do, after all. I'd put Translink's Board of Directors on the billboard, too, except nobody cares about Boards because Board members seldom make their living by being Board members and everybody knows it. If you want to get an organization lined up behind an idea or a plan, put the heads of those who run it on the block. Clarity suddenly becomes much easier to come by.
I'm not sure about about how to market this approach (cute cartoon characters? Animals? Kids (if that's a different thing)? Guys in white lab coats? Somebody who looks and sounds a lot like Il Duce (I mean, we're talking in part about making the trains run on time, here)? There are specialists for that stuff, but whoever and however, the message better be that both Translink and the provincial government are on the line here. If anyone thinks that the government does not meddle constantly in the running of things like Hydro, Translink, ICBC and so on they're very mistaken; I'm dead certain that a lot of the story behind how Translink got to this point goes to what the various provincial governments found politically expedient at various points, and I'm not just talking about the current government's campaign commitment on Translink taxes.
Okay, that should be enough to get things started...even I don't think it's quite "problem solved", in spite of the grandeur of this rant, but I still think there's some meat here.
That last bit is really what's going to hurt me here, because there has been a ton of coverage about the transit referendum here in the Lower Mainland, and I've done my manful best to ignore all of it. I know that usually means one should just shut up about a topic, if they haven't even bothered to listen to the arguments, but hey, this is my blog and I can be a nitwit If I want.
What's got me going seems like I must be wrong about it because it seems screamingly obvious...the Yes and No camps seem to be having a heated argument about two completely different things.
I don't know where the money for all the advertising that's currently going on comes from, but it feels like the Yes side has really turned up the volume lately - polling seems to show the petulant public is going to stamp its little feet and say No. Ad after poll after post that talk about the many benefits, the win win for drivers and riders, the positive results of prior investments in transit, the tiny incremental cost to each resident...I have no doubt whatsoever that spending the money now is absolutely the right decision. Think back to all the trouble the Canada Line caused, and find someone now who will say they wish it hadn't been built. It all seems pretty obvious.
Yet, the polls say the vote will be No. Why, why, why, I axe you.
I only saw one or two things from the No side, and they tended to reinforce the theory I was working on when I started the Chem Trails et Al post - that the weaker a given case is, the more poorly developed and laid out the website supporting it will be. The argument I saw seemed to have to do with exorbitant salaries for the people that run Translink. Really?! This is where I think I'm missing it more than anywhere else along this shaky trail, which is saying something.
I think it's way more complicated than that, and also way more straightforward: it's a trust thing. There's the provincial governments' long and terrible records of financial mismanagement and deception, going back as far as the fast ferries, (or maybe even the federal income tax promise, or GST, or or or). There are Translink's own problems (it just can't be helping to have thousands and thousands of people walk twice a day or more past all those inert Speedpass gates that have been sitting there for more than a year at the same time as about every month someone publishes some statistics on the enormous revenue loss they're suffering on fare evasion along with a remark about how ICBC (a much more reviled organization even than Translink) is now working with them on refusing to issue licences to those who owe fines for fare evasion). Finally, there's the general feeling that every time you turn on the TV in the lower mainland you're going to hear about how some organization is going to take more of your money and/or about how this is one of the most expensive places in the world to live. People are just absolutely exhausted and have no faith in any level of government or Crown corporation or whatever to manage anything successfully. They're mad as hell and they're not going to take it anymore. I can't believe that's not the slogan of the No campaign, in fact, now that I think of it - it's vague and catchy at the same time. I digress...again...
So, okay...let's just assume I'm reading this right, since this is my blog and no one ever comments on the site about anything I write anyway (except Rich - rock solid work, there, RJ). If I were a Yes man, and I am, what would I then do about this campaign?
For sure I think we can stop with the "benefits of transit investment" thing. Sold, done, we're convinced...but it feels a lot like the kid who has to take castor oil, or eat liver, or finish their homework, or any number of other disagreeable things we have to do simply because someone ostensibly higher up the food chain than us says it's good for us. I bet everybody knows we better spend this money now or it's going to cost a whole pile more when we eventually have to do it a little further down the road...but so far the whole thing feels like being made an offer you can't refuse.
I'd seek to assure the public that this money and the exhausting list of things it's supposed to be applied to were going to be managed right. Rather than going on and on about benefits, I think I'd start in on accountability, and I'd go Full Draconian. I'd get Christie Clark onside (because, face it, the link between Translink and the provincial government is a big part of the problem here, as it is with each Crown) and put up big billboards covered with those excellent head shots of the executive of Translink that appear in the annual reports (the ones that probably cost about $1,000 each to have taken, where there's a sleek and smiling face above a name and title) and it would say "If you vote Yes, and Translink does not deliver on these goals by this date, these people will all be fired, with cause, and therefore without severance packages. Between this group and your provincial government, we are going to deliver or get new jobs."
I'd probably try to imagine some kind of special legislation that would make this true, because it would probably be hard to make anyone believe that was really going to happen. There would be trouble with defining in simple terms what the exact goals are, too, but then again that's probably a large part of the problem - what on earth are they going to do with this money, exactly? Are they just going to pass it on to the provincial government the way ICBC does with optional "profit" while raising rates on basic? Providing that clarity is largely what I thought executives were paid to do, after all. I'd put Translink's Board of Directors on the billboard, too, except nobody cares about Boards because Board members seldom make their living by being Board members and everybody knows it. If you want to get an organization lined up behind an idea or a plan, put the heads of those who run it on the block. Clarity suddenly becomes much easier to come by.
I'm not sure about about how to market this approach (cute cartoon characters? Animals? Kids (if that's a different thing)? Guys in white lab coats? Somebody who looks and sounds a lot like Il Duce (I mean, we're talking in part about making the trains run on time, here)? There are specialists for that stuff, but whoever and however, the message better be that both Translink and the provincial government are on the line here. If anyone thinks that the government does not meddle constantly in the running of things like Hydro, Translink, ICBC and so on they're very mistaken; I'm dead certain that a lot of the story behind how Translink got to this point goes to what the various provincial governments found politically expedient at various points, and I'm not just talking about the current government's campaign commitment on Translink taxes.
Okay, that should be enough to get things started...even I don't think it's quite "problem solved", in spite of the grandeur of this rant, but I still think there's some meat here.
Saturday 14 March 2015
Dream Drive
Last night I dreamt for some reason that I got into the wrong '98 Honda Accord, started it, and discovered that it was a standard and that it had been left in reverse, so that when it started I immediately was backing up. Turned out it was Mike Swanson's car. It took me a few seconds to even comprehend I was moving, a couple more to get why, and then several more to sort out how to make it stop, all the while not knowing if there was anyone parked behind me. In the end, there wasn't. The car was parked on a level street, in a sort of old made-of-wood industrial area, a few blocks east of where I think I worked, probably Swanson, too. The deal was I didn't know he had a '96 standard Accord, and my key unlocked and started either car. I just got into the wrong one. I have no idea how I even knew it was Mike's car.
So...all you Freudians out there...how does this dream speak to my relationship with my mother, (because I thought Freudians thought everything was about everyone's relationship with their mother)? If there's nothing there, does it have anything to do with the fact that Swanson was also relieved of his job two years ago and has since landed another good one? Is there deep meaning embedded in having backed up for awhile before coming to grips with the situation, stopped the car, no harm done? Or was the whole thing just mental bric-a-brac, too much popcorn, stress release....do dreams ever mean anything? Only sometimes but not usually?
I know you're dying to know what I think, so here it is: they only sometimes bear any relation to reality, and usually not much at that. You can be feeling generally anxious (sleeping in a strange bed in a strange city, no plan for the next day or for that matter the next year), and that can find expression in about a million varieties of anxiety dream (being chased, being lost, feeling like you have to keep a huge secret, etc) but the specific nature of the dream is kind of random, as long as you're uncomfortable. Same thing for happy dreams; my personal fave is the version where I discover that if I think about it just right, hold the idea of it in my head just the right way, I can fly, levitate, defy gravity. The trick becomes enjoying that while not changing the mental frame at all...if I tell you that I can never manage that, and that the joy of flying gradually gives way to the anxiety generated by the threat of flying into power lines or passing aircraft, then promise not to share with me what you think THAT means.
So...all you Freudians out there...how does this dream speak to my relationship with my mother, (because I thought Freudians thought everything was about everyone's relationship with their mother)? If there's nothing there, does it have anything to do with the fact that Swanson was also relieved of his job two years ago and has since landed another good one? Is there deep meaning embedded in having backed up for awhile before coming to grips with the situation, stopped the car, no harm done? Or was the whole thing just mental bric-a-brac, too much popcorn, stress release....do dreams ever mean anything? Only sometimes but not usually?
I know you're dying to know what I think, so here it is: they only sometimes bear any relation to reality, and usually not much at that. You can be feeling generally anxious (sleeping in a strange bed in a strange city, no plan for the next day or for that matter the next year), and that can find expression in about a million varieties of anxiety dream (being chased, being lost, feeling like you have to keep a huge secret, etc) but the specific nature of the dream is kind of random, as long as you're uncomfortable. Same thing for happy dreams; my personal fave is the version where I discover that if I think about it just right, hold the idea of it in my head just the right way, I can fly, levitate, defy gravity. The trick becomes enjoying that while not changing the mental frame at all...if I tell you that I can never manage that, and that the joy of flying gradually gives way to the anxiety generated by the threat of flying into power lines or passing aircraft, then promise not to share with me what you think THAT means.
Wednesday 11 March 2015
Chem Trails et al
I had started out thinking this would be a short one, dismissive and insulting, about my new theory, that says there's a direct relationship between how well thought out and presented a website advocating a given belief or theory is and the validity of the theory. Upon reflection I decided that I didn't have either a website or a well thought out plan for one to espouse this theory, and that I'm too lazy to do the research that would be the proof or at least support of the theory. In fact all I have is a sample size of one, that one being a website devoted to the theory that the government is applying all kinds of mind control, behavioural control, by spraying chemicals from the jet engines of passing aircraft. I still think it's a good theory, but I also think I'm too lazy to try and prove it.
So, instead, the thought was What is it that makes theories like that plausible to many people? What is the need that conspiracy theories of all stripes and sizes meet? What's the invariable appeal of the local politician whose main message is "Those bastards....down in Washington (or Ottawa, or Victoria, or wherever the next seat up is)..." The same thing happens in companies that measure employee satisfaction or engagement: staff always report that their immediate manager is all right, but that each level above that one is successively less trustworthy, aligned, informed...and that person at the top is invariably an idiot, except to those who report to them.
Okay, so probably two different things going on there, eh? The politicians and employee satisfaction one probably just comes from having no face to face connection to those who make decisions affecting us - I think it's the same kind of thing that causes road rage, except with that there are way more opportunities and way less risk perceived in forcing that face to face confrontation - just roll down the window and shout a few obscenities, and presto! connection made. If you're working or sitting in the same car every day with the same people, you tend to be a little more moderate in your responses, you tend to develop a little more trust, a little more empathy, a little more of all those things that kind of impair a good mindless black rage. Don't know what the solution might be for that - public transit? All government by town hall meeting? Everyone in every organization all work in one vast room? Better check the "Answers to Every Question" blog that some other guy writes.
The other one, though, the one that causes us to believe in things that really don't make a lot of sense on the face of it....that's a lot harder to make up some glib theory about....but since this is essentially the "Glib Theories For Every Question" blog, I better give it a shot.
(As an aside just between us and not all the other people reading this thing, I'm slowly discovering that if you have a question and no answer, no theory, a really good strategy is to attach it to a much larger and well-discussed mystery that also has no real resolution. You don't have anything to add, but you still have a shot at coming off as though you have insight. Watch this, I'm going to do it in the next paragraph...tell no one!)
I think the thing that drives our ability to believe that Marilyn was killed by the CIA, in chem trails, in the possibility that Elvis still lives, in the shooters on the grassy knoll, that the moon landing was faked, and so on, is the same thing that makes us believe in the boogey man and fairies, Devils and Angels. There are questions that don't have answers, and nature abhors a vacuum, so...we put stuff in. Don't misunderstand me as trivializing or dismissing religion, or even any of the things I just listed, including chem trails! There are a lot of open questions that we can settle in our minds based on experience and knowledge, and we come to closure for ourselves on many of those based on likelihood, probability...and there are some questions and experiences that we cannot settle in our minds, that are not really satisfactorily explained for each of us as individuals by what we know and what we've seen, and our makeup, our big evolutionary advantage, is that we really are not comfortable without some kind of explanation for things. Lots of times the explanations we make up turn out to be completely correct, and the mental itch is satisfied...and other times we have to just satisfy that itch with a belief whose proof is still pending.
So that's it, I haven't got answers on those chem trails, but I think it's a little bit conceited for me to just dismiss them as nonsense...a little.
So, instead, the thought was What is it that makes theories like that plausible to many people? What is the need that conspiracy theories of all stripes and sizes meet? What's the invariable appeal of the local politician whose main message is "Those bastards....down in Washington (or Ottawa, or Victoria, or wherever the next seat up is)..." The same thing happens in companies that measure employee satisfaction or engagement: staff always report that their immediate manager is all right, but that each level above that one is successively less trustworthy, aligned, informed...and that person at the top is invariably an idiot, except to those who report to them.
Okay, so probably two different things going on there, eh? The politicians and employee satisfaction one probably just comes from having no face to face connection to those who make decisions affecting us - I think it's the same kind of thing that causes road rage, except with that there are way more opportunities and way less risk perceived in forcing that face to face confrontation - just roll down the window and shout a few obscenities, and presto! connection made. If you're working or sitting in the same car every day with the same people, you tend to be a little more moderate in your responses, you tend to develop a little more trust, a little more empathy, a little more of all those things that kind of impair a good mindless black rage. Don't know what the solution might be for that - public transit? All government by town hall meeting? Everyone in every organization all work in one vast room? Better check the "Answers to Every Question" blog that some other guy writes.
The other one, though, the one that causes us to believe in things that really don't make a lot of sense on the face of it....that's a lot harder to make up some glib theory about....but since this is essentially the "Glib Theories For Every Question" blog, I better give it a shot.
(As an aside just between us and not all the other people reading this thing, I'm slowly discovering that if you have a question and no answer, no theory, a really good strategy is to attach it to a much larger and well-discussed mystery that also has no real resolution. You don't have anything to add, but you still have a shot at coming off as though you have insight. Watch this, I'm going to do it in the next paragraph...tell no one!)
I think the thing that drives our ability to believe that Marilyn was killed by the CIA, in chem trails, in the possibility that Elvis still lives, in the shooters on the grassy knoll, that the moon landing was faked, and so on, is the same thing that makes us believe in the boogey man and fairies, Devils and Angels. There are questions that don't have answers, and nature abhors a vacuum, so...we put stuff in. Don't misunderstand me as trivializing or dismissing religion, or even any of the things I just listed, including chem trails! There are a lot of open questions that we can settle in our minds based on experience and knowledge, and we come to closure for ourselves on many of those based on likelihood, probability...and there are some questions and experiences that we cannot settle in our minds, that are not really satisfactorily explained for each of us as individuals by what we know and what we've seen, and our makeup, our big evolutionary advantage, is that we really are not comfortable without some kind of explanation for things. Lots of times the explanations we make up turn out to be completely correct, and the mental itch is satisfied...and other times we have to just satisfy that itch with a belief whose proof is still pending.
So that's it, I haven't got answers on those chem trails, but I think it's a little bit conceited for me to just dismiss them as nonsense...a little.
Tuesday 10 March 2015
Are Artists Really Artists?
In the dawn of recorded time, before cell phones and just after clay tablets, I came to understand that there was such a thing as an IQ test, and that that test was a sure fire way to objectively determine everyone's relative intelligence. In one simple number you could tell who was supposed to be a doctor or an engineer and who should be a garbage man. You also knew that garbage men were not as smart as doctors and engineers. It was clear.
Yes, there were some people, even one gender, that weren't really expected to do well on The Test, and in fact weren't even expected to take it. Those people were either involved in roles that had nothing to do with Business (and were therefore irrelevant) or were women, which wasn't exactly a job but certainly seemed to strangle the perception that you were in Business. Actors were a group that didn't fit into Business. Artists, too. When people in those roles achieved fame and fortune, they were generally regarded as possessed of some kind of ineffable genius, something that couldn't be taught, learned, or measured. They "marched to a different drummer"...and so if they failed to achieve fame and fortune, nobody was suprised or sympathetic. In the end, they were regarded as a mystery that no one could understand, so whatever they did or why they did it was pretty much explained as divine inspiration or foolish hubris, depending on success.
Since those far-off days, much of our thinking about most of that last paragraph has changed. I won't put you through it, and I won't claim we've completed the evolution of our thinking about a lot of those things, either. What puzzles me is how we don't seem to have examined or at least progressed in our view of art and artists that much. We've sure talked about it a lot. We've sure spent money on Art. We sure haven't moved far away from the idea that artists are somehow different and that what they produce can only be admired or misunderstood, because it's divinely inspired and done by people whose sensibilities are born, not learned, and who operate on a different, higher plane than the rest of us. We have managed to move away from a lot of our old values around how being relevant in the business world is the only way to be relevant, but we've never really stopped and reconsidered values around things like actors and artists, what they do, what we expect of them. Actors are either stars or wanna be and artists...are artists, still. It's like we still feel so guilty about being dismissive about art in the 50s and 60s that we're now dead afraid to do anything but worship for fear of being seen as shallow and insensitive.
The way things sit these days I'm not sure it's okay to even say out loud that there may be good artists and bad artists. Believe me, if you don't like a given piece of art it's because of some limitation on your part, not because the art itself is flawed. If you're NOT an artist, your opinion is invalid because, well, you're not an artist, you don't march to that different drummer, you can never understand what it's all about, you need an artist to explain it to you. If you happen to be an artist and break ranks and express disapproval, it's because of some petty jealousy or neurosis on your part. So if there's no such thing as a bad artist, if the splattered paint on a spinning piece of cardboard at the PNE is just as good and valid as Breughel the Elder's whole life, then are artists really artists? I axe you....and I say yes, they are. I am. You are. I feel a song coming on, "We Are All Artists". The thing is, some of us are good artists and some of us are bad artists. I would like it if only the good ones made livings as artists and the bad artists got into other jobs, like writing blogs.
Art is Beauty, and beauty is famously subjective. When Ken Lum gets his Master of Fine Art degree, after a no doubt very lengthy and expensive education, and begins producing work like a picture of his high school friend Steve Chan with the name "Steve" over the top of the high school year book picture, or a scale model of a Vancouver Special, that's fine....sort of. As long as nobody asks me to pony up $45,000 for the scale model house, which was originally intended to be built at a scale that represented the cost of that house when it was built versus what it costs to buy now. The problem was that the resulting scaled down house would have been about the size of a shoe box, and the grant to do the project was $45,000. No doubt the installation space was not going to look great if filled only with a $45,000 shoebox, too...so he arbitrarily scaled it up. It went from a stupid, trite idea that anyone can get across with a paper and pencil to a stupid, trite, and meaningless one in that there wasn't even a scale to it. Still, Ken Lum got paid. I could wish it was the Society for the Development of Mathematical Literacy that paid him, but it wasn't.
I'm guessing he was paid at approval of a group of people administering some endowed fund, whose owner decided they may as well leave money to the development of Art as to the Minister of Finance. The good, and worthy, and anonymous group who made the disbursement gave us the scaled down house. I think I would rather have seen the Minister of Finance spend that dead rich person's money on used submarines, which I feel are High Art, at least relative to scale models of Vancouver Specials. I'm pretty sure the dead rich person doesn't care, and if they did I have to wonder if they wouldn't agree. I mean, it's a fine thing to avoid the tax man, but if this is the result...really?
So, now...what to do, what to do? We can't just throw artists to the wolves, we need them, believing in them is what separates us from the animals, isn't it? We could go back a few centuries and make art the exclusive purview of the wealthy, who would patronize whichever artist they wanted for whatever reasons they felt just. I think that's pretty much where we are these days anyway, only we all have to be irritated because we're kind of led to believe that the money that gets spent on nonsense like scale house models is producing Art that only cretins don't recognize and value. At least when it was purely something the rich did, none of the rest of us had to have an opinion, and weren't found lacking for it. If some rich fool wanted a scaled down model of an ordinary house for $45,000 what did I care? It's his money. My opinion of it didn't matter to the person paying the tab, either, so I was free to say and think whatever I thought, at least about art.
Here's my suggestion: if I'm going to be judged for my opinion of art, then make the administering of endowments for the arts the focus of training that people get when they take a Master of Fine Arts degree, and make it law that funds set up for that purpose only be managed by people with that degree. I'm guessing most of these endowments end up keeping money out of the government's hands, so I think the government should have some say in how the money they didn't get is managed. It's just too galling to see cuts to all kinds of government services that people really do need at the same time as we see money wasted on things like scaled down Vancouver Specials, or carelessly photoshopped high school year book pictures, and then to have to endure a lot of after the fact double talk from the artist about what he intended to get across to those of us among the great unwashed.
A six year old could tell the guy had a thought about how to portray that moment when you remember something, and a six year old would pretty much draw it the same way, too. That same six year old probably had to hear their parents talk endlessly about what their parents paid for the house they grew up in, and how much that house would cost now....an inaccurately scaled down house isn't really needed and certainly isn't much of a Thought. No, train the people who spend the money on things like the kind of effort and time that great art takes, or on the history of Art and art patronage, and have Ken continue to make his living as artists have for centuries, by catering to rich patrons who want their portraits done so history remembers them.
Yes, there were some people, even one gender, that weren't really expected to do well on The Test, and in fact weren't even expected to take it. Those people were either involved in roles that had nothing to do with Business (and were therefore irrelevant) or were women, which wasn't exactly a job but certainly seemed to strangle the perception that you were in Business. Actors were a group that didn't fit into Business. Artists, too. When people in those roles achieved fame and fortune, they were generally regarded as possessed of some kind of ineffable genius, something that couldn't be taught, learned, or measured. They "marched to a different drummer"...and so if they failed to achieve fame and fortune, nobody was suprised or sympathetic. In the end, they were regarded as a mystery that no one could understand, so whatever they did or why they did it was pretty much explained as divine inspiration or foolish hubris, depending on success.
Since those far-off days, much of our thinking about most of that last paragraph has changed. I won't put you through it, and I won't claim we've completed the evolution of our thinking about a lot of those things, either. What puzzles me is how we don't seem to have examined or at least progressed in our view of art and artists that much. We've sure talked about it a lot. We've sure spent money on Art. We sure haven't moved far away from the idea that artists are somehow different and that what they produce can only be admired or misunderstood, because it's divinely inspired and done by people whose sensibilities are born, not learned, and who operate on a different, higher plane than the rest of us. We have managed to move away from a lot of our old values around how being relevant in the business world is the only way to be relevant, but we've never really stopped and reconsidered values around things like actors and artists, what they do, what we expect of them. Actors are either stars or wanna be and artists...are artists, still. It's like we still feel so guilty about being dismissive about art in the 50s and 60s that we're now dead afraid to do anything but worship for fear of being seen as shallow and insensitive.
The way things sit these days I'm not sure it's okay to even say out loud that there may be good artists and bad artists. Believe me, if you don't like a given piece of art it's because of some limitation on your part, not because the art itself is flawed. If you're NOT an artist, your opinion is invalid because, well, you're not an artist, you don't march to that different drummer, you can never understand what it's all about, you need an artist to explain it to you. If you happen to be an artist and break ranks and express disapproval, it's because of some petty jealousy or neurosis on your part. So if there's no such thing as a bad artist, if the splattered paint on a spinning piece of cardboard at the PNE is just as good and valid as Breughel the Elder's whole life, then are artists really artists? I axe you....and I say yes, they are. I am. You are. I feel a song coming on, "We Are All Artists". The thing is, some of us are good artists and some of us are bad artists. I would like it if only the good ones made livings as artists and the bad artists got into other jobs, like writing blogs.
Art is Beauty, and beauty is famously subjective. When Ken Lum gets his Master of Fine Art degree, after a no doubt very lengthy and expensive education, and begins producing work like a picture of his high school friend Steve Chan with the name "Steve" over the top of the high school year book picture, or a scale model of a Vancouver Special, that's fine....sort of. As long as nobody asks me to pony up $45,000 for the scale model house, which was originally intended to be built at a scale that represented the cost of that house when it was built versus what it costs to buy now. The problem was that the resulting scaled down house would have been about the size of a shoe box, and the grant to do the project was $45,000. No doubt the installation space was not going to look great if filled only with a $45,000 shoebox, too...so he arbitrarily scaled it up. It went from a stupid, trite idea that anyone can get across with a paper and pencil to a stupid, trite, and meaningless one in that there wasn't even a scale to it. Still, Ken Lum got paid. I could wish it was the Society for the Development of Mathematical Literacy that paid him, but it wasn't.
I'm guessing he was paid at approval of a group of people administering some endowed fund, whose owner decided they may as well leave money to the development of Art as to the Minister of Finance. The good, and worthy, and anonymous group who made the disbursement gave us the scaled down house. I think I would rather have seen the Minister of Finance spend that dead rich person's money on used submarines, which I feel are High Art, at least relative to scale models of Vancouver Specials. I'm pretty sure the dead rich person doesn't care, and if they did I have to wonder if they wouldn't agree. I mean, it's a fine thing to avoid the tax man, but if this is the result...really?
So, now...what to do, what to do? We can't just throw artists to the wolves, we need them, believing in them is what separates us from the animals, isn't it? We could go back a few centuries and make art the exclusive purview of the wealthy, who would patronize whichever artist they wanted for whatever reasons they felt just. I think that's pretty much where we are these days anyway, only we all have to be irritated because we're kind of led to believe that the money that gets spent on nonsense like scale house models is producing Art that only cretins don't recognize and value. At least when it was purely something the rich did, none of the rest of us had to have an opinion, and weren't found lacking for it. If some rich fool wanted a scaled down model of an ordinary house for $45,000 what did I care? It's his money. My opinion of it didn't matter to the person paying the tab, either, so I was free to say and think whatever I thought, at least about art.
Here's my suggestion: if I'm going to be judged for my opinion of art, then make the administering of endowments for the arts the focus of training that people get when they take a Master of Fine Arts degree, and make it law that funds set up for that purpose only be managed by people with that degree. I'm guessing most of these endowments end up keeping money out of the government's hands, so I think the government should have some say in how the money they didn't get is managed. It's just too galling to see cuts to all kinds of government services that people really do need at the same time as we see money wasted on things like scaled down Vancouver Specials, or carelessly photoshopped high school year book pictures, and then to have to endure a lot of after the fact double talk from the artist about what he intended to get across to those of us among the great unwashed.
A six year old could tell the guy had a thought about how to portray that moment when you remember something, and a six year old would pretty much draw it the same way, too. That same six year old probably had to hear their parents talk endlessly about what their parents paid for the house they grew up in, and how much that house would cost now....an inaccurately scaled down house isn't really needed and certainly isn't much of a Thought. No, train the people who spend the money on things like the kind of effort and time that great art takes, or on the history of Art and art patronage, and have Ken continue to make his living as artists have for centuries, by catering to rich patrons who want their portraits done so history remembers them.
Sunday 8 March 2015
Daylight Saving
Today was Spring Forward, and although I'm allllll ready for bed at 8 pm I very much enjoyed seeing traces of daylight still in the sky well after 7....summer is coming.
I've been trying to decide for a few years now whether we should change out Christmas in favour of celebrating the passing of the longest night of the year on December 21, or just tear it up on the more artificial date upon which we return to Daylight Saving Time. I tend to lean to the old pagan choices associated with the passage of the seasons, the solstice and the equinox, but I can't quite decide for sure. Maybe both. It's not like it would be a big adjustment, we already have national statutory holidays around those dates anyway, I just think we should call a spade a spade regarding what it is we're really celebrating, and what we HAVE been celebrating for millennia. Whether it's the spring equinox or whatever the date is that we Spring Forward, for me what it's all about is "thank heaven, I can resume actual life after the long winter spent pretending we revel in ice and snow and darkness." That's not a very catchy name for a statutory holidays I suppose. There's a whole other post or possibly series of them related to my lack of connection to the art of marketing, so I guess the Catchy Title Department can just gleefully await my visit to them on bended knee asking for their help in my Real Seasonal Celebration Titles campaign.
I'm never quite sure how Thankful I am for the onset of longer nights and shorter days that happens right after Thanksgiving. I'm thankful for having whatever I need to get through those days, but just not so much about the fact that I actually have to.
I've been trying to decide for a few years now whether we should change out Christmas in favour of celebrating the passing of the longest night of the year on December 21, or just tear it up on the more artificial date upon which we return to Daylight Saving Time. I tend to lean to the old pagan choices associated with the passage of the seasons, the solstice and the equinox, but I can't quite decide for sure. Maybe both. It's not like it would be a big adjustment, we already have national statutory holidays around those dates anyway, I just think we should call a spade a spade regarding what it is we're really celebrating, and what we HAVE been celebrating for millennia. Whether it's the spring equinox or whatever the date is that we Spring Forward, for me what it's all about is "thank heaven, I can resume actual life after the long winter spent pretending we revel in ice and snow and darkness." That's not a very catchy name for a statutory holidays I suppose. There's a whole other post or possibly series of them related to my lack of connection to the art of marketing, so I guess the Catchy Title Department can just gleefully await my visit to them on bended knee asking for their help in my Real Seasonal Celebration Titles campaign.
I'm never quite sure how Thankful I am for the onset of longer nights and shorter days that happens right after Thanksgiving. I'm thankful for having whatever I need to get through those days, but just not so much about the fact that I actually have to.
Saturday 7 March 2015
May I recommend...
"The Grand Budapest Hotel"?
I don't know where that thing came from but there must be a few stories there. I just kept being pleasantly surprised by it.
I don't know where that thing came from but there must be a few stories there. I just kept being pleasantly surprised by it.
Wednesday 4 March 2015
Message In a Bottle
I didn't know about the rest of you, but so far my life experience strongly suggests that almost nothing that's ever happened in and around my life is unique to me. There is, again, no doubt that there have been studies done and papers written on how that comes home to people, and what effect, positive or negative, it may have on them. For example, I suppose for the vast majority of those who feel they may have a Big Message, it must be a bit of a burden to recognize that their Message has been expressed really well by a LOT of other people in all kinds of places and cultures before it came to them. For those dealing with something difficult or unpleasant, a challenge they're not sure they can meet, there's probably some comfort in the knowledge that they're not the only one this has ever happened to.
Today, I'm in the latter camp on a trivial issue: it's some comfort to me to be certain that at some point, lots and lots of other people who more or less randomly one day thought "I know, I'll write a blog!" have come to grapple with the fact that how blogs kind of mechanically work is something they don't understand well enough. They've had to send a note to whomever they think might actually be looking at whatever they're pushing out into the ether that's neither illuminating nor entertaining, kind of like this one. In my case today, it's about subscribing...and have no fear, I'm sure there will be others just as mundane in the future, especially if this one unexpectedly becomes a big fat hit.
People probably write blogs for all kinds of different reasons, like unmet attention needs, runaway narcissism, dreams of untold riches, nascent megalomania, or staggering boredom...lots of reasons. Whatever the reason, though, I'm pretty sure most people who write blogs hope that someone is reading them, kind of like the marooned sailor who puts a message in a bottle. The statistics on how many times a given blog or post within it has been viewed are, to a blogger, pretty much the index on likelihood of rescue to the marooned sailor. Therefore anything that distorts the stats is not good.
When this blog started, it used a subscription method that allowed you (okay, pretty much begged you) to put in your email address and have every subsequent post emailed to you. That's great except now anyone who gets the thing by mail doesn't record as a view of the blog, and I don't get my aspirations to plague you with ads and thus make tons of money met. So I changed the subscription thing so that hopefully it sends you a link to the page every time there's a new one. Unfortunately it doesn't unsubscribe anyone receiving it by email. Since there only about 5 of you looking at this thing (I'm not going to count whatever is going on in Taiwan, Germany, India, and Venezuela as actual people reading posts), the stats can drop to zero pretty quickly.
So do me a solid: if you're getting the posts by email, please unsubscribe and see if you can sign up to get them as a link, or just hit the page to see what's happening.
Thanks!
PS ...and if you've read some way more entertaining way some other blogger has gone through this kind of thing, let me know so I can flatter that person to death by copying it...
Today, I'm in the latter camp on a trivial issue: it's some comfort to me to be certain that at some point, lots and lots of other people who more or less randomly one day thought "I know, I'll write a blog!" have come to grapple with the fact that how blogs kind of mechanically work is something they don't understand well enough. They've had to send a note to whomever they think might actually be looking at whatever they're pushing out into the ether that's neither illuminating nor entertaining, kind of like this one. In my case today, it's about subscribing...and have no fear, I'm sure there will be others just as mundane in the future, especially if this one unexpectedly becomes a big fat hit.
People probably write blogs for all kinds of different reasons, like unmet attention needs, runaway narcissism, dreams of untold riches, nascent megalomania, or staggering boredom...lots of reasons. Whatever the reason, though, I'm pretty sure most people who write blogs hope that someone is reading them, kind of like the marooned sailor who puts a message in a bottle. The statistics on how many times a given blog or post within it has been viewed are, to a blogger, pretty much the index on likelihood of rescue to the marooned sailor. Therefore anything that distorts the stats is not good.
When this blog started, it used a subscription method that allowed you (okay, pretty much begged you) to put in your email address and have every subsequent post emailed to you. That's great except now anyone who gets the thing by mail doesn't record as a view of the blog, and I don't get my aspirations to plague you with ads and thus make tons of money met. So I changed the subscription thing so that hopefully it sends you a link to the page every time there's a new one. Unfortunately it doesn't unsubscribe anyone receiving it by email. Since there only about 5 of you looking at this thing (I'm not going to count whatever is going on in Taiwan, Germany, India, and Venezuela as actual people reading posts), the stats can drop to zero pretty quickly.
So do me a solid: if you're getting the posts by email, please unsubscribe and see if you can sign up to get them as a link, or just hit the page to see what's happening.
Thanks!
PS ...and if you've read some way more entertaining way some other blogger has gone through this kind of thing, let me know so I can flatter that person to death by copying it...
Monday 2 March 2015
Daylight Losing Time
I had heard of Daylight Saving Time, like everyone else, but a friend of mine recently brought me up to speed on a concept new to me in the world of How To Deal With Winter. In fact he didn't just calmly tell me about it, he ranted and foamed and gnashed his teeth about it. I felt that kind of passion might mean it's a topic worth sharing.
We all know that in a lot of places in Canada and the U.S. we set our clocks back an hour in the fall and forward an hour in the spring. Spring forward, fall back was one of the most helpful mnemonic devices of my household life. I'm not sure but I think this time shifting thing was started a long time ago in aid of having the chance of a little bit of daylight in the morning to milk the cows by, or to help manufacturers by maximizing the amount of natural light they could use for the day shift at their plants. Something like that. In more recent decades there's been a vigorous debate about how relevant or necessary the time shifting thing really is anymore - we're a much less agrarian country than we used to be, lighting is probably cheaper than it used to be, things like that. In this country, Saskatchewan has opted to stop shifting their time back and forth, making Saskatcheweinians among the less confused citizens of our country...which they probably already were anyway, as evidenced by the fact that they recognized the folly of this time shifting thing and put a stop to it.
The argument (and finally also the point of this note) then becomes where to stop the shift - in Sprung Forward mode or in Fallen Back mode?
It's clear to me that the Sprung Forward proponents have read an earlier post on this blog referring the power of Marketing, because they seem to have taken an early lead in the debate by labelling the Fallen Back group's proposal as Daylight Losing Time - I thought "Fallen Back" was already pretty negative sounding, but Daylight Losing Time tops it. This plucky group of likely slackers has also worked up a satisfying character assassination approach to describe "the kind of people who support Daylight Loser uh Losing Time". Apparently the Daylight Loser crowd are a bunch of baby-eating go-getters, who want it to be lighter earlier in the day so they can get a leg up on crucifying their competition before coffee time. These shallow, materialistic, capitalist pig types don't care about light in the evenings because they just want to get to bed early so they can get up early and get right back to tearing each other limb from limb. They don't want to have fun the evenings, at least not the kind of fun that requires natural light or probably fresh air.
I'm sure that in that last paragraph you can hear the foaming and teeth-gnashing I mentioned above.
What I'm much less certain about is what the actual position of those favouring the Fallen Back posture might be, what advantages it may have, and what amusing character flaws are shared by anyone who thinks remaining forever Sprung Forward is for some inexplicable reason good.
Can anyone reading this tell me? I wonder what positions the readers of this post might take? I wonder if there's constancy or inconsistency within this group on this question? If you have a position or opinion and would care to post a comment expressing it, that would be great. We could start taking bets on whether or when it's going to happen as well as on what the outcome of the debate will be within this province.
Let me know...thanks.
We all know that in a lot of places in Canada and the U.S. we set our clocks back an hour in the fall and forward an hour in the spring. Spring forward, fall back was one of the most helpful mnemonic devices of my household life. I'm not sure but I think this time shifting thing was started a long time ago in aid of having the chance of a little bit of daylight in the morning to milk the cows by, or to help manufacturers by maximizing the amount of natural light they could use for the day shift at their plants. Something like that. In more recent decades there's been a vigorous debate about how relevant or necessary the time shifting thing really is anymore - we're a much less agrarian country than we used to be, lighting is probably cheaper than it used to be, things like that. In this country, Saskatchewan has opted to stop shifting their time back and forth, making Saskatcheweinians among the less confused citizens of our country...which they probably already were anyway, as evidenced by the fact that they recognized the folly of this time shifting thing and put a stop to it.
The argument (and finally also the point of this note) then becomes where to stop the shift - in Sprung Forward mode or in Fallen Back mode?
It's clear to me that the Sprung Forward proponents have read an earlier post on this blog referring the power of Marketing, because they seem to have taken an early lead in the debate by labelling the Fallen Back group's proposal as Daylight Losing Time - I thought "Fallen Back" was already pretty negative sounding, but Daylight Losing Time tops it. This plucky group of likely slackers has also worked up a satisfying character assassination approach to describe "the kind of people who support Daylight Loser uh Losing Time". Apparently the Daylight Loser crowd are a bunch of baby-eating go-getters, who want it to be lighter earlier in the day so they can get a leg up on crucifying their competition before coffee time. These shallow, materialistic, capitalist pig types don't care about light in the evenings because they just want to get to bed early so they can get up early and get right back to tearing each other limb from limb. They don't want to have fun the evenings, at least not the kind of fun that requires natural light or probably fresh air.
I'm sure that in that last paragraph you can hear the foaming and teeth-gnashing I mentioned above.
What I'm much less certain about is what the actual position of those favouring the Fallen Back posture might be, what advantages it may have, and what amusing character flaws are shared by anyone who thinks remaining forever Sprung Forward is for some inexplicable reason good.
Can anyone reading this tell me? I wonder what positions the readers of this post might take? I wonder if there's constancy or inconsistency within this group on this question? If you have a position or opinion and would care to post a comment expressing it, that would be great. We could start taking bets on whether or when it's going to happen as well as on what the outcome of the debate will be within this province.
Let me know...thanks.
Sunday 1 March 2015
No Martian blood!
Somewhere in here I made a remark about Mars bars, and the labelling they put on their bars about 10 years ago that declared there were no transfats in their product. I thought this was pure cynical marketing and that there never had been transfats in Mars bars anyway. I thought you might as well label a pair of socks as containing no transfats. Turns out I was wrong! I know, I'm as shocked and saddened as you are by this admission. I spent about 5 minutes with Dr. Google to find out that they did do something to change their recipe to remove hydrogenated vegetable oil from it. In fact, I think they took some grief because they removed the offending material from the bars in such haste that they failed to remove it from the list of ingredients printed on the packaging.
Still....there was never apparently very much of it in their bars, so I'm sticking with the largely cynical explanation for the labelling they slapped on declaring they were now way healthier because there were no transfats in there. In fact I'm sticking with that explanation to the point that I'd bet there's research already done and filed that proves that if you stuck a label on something ordinary and unhip like Sunlight dish soap that said something idiotic like "NOW with NO Martian blood!" you'd see a spike in sales. I'm sure the people who run marketing for Sunlight would never do this because eventually they'd completely confuse and alienate their most loyal customers, people like me, people who don't expect their trusty dish cleaning product to go all campy on them. It would work, though, I bet.
So what's my point? It might be that we're all lucky that marketing is a science that takes itself seriously and so could never countenance (for good solid commercial reasons as well) behaviour that just completely mocks our collective susceptibility to their many devious and not-so-devious tricks. It might be that we should all just keep quiet about how evil marketing is, and not let on that we know their little game, because let's face it, we don't want them turning up the pressure. Considering the amount of money that's poured into research and development of effective marketing techniques (as opposed to humdrum nonsense like ending world hunger, curing cancer, and so on), I think we all need to hope that the entire marketing industry doesn't fall into the hands of some madman or self-aware giant computer. The science at his disposal, and its proven ability to manipulate us all into saying and doing and buying and voting for things we never even thought we wanted, were totally against, in fact, is terrifying. If the madman/computer decided to tell us to jump off a bridge, we'd eventually do it. The survey that we'd all be asked to complete just before taking the high dive (and which we of course would mindlessly complete) would likely reveal that the biggest question in our minds as we plunged towards oblivion would be "What in the world made me think THIS was a good idea?!"
Don't wake the sleeping giant, I say. Just keep buying things with splashy labels on them, and don't even think about whether you need them or they're really worth this price. Think about the number of football stadiums that could be filled with Pet Rocks and Cabbage Patch Kids and He-Man dolls and Chrysler products containing fine Corinthian leather (whatever that even turns out to be), and just smile and say thank you, and mean it. Oh, and also, please keep this advice firmly in the forefront of your mind when you read my soon-to-be-released ad in this space that asks you to just send me money, ALL your money, in fact. The ad won't promise any goods or services in exchange for that money. It will just assume that because I've put colours into it and used certain magically powerful fonts and because I know you now understand the possible consequences of NOT responding, you'll just send the cash.
And no, I'm neither a giant self aware super computer nor a powerful madman. Yet.
Still....there was never apparently very much of it in their bars, so I'm sticking with the largely cynical explanation for the labelling they slapped on declaring they were now way healthier because there were no transfats in there. In fact I'm sticking with that explanation to the point that I'd bet there's research already done and filed that proves that if you stuck a label on something ordinary and unhip like Sunlight dish soap that said something idiotic like "NOW with NO Martian blood!" you'd see a spike in sales. I'm sure the people who run marketing for Sunlight would never do this because eventually they'd completely confuse and alienate their most loyal customers, people like me, people who don't expect their trusty dish cleaning product to go all campy on them. It would work, though, I bet.
So what's my point? It might be that we're all lucky that marketing is a science that takes itself seriously and so could never countenance (for good solid commercial reasons as well) behaviour that just completely mocks our collective susceptibility to their many devious and not-so-devious tricks. It might be that we should all just keep quiet about how evil marketing is, and not let on that we know their little game, because let's face it, we don't want them turning up the pressure. Considering the amount of money that's poured into research and development of effective marketing techniques (as opposed to humdrum nonsense like ending world hunger, curing cancer, and so on), I think we all need to hope that the entire marketing industry doesn't fall into the hands of some madman or self-aware giant computer. The science at his disposal, and its proven ability to manipulate us all into saying and doing and buying and voting for things we never even thought we wanted, were totally against, in fact, is terrifying. If the madman/computer decided to tell us to jump off a bridge, we'd eventually do it. The survey that we'd all be asked to complete just before taking the high dive (and which we of course would mindlessly complete) would likely reveal that the biggest question in our minds as we plunged towards oblivion would be "What in the world made me think THIS was a good idea?!"
Don't wake the sleeping giant, I say. Just keep buying things with splashy labels on them, and don't even think about whether you need them or they're really worth this price. Think about the number of football stadiums that could be filled with Pet Rocks and Cabbage Patch Kids and He-Man dolls and Chrysler products containing fine Corinthian leather (whatever that even turns out to be), and just smile and say thank you, and mean it. Oh, and also, please keep this advice firmly in the forefront of your mind when you read my soon-to-be-released ad in this space that asks you to just send me money, ALL your money, in fact. The ad won't promise any goods or services in exchange for that money. It will just assume that because I've put colours into it and used certain magically powerful fonts and because I know you now understand the possible consequences of NOT responding, you'll just send the cash.
And no, I'm neither a giant self aware super computer nor a powerful madman. Yet.
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