Some TV shows make you feel smart. “Everybody Loves Raymond” makes me feel smart because every joke is both telegraphed and juvenile. “Stargate: Atlantis” makes me feel smart because I typically only need to watch the first 5 minutes in order to predict the plot of the remainder of the episode. So, while these shows make me feel smart, it is for the wrong reason, and they are generally unsatisfying (I will admit there are occasional very good episodes of SG: Atlantis).

“Mad Men” makes me feel dumb. There’s not a lot of actual “stuff” going on in the show (take as evidence this tongue-in-cheek fake trailer). There’s a total absence of gunfights, and the tension between characters is frequently hidden under a surface of civility. A result of this is that I often struggle to figure out the significance of what is going on. I can feel that every scene has meaning, but I only occasionally pick up on what is important (the ones I pick up on are often Don Draper monologues). For example, recently I found myself struggling to interpret a scene of Grandpa Gene teaching Sally to drive.

Well, I found a fantastic resource to help those like me who suffer from Mad Men inadequacy syndrome. This blog does an exellent job of analyzing, perhaps even over-analyzing, every detail of every episode. On reading the first entry I felt my eyes opened up to the importance of the show. This is the guide I need in my Mad Men watching. Tangentialy, it reminds me of my favourite class of all time, German Literature 051/052 (in translation) with Prof. William Reeve at Queen’s, where we dissected every detail of some great works (Goethe, Kleist, Mann, Grass). There was just no way I could absorb these works without proper guidance.

So I heartily encourage everybody to watch “Mad Men”, and I also encourage them to find an online guide to help them in their voyage.

Much has been written about the impending death of newspapers. The wealth of information on the Internet is of course threatening the existence of newspapers, where what you are reading is filtered by editors that you may not agree with, can lag actual events by up to 24 hours (!), and costs money.

I actually like reading newspapers. Once or twice a week I will relax at lunch and go through either the National Post or Globe and Mail. It gives me an opportunity to actually cogitate, as opposed to the web experience which, to me, is more frantic and random.

The point of this post, though, is how newspapers are trying to build online presences. Both of the mentioned newspapers have online versions with extra functionality, such as the ability for readers to write comments. This is very nice. Today I was looking at the Post’s website, and ran across a particularly ridiculous article that deserved to be commented on. I felt compelled to do so.

The first difficulty presented was the fact that I had to sign up to comment. This is an unfortunate necessity, as no accepted standard for universal online ID management has emerged, and they need a mechanism for filtering out the vi@gra comments. So, I filled in my info and submitted it. I then tried to comment, but discovered that I had to “upgrade” my account to be able to participate in discussions. This is a bit strange. I’m not quite sure what the point of an un-upgraded account is, as it doesn’t seem capable of doing anything. Anyway, I pressed the “upgrade” button, and discovered that I had to click on a link from an email that they sent me, to prove that my email address is correct. I clicked on the link, and the resulting website said “E-Mail Address Not Found.” So, I must confirm my email address to comment, but I can’t confirm my email address.

I suspect the problem is that the email address I gave them is a Gmail address with a “+” in it. Using a + in Gmail is a technique for filtering incoming email from places you’ve signed up. My suspicion is that the Post’s email address parser has trouble with the “+” character.

Anyway, the outcome was that I wasted 10 minutes, still can’t write comments on the article, have another email address floating around out there in their system, and have a little less respect for newspapers’ abilities to move beyond their current business model.