One such situation occured in grade 11, where we read Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” and had a small in-class discussion. I imagine everybody has read this short story at some point, but for those who haven’t, it describes (SPOILER!) a small town where all the people get together on a certain day, draw lots, and then stone the winner to death. The End.

So, my memory centers around one question, where the teacher asked something along the lines of “when do you think the story was situated?” A student raised his hand and responded “I think it was set a long time ago, hundreds of years, and these are people following an ancient rite.” Whoah! thought I. I don’t think this is correct at all. The teacher nodded his head, though, confirming the student’s answer as being correct, and prepared to move on. I had to interject, though. I did, and said “Wait, I don’t think that’s correct. There really isn’t anything in the story to indicate any particular time period. The people live in houses, which could occur any time, and there aren’t really any means of transportation that could betray it being set in some time. I think it was left intentionally ambiguous, so that the story could be used to illustrate the risk of slipping towards barbarism, regardless of the era.”

This obviously annoyed the hell out of the teacher. He didn’t want a debate. He wanted to get through the questions. The other students were also annoyed. They didn’t want to listen to me blabbering. So I was dismissed offhand, and we continued.

I remembered this. And periodically I would wonder: was I wrong? Was “The Lottery” actually set in some specific bygone era? Am I an intellectual fraud who suffers from the Dunning-Kruger effect? Or did I know what I was talking about?

Well, today I happened across a mention of The Lottery, and it linked to the wikipedia entry. Looking at wikipedia I found these quotes fom the author: “I hoped, by setting a particularly brutal ancient rite in the present and in my own village to shock the story’s readers [...]“, and “Jackson lived in Burlingame, California, and [...] reveals that she had Bennington in mind when she wrote “The Lottery”.”

So, not only did she set the story in the present, but she set it in a specific small California town! This isn’t quite the same as my theory that she wrote it to be non-specific to era (although I think there may be an element of that), but it is FAR from the teacher’s assertion that it was set in some ancient village.

So, now I can rest. My teacher was an idiot, I was right, and I deserve better than the B I received on that assignment.

Now I’m older, and Dairy Queen isn’t quite the same. If I wanted I could eat there every day, although thankfully I don’t, and when I do go I don’t get that mystical feeling. That would be fine, and an expected outcome of getting older, but this post has to do with a different aspect of Dairy Queen.

Recently I went to Dairy Queen and ordered some sort of brownie/ice-cream/chocolate concoction. The ice cream was good, but the syrup was too sweet, and the brownie was sweeter than the syrup. Plus, the brownie and syrup comprised over half of the entire desert. The thing was basically inedible, except for the little bits of ice cream that I could excavate from between the gross syrup and brownie parts.

So, I wonder. Have Dairy Queen treats become grosser, or have my tastes changed? I think it is the former, since my tastes in other desserts haven’t changed much. So then why is Dairy Queen making these gross things? Have they focus grouped these desserts and determined they test well with people who like gross things? Are people who like gross things Dairy Queen’s main demographic target? I’m guessing the answer must be yes. They have even started mixing syrup in with the Blizzards.

Anyway, I’ll stick to my Blizzards, and I’ll make sure to request it be kept syrup-free.

“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.

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.

Researchers have spent a huge amount of time studying how people actually drive cars. We have a very deep understanding of how to design cars from this perspective. But I have never heard of any research centered around the maintenance of cars. I think this is a very interesting problem. On one hand I want car maintenance to be so trivial that fixing any problem is like building a simple LEGO model. Everything goes where it seems it should, and clicks nicely into place. However there are a bunch of competing requirements. The car must remain affordable to build. It must be light enough to have reasonable gas mileage. It must be safe. So, can we design a car that can be maintained by anybody but maintains these properties?

I think the answer is yes. Taking my door as an example, the entire thing contains maybe 50 parts. That is not a high degree of complexity. Once the thing is apart it is not terribly difficult to figure out what does what. The difficulty lies mostly in actually getting it apart. The fasteners used are generally not friendly. To get the first body panel off one must tug at it, fearing the whole thing is going to tear apart, until the fastener finally lets go and pops out of its hole. Then there is a layer of vapor barrier glued on with the grossest sticky black stuff. Then there is the air bag that has to be treated gingerly, lest it blow up in your face. There are bolts that fit into little tabs that tend to break. Finally, during reassembly, there is waterproofing trim that is a freaking nightmare until one figures out that it needs to removed and fit on the floor panel, rather than trying to stick the door panel onto it while it sits on the door frame. All very confusing.

In short, I think a huge difference in maintainability could be made by improving fastener technology, and the way in which parts fit together. Taking the door panels off should be a pleasure. I should be able to lift a lever and have the things slide right off. The camera makers have figured this out. Sometimes I take the lens off my SLR and then put it right back on, just because it feels so nice. Why can’t cars be the same?

Looking beyond door maintenance to more standard car stuff, why do I have to stick my fingers into a dark and dirty hidden place and pull on a sharpish lever in order to raise the hood? I read somewhere that some non-insignificant fraction of drivers never lift their hood. I suspect they would be more likely to if lifting it was much easier. Also, when adding oil why do I have to open this bottle and then pour it into this smallish hole, potentially spilling it all over either the engine or myself? Oil is very unpleasant stuff. There should be a method for adding oil where the oil itself is never arcing through empty air, potentially making a mess.

A while ago I read about a team of average women who were recruited by a car maker to design a “woman’s car,” whatever that is. One of their answers was to make the hood impossible to open, except by a licensed mechanic. I think this is an example of the mistake of letting users design something. They designed what they thought they wanted, not what they actually wanted. And since they didn’t like opening the hood, their answer was to never do it. What they actually want, and what I want, and what I think everybody wants, is a car that lets me change pretty much any mechanical part (maybe stopping short of the powertrain itself), without getting dirty, pinching my fingers, or worrying about breaking anything. Maybe the women from the story won’t go so far as to do the maintenance I did this weekend, but maybe they will be able to open the hood and put some oil in. The point is that the difficulty level of every aspect of car maintenance, from adding oil to changing a bushing, can be made simpler.

As for my adventure with the window, it now opens and closes like it did when it was new. And I only stripped one bolt, and ended up with one mystery washer.

The stories are well written, having a grand operatic feel to them, but what I find most interesting are the themes that lie on the periphery of the main stories. In particular I am fascinated by the relationship between the human members of the Culture and the machine members. The Culture is so advanced that is has managed to create artificial intelligences that possess almost infinite computational abilities. Many of them, especially the smaller “person-like” AIs are limited in intelligence, presumably so that the humans can relate. There are also many super intelligent AIs that run very large space ships on which millions of people live. The AIs are so powerful that they can monitor everything that is happening on the space ship and intervene if, for example, one of the millions of inhabitants is about to fall down and hit his head. They can also perform complicated reasoning beyond anything that humans can comprehend.

What I find interesting about the concept of the AIs is that, with them around, humans are far from being the dominant intelligence in the society. Humans are so inferior that they can never even really understand the nature of their relationship with the AIs. The AIs SEEM to be nice and supportive, and allow the humans freedom, but how can the humans really KNOW that they are free. A parallel might be a relationship between a dog and owner. A dog can never figure out the relationship between it and the human owner.

Of course the super AI theme has been explored before, for example in The Matrix and Terminator movies. But they are comparatively simple situations, because the relationship between the humans and the machines is purely adversarial. The balance between human and machine in this case is very clear. But the “friendly” relationship between humans and machines in the Culture novels is less clear, and is perhaps quite sinister, simply because the humans don’t and can’t know what is going on.

I recommend Banks’ books for some good but not mind blowing reading. He also writes normal (non SF) fiction. The one example I read was “The Steep Approach to Garbadale” which had a good story, but was marred by overly insistent political diatribes.

I didn’t notice it at the time, but in light gray font at the bottom of the email are the words “Advertisers with self-managed signup accounts are subject to a $5 activation fee that will be deducted from the promotional credit.” This would turn out to be relevant later.

I went over the the Google adwords site and started puzzling through the signup process. It’s not very friendly, having some annoying “wizard” style elements that don’t let you perform operation “B” until you have performed unrelated operation “A”. But that isn’t the important part. After spending valuable time figuring out how stuff worked I ran into these words: “Your account will be charged a non-refundable CAD $10.00 activation fee upon continuing” and “The promotion code does not apply to the activation fee.”

Google lied to me twice over. They lied about the actual cost ($5 versus $10) and they lied about whether I could deduct the cost from the coupon. In the end I walked away without any free advertising and about 1/2 hour closer to death. Thanks for nothing, Google.

Now, like many people, I have adopted online methods. I personally use www.ufile.ca. This is a surprisingly well-designed, user-friendly system. One can punch in the numbers from their various tax slips in any sort of order, and it will instantly provide you with an up-to-date result at any time. But, there is a hidden dark side to the ufile tax preparation approach.

Unfortunately, ufile might just be TOO easy to use. Recently in preparing my taxes I ran through my slips in no time, clicked through to the results page, and was happy to see that I had a modest refund owed me. Then I saw something odd. First, I hadn’t used any of my available education amount for the year. Second, the result page didn’t show any capital gain, whereas I expected to have one. After poking around I found my error. I had keyed in some digits wrong for one of my capital gain entries, and instead of claiming a $1.06 gain for the trade, I had claimed a $960,000 loss. This is a substantial error that explained the observed oddities. What scares me is that it was so easy to make this error, and simultaneously difficult to spot it once it had been made. If I had been doing my taxes by hand I would have definitely caught this, but since ufile is so easy, these kinds of errors are simple to make.

I suspect that, compared to the old days of paper returns, there are a large number of people who are making the kinds of mistakes I describe. It is too easy for a mis-key to result in 1 or 2 extra digits somewhere. But I think the problem can be addressed. What the ufile system needs is some kind of intelligent “Clippy” equivalent that will do a sanity check on your inputs. On my return, for example, it might look at the numbers in aggregate and ask me “Hi Garth! Say, you don’t seem like the kind of guy who would lose $960,000 in a money market fund. Are you sure this is right?” Or, in the case of another mistake that I caught, it would say “Hi Garth. I find it kind of strange that these two different trades have exactly the same numbers entered for ‘cost’ and ‘proceeds’. Are you sure you didn’t enter the wrong numbers in one of them?”

So, in conclusion, ufile and web tax preparation services in general are great. Their main problem is that they are TOO great, making simple errors easier to make and overlook. There needs to be a mechanism to address these kinds of errors.

My latest run-in with Gladwell, and the inspiration for this post, was on TV the other night. He was being interviewed about his book, and specifically brought up his example of how The Beatles became famous. The Beatles, he explained, spent some time playing strip clubs in Hamburg, Germany. This was before they were famous, and they would regularly play 8 hour sets, 7 days a week. This is a very difficult schedule, and as Gladwell explains, this stint of very intensive performing (he equates performing with practicing, which is a mistake in itself), is the reason they became famous. Note, he does not say that this contributed to their success; he says it is the reason for their success. He was very explicit in saying that “talent is the willingness to practice.” This is horse hockey.

I don’t think anyone would dispute that effort is a critical element of success. But, anybody who has spent any time in a creative field would immediately recognize that with the same amount of effort given, there are wide variances in the level of individual accomplishment. In my life I have known dozens of individuals who have put in similar amounts of effort to The Beatles in Hamburg. After having invested the time the results were that these people range wildly in ability, from terrible to very good. None of them, I am sad to say, have reached Beatles levels of accomplishment.

To put it another way, The Beatles were certainly not the only band to play 8 hour sets 7 days a week in Hamburgian strip clubs. Where are the other bands who did so? They put in the same amount of effort as The Beatles. According to Malcolm Gladwell they should be equally accomplished.

Malcolm Gladwell is a very eloquent speaker. He presents things in such a way that one has a tendency to immediately agree with him. But, after a little bit of effort and probably a minute or so spent analyzing his statements one realizes that they just don’t hold up (I call this the Stephen Lewis effect). Furthermore, his writing seems designed specifically to make us feel better about ourselves. The particular claim that effort is the only differentiator is perfect for convincing myself that yes, I can be a rock star or an NFL quarterback, all I have to do is get off the couch (I’ll do this next week) and go put some effort in. I’m sorry, but the bottom 99% of us are simply incapable of being world class at pretty much everything. Implying otherwise is not going to help.

So, Mr. Gladwell, I really don’t think your writing is any good. I know you’ve put in the effort to write good books, but I don’t think you have the innate talent required to do so. And yes, the title is overly harsh, but I decided to honour Mr. Gladwell by extrapolating further than is justifiable from the data available.

Luckily I’ve now managed to work around some stupid file size upload limits, and can now provide, for your listening pleasure, a recording of Also Spracht Zarathustra, by Richard Strauss, as performed by me (and 90 or so other people) at Jack Singer Hall in Calgary.

listen to it

The first minute is immediately recognizable to anybody who watches movies, but very few have listened to the remaining half hour, which is just as good, and worth sitting through. The story it tells is of man’s ascension from beast to overman, but of course we’ve all read our Nietzsche so we know that.

My fondest memory playing this piece occurred at Toronto’s Roy Thompson Hall. It’s a very nice hall, and was fairly new when we played it in 1994. Of particular interest was the organ, which as organs go is considered to be “beefy.” Some of the string players ganged up on the organist after the dress rehearsal and convinced her to see what it could do in the performance. So, when the performance came along she cranked that sucker up to 11 and absolutely let loose during the first massive 2001-esque crescendo. That thing shook the entire hall, leaving a few thousand heads exploded, and I bet God himself was trembling at the sound. It was of course a totally unprofessional thing to do, and she was banned from playing the Strauss for the rest of the tour, but holy crap it was amazing.

So, please enjoy, but if you intend to listen I suggest you right click and download, as it’s >30 MB, and I don’t want to kill my server.