For the sake of the search engines, I’ve just started tagging entries.  I went back and retroactively added a tags and installed a plugin to help deal with them.  They’re a pain in the ass.

The idea is that when I write a post, I include a bunch of words or short phrases in the metadata that describe what I’m writing about.  The tags for this one are inevitably going to include “software quality” and “software,” and probably “geek,” maybe “blogging.”  I do this so search engines and blog tracking sites can do a better job of matching what I’m writing about with what people seem to want to read.  It also leads to things like tag clouds, which are great for roughly nothing¹.

The deep problem that we’re up against is that computers are really dumb.  If I talk about software and mention bugs, it will take a long time for a computer to figure out that I don’t mean bugs in general.  Despite the fact that I’m clearly saying the two are unrelated, the fact that I linked both of them in one article means they’ll get slightly closer in the search engines.  And when you add metaphors, satire, similes, etc, computers fall apart entirely.  A surprising number of humans can’t handle it either, but we’re talking about a level of fail never before seen.

This amounts to going over what I write, doing the first level conceptual digestion, and picking the largest lumps of crap that come out of it².  It feels like telling a joke and then explaining it in detail.  But if to get meaningful use out of things like Technorati, then, as they say in the parlance of the streets, those are the breaks.

1) If you’re an idiot and you’d like to know the buzzwords surrounding some new buzzword you’ve heard, they’re very effective.  I don’t endorse technology that helps buzzword-driven idiots fail to function more effectively.  They’re also useful for figuring out how other people are tagging similar articles.

2) And with that, software bugs get a bit closer to dung beetles and tapeworms.

As we all know, print media is dieing the hard death.  There’s this vicious cycle: dropping circulation means dropping revenues, dropping revenues means staff cuts, staff cuts mean less fresh material and more editorial slips, those mean less interest, which drops circulation, and so it continues.  This isn’t the only problem.  Competition from TV news has been eating away at circulation for decades, and now the internet is accelerating that, with its wonderfully wide distribution and rebranding of wire-service propaganda drivel and that pinko – libertarian statist capitalist commie godsend, the blogosphere.

But what came to mind earlier today—thanks to this lies.com link (courtesy of blunt object)—is that print media, even with most of it on the verge of collapse, is probably the last actual home of investigative journalism.

Think about it: in a newspaper, a story can be 300-500 words, easily.  If it’s a big deal, it could break 1000.  That’s room to present a few things in some reasonable detail.  Print magazines can go even further.  For example, Rolling Stone recently did a detailed article about AIG and the wall street collapse.  It’s a really good one, and it’s long.  Some research and digging went into this.  Matt Taibbi had more access to the relevant information than your standard blogosphere hack.  He was also paid to do his research, which is something else that most bloggers don’t have going for them.

On the other hand, TV news and the blogosphere both suffer from an alarming flood of populism, because they have tremendous flexibility in their structure and what they cover in response to what’s popular.  Newspapers would secretly love to be in the same boat, because it’s great for advertising revenue.  But it has a price.  Check out the face of the new media:

Top WordPress.com blogs today

1. CNN Political Ticker
2. FAIL Blog: Pictures and Videos of Owned, Pwnd and Fail Moments
3. Celebrity Baby Blog – People.com
4. PEOPLE TV Watch

So we have a condensed version of a TV news network that uses almost exclusively wire-service material and sucks even more when it doesn’t, and then we have embarrassing pictures, babies and celebrities.

And hey, this publication already exists.

Tom sit down.  Back on tree.  Tree on hill.  Look at sky.  Sky blue.  Small clouds in.  Look at river.  River blue.  No clouds in.

Tom think about book.  Smart man talk in.  Say words not mean stuff.  Tom no get.

Tom look down.  See flower.  Pretty flower.  Yellow.  Tom pick flower.  Stare at.  Spin in fingers.

Tom think hard.  Make face.  Think what man say.  Dog not mean dog.  Dog mean not cat.  Dog mean not chair.  What mean cat?  Not dog.  Chair not dog too.  That mean cat is chair?  Tom no get.

Tom look at flower.  Dead now.  No make seeds.  Tom feel sad.  Flower not chair too.  Flower is dog?  No.  Flower mean not dog.  Dog no make seeds.  But dog not dead flower.

Tom think about words.  What is words?  Words name stuff.  Oh.  Sun hot.  Tom brain hurt.

Think.  Have word for thing.  World mean thing and not-thing.  Oh.  No not-thing mean no thing.  No not-dog mean no dog.  If world only dog, no dog.  Just dog parts.  What dog parts?  This wrong.  Tom no get.

Tom lean back.  Hit tree with head.  Hit not-Tom with head?  Tree is not-Tom.  Tom look at flower.  Dead yellow not-Tom.

Tom look at feets.  Feets on legs.  Legs with hairs.  Small hairs.  Legs is Tom.  Oh.  Legs is not-Tom?  Tom is not-legs?  Tom is not-tree!  Oh.  Tom get.

Tom look at river.  River has water.  Tom think.  Words like water?  Words move together?  No.  World is water.  Words chop water.  No splash.  Words chop world.  All same.

Tom head hurt.  Want sleep.  Then book.  Tom like smart man.

After half of a decade, the first time I see him again is at a bus stop in a dream, sitting on the curb in the shade of an overhanging tree, absently pushing a skateboard back and forth with one foot.

Behind him is a bench, dominated by a pale man with a patchy goatee, black Cordobés hat with white edges, sunglasses and a t-shirt showing a blue wolf with sunglasses playing an upright bass.  The man is sitting in the centre of the bench with his arms spread across the top as though he planned to sneak a cuddle out of anyone who dared sit beside him.  I would have chosen the curb too.

My former friend has changed very little, still skinny and unshaven with a Beavis-style haircut, dressed as a strange mix of metalhead, skater and engineer.  I suppose it would be unreasonable to expect him to be different, considering the circumstances.  He recognizes me at the same time I recognize him.

“Hey, asshole,” he greets me, in the joking tone you use when you’re serious.

“Shithead,” I reply, as though he were a coworker I’d greeted the same way for years.

Apparently there’s still some ill will here.  A few awkward moments pass before anyone speaks.

“So, what happened?” I ask, “Best friends for three years and then suddenly you disappear.”

As soon as I say it, I remember how this largely wasn’t true.  We’d been friends based on a taste for math jokes, drinking, listening to obscure and unpalatable music, and being bitter about our failures with women, or to be more accurate, their failures with us, their failures to see us as the fun, smart, caring people we thought we were.  Great catches.

At one point near the end of our friendship I simultaneously had my heart broken and was introduced to the local party scene.  I discovered music that made me want to move, although I was scared to, because there were women watching, many of them shockingly attractive.  What was the raver equivalent of James Dean?  Whatever it was, it clearly didn’t involve an impressive knowledge of Mahavishnu Orchestra’s body of work.  I started to realize that I was complicit in my loneliness, and started taking action to fix it.

On his end, he continued cultivating his knowledge of ever more obscure progressive rock and jazz.  When I invited him out to parties he would decline in favour of spending time playing pool with a subtly condescending computing science guy who managed to have attractive girlfriends while still listening to Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci: proof positive that there’s life after prog.  The guy never sat well with me; his speech was full of subtle barbs to leave you feeling inadequate, and it reminded me of tips from sleazy pick-up manuals.  I never saw him with the same girlfriend more than three times.

Finally, as I started grad school and he finished his last term of undergrad, I received an email telling me that I was a shitty friend and that I was never there for him.  I replied asking when I should have known to be there, and he replied, “Fuck you.”  Then, mutual silence.  I wondered what he was up to a few times in the intervening years and sent quick emails, which were ignored.

“Well,” he says, “you turned into a dick.  With all your indie rock and that shitty electronica.  Absolutely no redeeming value, it’s all crap.”

“This coming from the guy with the complete works of Pain of Salvation.”

Jazz wolf’s ears perk up.  He gauges the tone of the conversation and decides against interjecting.

“Besides,” I say, “it’s pretty narrow to call someone’s expression worthless based on your perception of how difficult it is to play.”

“It’s not just that, jackass, it’s about soul.”

“Or maybe you just don’t appreciate the soul of musicians that aren’t relentlessly focused and self-indulgent.”

Jazz wolf wants to speak up so badly that he’s squirming.

“Or maybe I’m not willing to change myself to get laid.”

“Are you saying that you’re unwilling to leave your intellectualized music bunker or that you’re still a virgin?”

He laughs.  “Me, unwilling to leave my bunker, eh?  How much of your three month-long iTunes library have most people heard of?”

I have to admit that he has a point.  “How do you know how big my library is?”

“This is a dream, remember?  I’m just the most convenient face to put on the parts of yourself that you’re ashamed of, that you tried to bury and need to confront.  The part of you that pursues the esoteric fringes of things to avoid connecting with anyone as an equal and confronting your fear of rejection, the shame and anger you feel because of it, and the way you funnel that into harsh judgements of yourself and others.”

“But how can I confront that?”

“Well, in some ways you have.  You haven’t forgiven yourself though.  You still think you wasted all those years.”

I can’t think of anything to say.  Jazz wolf has stopped shifting too, and looks introspective.  “Who’s he?” I ask.

The image of my old friend stands up and puts a foot on his skateboard.  “Probably your habit of interrupting and correcting people.  I have a feeling you’ll deal with him eventually.”  He pushes twice and glides down the road without looking back.

When I look back at the bench, Jazz wolf has become a magpie, retaining only the hat.  He takes off, and I sit down to wait for the bus.

Alain de Botton’s books have amused me before.  I enjoyed Architecture of Happiness and Status Anxiety, and now, this article happens, and I suspect he’s reaching across the Atlantic to kick me in the nuts.

Jon Henley’s contribution is a pretty straightforward if timid-sounding look at our views and expectations of work and how they change in a recession.  I suppose the timidity is honest, and he seems to express how a lot of people feel.  It feels very superficial and fearmongering to me.

But then the voice changes dramatically, into de Botton’s unmistakable lulling pastel tone, and the article disconnects from reality, dropping into absurdly pastoral descriptions of office life that drip irony so thick and pure that Jonathan Swift would gasp.

Coming off of the tone of the first half, de Botton says the most ludicrous things without setting off many alarm bells. He talks of business cards as convenient definitions of identity, rather than having to discover one through contemplation.  He talks about the reversal of civility at work and at home: “How politely we tend to behave at work, next to the insults we throw at one another at home, where there is no HR department to coax us into being more civilised.”  He talks about employers’ concern for their employees’ well-being, and how they demand contentment from them, instead of simply beating them into line like they used to.  He talks about the bureaucratic passive-aggressive organization, the attempts to obscure the workplace hierarchy… it goes on.  At the climax, he even claims that offices are sexy.  Right. It’s probably the most brilliant piece of satire I’ve read in years.

Reading this makes me remember the feeling of unemployment.  Yes, there was worrying about money and making rent, but more significantly there was a feeling of freedom, that the day was mine to seize or waste as I saw fit.  And it reminds me how many of them I wasted.

Office jobs are a tradeoff: your life for steady money.  Yes, there’s talk of people pursuing their passions in evenings and on their weekends, but how many people actually do that?  You come home from an office, drained, and once you’ve dealt with dinner and cleaned up a bit, you have one or two exhausted hours to attack your passions.  Let’s admit that it’s pretty much impossible.  No non-trivial pursuit can thrive on such slender resources.

It becomes a matter of what you want out of your life, and what you want to do with it.  If you can measure it monitarily, as houses, cars, TVs, vacations, fancy clothes, then an office job might suit you perfectly.  The last few years have taught me that I can’t do this, and they did it in a way that leaves no room for argument.  I’ve worked for jack all, I’ve worked for mad cash.  I’ve had the big TV and leather couch, lived in the posh urban condos and a beautiful house in one of the nicest neighbourhoods in the world, and I’ve lived in a small basement bedroom.  My ceilings have been between 7 and 20 feet.  It turns out that it made very little difference. If I’m not engaged, I won’t be happy. Repetition doesn’t promote engagement.

I think my office days are numbered, and the number is rather small. I don’t know what will come next, but I’ll be stronger, because the memory of office work will motivate me.

Wow, this is pretty impressive.  Let’s read some stunning examples of misleading statistics.

To begin with, the pope is certainly right about at least one thing: Condoms have been disappointingly ineffective in the fight against AIDS in Africa. In Cameroon, for example, the country the pope was flying to when he made his notorious remark, condom sales more than doubled from 6 million in 1992 to 15 million in 2001. Meanwhile, HIV prevalence tripled from three per cent to nine per cent. Botswana, one of the best-governed countries in Africa, was quick to jump on the condom bandwagon in the early 1990s. Its reward: about a quarter of its adults are infected with HIV.

It’s hard to even know where to begin here.  Condom sales in Cameroon more than doubled to 15 million in 2001 and the infection rate is increasing: the country had 16 million people in 2003, meaning that people were using about 1.88 condoms per year (two people use one at once, technically).  Botswana, a country of just under two million in 2003, bought about three million condoms in 2001.  That’s about 3 condoms per year¹.  I don’t know, maybe they sell reusable ones.  Maybe I’m just a huge slut and my idea of how often people have sex is hyperinflated.  Maybe priests are more in touch.  But clearly, condoms are a failure, and we should stop promoting their use.

Well, I wound up showing these numbers are stupid and misleading even before getting to the fact that they’re bad statistics, but they are: does promoting condom use cause an increase in infection rates, or does an increase in infection rates cause promotion of condom use?  Gee, that’s a hard one.

But wait, there’s more!  And “better”!

A shift in sexual norms? Partner-reduction? Hmmm, isn’t that what Pope Benedict is promoting? With, by the way, much enthusiastic support from African women who find the notion of faithful husbands rather endearing. And with some success. Uganda, for example, which has long emphasized abstinence and fidelity over condoms, has seen its HIV prevalence rate drop from more than 15 per cent to less than six per cent in 10 years. And campaigns to discourage multiple partnerships have also had encouraging results in Kenya and Swaziland, with corresponding drops in HIV rates.

Wow!

First of all, a “prevalence” rate is the percentage of infected adults.  Having the prevalence rate drop from 15% to 6% over a decade doesn’t mean you’ve stopped the spread of AIDS, it means one of two things:

1. 9% of your population has keeled over dead.
2. Your uninfected population has more than doubled.

I don’t know about you, but I’m leaning towards number two.

Also, over the period in question, Uganda heavily promoted the use of condoms.  And to boot, since they jumped on the abstinence-based bandwagon, the infection rate has risen again.

So seriously, for Chist’s sake (literally), learn some statistics.  Or, you know, go on deliberately misleading the general public at the expense of millions of Africans.

1) For amusement’s sake, looking for the numbers in Botswana brought up this article, which calls 3 condoms per couple-year “condom-flooded.”

Tuesday morning is possibly the worst morning of a standard working week.  Monday mornings slide by relatively painlessly, because we’re too coated in the frost of the weekend to feel them.  It will be nearly noon before we realize what we’ve been suckered into.  Tuesday morning is the first one that requires conscious effort.  By Wednesday we’ll remember how to do it, and on Thursday we’ll be thinking about the weekend.

Of course, this is arbitrary.  I could probably come up with an explanation for every morning of the week that would sound convincing, except Saturday.  Saturday morning is always awesome, even if you have a hangover (you think, “man, I’m glad I can take it easy this morning”).

So why write about it?  I haven’t started any sort of habit that will give me a backlog of topics to attempt, and I want to get myself writing something every day.  I suspect the best way to get the word wheels spinning with torque is to just keep them going.  To this end I plan to start blogging almost every day, and keeping a notebook on hand to keep track of every idea even tangentially worth thinking about writing about.  And in the worst case, I have five mornings left to bitch about.

You’re sitting in the sun with your back against the concrete sign in front of your old high school, with your arms resting on your knees, head slightly forward so you don’t mess up your mohawk.  Your clothing is down to a ratty red and black flannel shirt (open), white gonch, wool socks and 20-hole docs.  A dozen feet away your girlfriend aims her camera, taking shot after shot from different angles.  Beyond that is an arc of maybe a dozen counterculturish teens, afraid to come closer but too piqued to leave, radiating that unique mixture of sexuality and uncertainty that only counterculturish teens can manage; some plans to lock up in stalls in the bathroom come through as clearly as a radio station.  They’ll probably blog about it too.

Your girlfriend has been dreaming about this camera for a year.  She quickly grew out of the tiny point-and-shoot her parents gave her for her birthday, and started saving for this new one.  She even quit smoking to save faster, only putting a bit into photography mags that she devoured like a starving man with a lamb shank, leaving a clean bone and even eating a bit of that.  She cut out ads for photography schools and visits the websites of local ones compulsively.  Finally she bought the camera, some shiny black thing with a couple of lenses and a flash that connected to the top with a cord.  It’s a Nikon, and she’s explained why this is awesome dozens of times but you don’t really give a shit about cameras except that they make her happy.  In her excitement she wanted to take every picture in the world at once and was bouncing around with an open mouth grin, completely unable to choose where to start, so you volunteered.

The location was the first decision, and the undressing part came naturally because it’s fucking hot out.  On the walk over from your apartment you hashed out some details.  She talked about how when you were younger and going there, you started dressing like punks so you could have an identity, and now all these years later it’s seeped into your bones so far that you don’t even need the fucking clothes, you just are punk.  It’s like returning to your birthplace without your cocoon or some shit, you replied.

There is a shuffle in the outer arc, and a fat guy comes strutting up, ham legs pumping spastically, flanked by two skinny teachers in ugly sweaters.  “What do you think you’re doing here?” he demands.

“I think I’m sitting in the sun, and maybe I’ll take my shirt off.  Maybe have a beer later.”

He keeps walking at you.  The teacher on his left breaks off to sass your girlfriend.  He comes to a stop in front of you and puts his hands on his hips, pulling back his cheap sport coat to reveal his shirt straining under the sphere of his belly and glowing in the light like a terrible fuschia star.  “Are you going to think about leaving?” he asks as though he’s ten seconds from ordering you to detention.

You stand up to escape the belly of authority and now your eyes are level with the hairless top of his head.  You look down into his eyes and realize that he is fighting a sudden urge to shit himself.  Your girlfriend swats the arm of the teacher reaching for her camera and gives him the finger.  He steps back like he’s dodging a rattlesnake.  Fuck, she is so hot.

“Why would I do that?  It’s a lovely day.  I was thinking of calling up some friends, having a picnic.  Maybe getting out the ghetto blaster.”

The thought of it clearly terrifies him.  You realize you’re the antithesis of his life of one hour periods, bells, and gratuitous displays of authority.  He’s powerless now and he can’t handle it.  You remember your high school days, with a different principal, getting busted for every little thing, sometimes for nothing but some teacher’s mood.  It seems incredibly distant, like a mostly forgotten dream.

“We might have to call the police, then,” he says.  Now all the kids watching have seen their principal crumble and resort to the “I have big friends” line against a man with no pants on.  They’ll never look at him the same again.  You win.

“That’d be a pretty fucking unsporting thing to do when you haven’t even told us to leave.”

“Well, now I’m telling you to leave.”  There’s a waver in his voice when he says “telling.”

“Go ahead, tell us.”

He stammers for a second.  “Please leave.”

“Sure, give us ten minutes to wrap up and put pants on.”

After a short pause he nods, turns around and starts pumping back to the school.  “Get to class,” he barks at the onlookers, who start shuffling towards the school as well, looking back with a mix of admiration and awe.

Your girlfriend pokes at her camera and turns it off.  “OK, that was stupid.”

You look towards the entrance, where the fat guy is turning sideways to fit through the school door and several teens are waiting behind him for the maneuver to complete.  You wonder what kind of life you would have to have had to turn into such a dick.  Maybe overly strict parents.  Being spanked too much.  You have no idea, and it feels like too much to think about.

“I’m hungry,” you say.

“Ditto.” Your girlfriend walks over and kisses you on the cheek. “Let’s go see how these turned out.”

You put your pants on, she packs up her lenses, and you leave.

All around the melting ice forms little oceans with foothills of packed snow blocking their underground escape routes.  Diminutive bergs from broken ice sheets slosh around in the waves of passing cars; footage for a global warming documentary for ants (a big-headed red one in a puffy parka speaks into a pherophone as the ice collides dramatically behind it.  It wins several awards at film festivals).  Everywhere the ground is muddy with the sand and salt built up over the winter, and eventually it will form a coat of dust that will give being outdoors a feeling of finding favourite toys lost in an attic.

Soon spring will come, with dripping wet days of snow banks slinking away from the sun’s renewed assertiveness and finally taking refuge under barriers of gravel, in shadowy corners, and on the steepest slopes of north-facing hills.  For another year their dastardly plot to bury civilization under glaciers will be defeated.  Once again, we will step outside standing straight with giddy smiles, after months of walking hunched like fugitives trying to go unnoticed by the wind.  A few weeks later, seeds and buds will dare the same optimism.

But for now, the forecast keeps talking about cold, and I’m getting impatient.  Hurry up already, you damn season.

Why does anyone live anyplace as crappy as Edmonton, Alberta?

I don’t know too much of the native history for the area, but from what I recall they were at least semi-nomadic large game hunters, so they were here because the things they killed were here.  That’s fine.  That’s sane, there’s a logic to it.  But what about the settlers?  What was up with them?

Just imagine this: you live in Europe, in a “developed country” with “civilization,” and it sucks so hard that getting on a long, uncomfortable boat ride to a different continent so you can trek across thousands of kilometres of wilderness to do some subsistence farming on a few hundred acres of frozen birch forest in the middle of nowhere was a step up.

So the fact that this area is even inhabited is sort of a telling proof of the scale of the inequality European society at the time.  While we had people living in lovely countryside estates exchanging repartée and poncy English poets dying of syphilis and the leisure class enjoying their tea, we had a lot more people thinking, “man, digging into the frozen earth in the middle of nowhere would be such a great opportunity.”

And the big deal was land ownership.  Yup, it might be a chunk of forest.  It might be a hundred miles from the nearest store, where an unbathed man with a raccoon on his head would sell you salt and medium-sized sharp rocks.  But it was your chunk of forest, and if anyone—even raccoon man—tried to take it you’d fuck them up.  And probably eat them, because it’d be a pleasant change from birch bark and turnips.

Strangely, everything around here related to settlers glosses over winter.  The Ukranian village has some stuff like a burdei, and in the summer there are costumed actors living in these places, but that’s only during the summer.  Once fall hits, they’re done, and seriously: look at that photo.  Imagine spending a winter snowed into that.  Yes, this was a step up.  Crazy.