Sorry, Adobe

I love Adobe's products, and wish I could afford more of them. And kudos to them for surviving so long in the quick-turnover world of technology.

However, the text below was in a promotional email I just received.

"From Blah to Aha! Ten Best Practices for the Virtual Classroom
Discover how to repurpose face-to-face classroom delivery with engaging,
facilitated online learning."

No one who is capable of perpetrating that prose should ever -ever! - be allowed near a classroom of any kind. No matter what they're "repurposing", "delivering" or "facilitating".

Floral Interlude

Now that I'm finished trashing cellphone companies, I have to admit that the new phone is pretty cool.

While visiting the town of the Hammers last weekend, we ended up at the Mum Show (which is what you might expect), and here I was with no camera.

But wait! My phone takes pictures!

Ok, there was some consternation with respect to getting the pictures off the phone and onto the computer, but with the magic of Bluetooth, I would now like to bring you some lovely floral offerings. Above we have a cow made entirely of Mums. Pretty cute. Also some greenhouse pictures and a large display of Mums. I never knew there was such a variety. Pretty good pictures for a cellphone, eh?

The Cellphone Saga - Chaper 1

...In which Little Red Riding Hood takes her kids cellphone shopping and turns into the Big Bad Wolf.

In response to the fact that the current contract had expired and that the kids were "totally embarrassed" by having "old clunky" cellphones, L'Hood decided to upgrade. The problem being that L'Hood and retail don't mix at the best of times. And the retail cellphone experience is definitely the worst of times.

As the kids, then, slowly back away, anxiously awaiting the Woodsman's appearance to "take care of" what used to be Little Red Riding Hood, but now resembles a crimson-fanged Wolf howling imprecations at Best Buy and Telus, let us take a moment to reflect on how this happened.

Telus apparently does not use the English language in the same way as most of us, and has a unique interpretation of the word "shared". Their "Share Plans" may look like a good deal, but in fact are not "shared" at all, since each phone owner/used must have his/her own plan. This confused and enraged Little Red Riding Hood, who uses the word "share" in what, I believe, is the more common English meaning.

Secondly, not being made of money, L'Hood wanted free phones for all. Many minutes were spent at the Telus display at Best Buy negotiating with children who had varying needs in terms of cellphone ownership. Once the decision was made, L'Hood bravely asked for three of the same, $0.00 phones. Naturally, they had only two. So, a second choice was offered. They had only none. L'Hood gave up and spent $50.00 on the third cellphone.

While in prison, L'Hood had time to reflect that what went wrong in this experience, and decided that it was a fundamental disconnect in value systems. L'Hood expected Best Buy and Telus to care what she, the customer, wanted, and to provide it. Best Buy and Telus expected L'Hood to lust after cool gadgetry without regard for price.

Perhaps surprisingly, or not, I think Dilbert illustrates it well in this cartoon. We as humans are almost completely self-involved and love what we have created more than we love what God has created. God, in whatever form you choose to conceive of Him, including potentially a particle, has created people. People have created much stuff for themselves, because they are clever, and curious, and creative, and in many cases think they can make a fast buck, which is another human creation. However, because we love our own creations more, we are often happy to remove the messy messy people from our nice clean process.

Despite marketing campaigns claiming to value human dignity, the process, or the product, rather than the human, becomes the point. Yet almost all processes and products, created by humans for humans, are necessarily arbitrary and artificial. We actually really need very few things. Therefore, by creating within ourselves an arbitrary and artificial need for a cool gadgetry, we allow ourselves to become captive to the machinations of, in this case, cellphone hell. So, in other words, it's our own fault.

Now, I know that many people in North America don't have a problem with this. We are, by and large, a consumer culture. And I myself am certainly not immune to the siren call of stuff. I just think that there could be less product, less process, and more time for human dignity.

Stay tuned as Little Red Riding Hood goes looking for affirmation in the religious, rather than secular church. Should be good.

Announcing....

Thank you for your votes and comments.

I can now proudly announce that the little dude's name is officially....

Tucker!

However, he's still occasionally known as Turkey Bite and Little Dude, although these seem to be giving way to Fubrox. Not sure why - he just looks like a Fubrox. Also, he acts like a Fubrox.

Tucker is easier to explain to the vet, though.

Cheers!

Salute to Brazil

We interrupt the feline-fest briefly for a nod to our Brazilian friends. For some reason, this little blog has picked up significant traffic from Brazil lately - some sort of embedded Brazilian Portuguese cuss word? Anyway, on this blog:
- we love Romario and hope his next political ambition is mayor of Toronto;
- we're happy to be able to generate our own Brazilian national team football shirt;
- and speaking of that team, who can't love them?

Name teh kitteh!

By popular demand, may we be allowed to present.....

The newest member of our household!

He's small, he's cute, he's destructive, he types rude words on the computer, and he may be breaking the law, it's ????

For reasons too complex to enunciate, Emma prefers the name "Turkey Bite". Myself, I prefer "Alfie". Other suggestions include "Mr. Darcy", "Tangelo", "Augie", "Li'l Abner", "Meow", "the Fubrox" and "Huffy J. Beak". Obviously, some people don't have to tell the vet what their cat's name is and can therefore afford to be funny. At the moment, we're just calling him "Little Dude".

In order to resolve our sad sad situation, we have spared all expense to bring you the "Name Teh Kitteh" survey. Please vote for your favourite name and/or suggest your own. All suggestions will be considered, but we reserve the right to be bound by none of them. There might be a small prize for the winner, if there is one, and if I get around to it.

Of Ikea, Greed, Privilege and Inflation

The former CEO of Merrill Lynch now says he wishes that he's bought furniture at Ikea for his office redecoration rather than the $35,000 toilet and $25,000 table he actually bought as part of the $1,200,000 project.

"Does anyone need a $60,000 car? ... Does anyone really need to be told, over and over, spitting in the wind comes back at you twice as hard?"
- Lou Reed, "Strawman"

Justice, morality and stuff

I don't know if Judge Rakoff is right, but refusing to allow a settlement for $33 million of a claim that payment of $3.6 billion in bonuses was improperly disclosed just feels good, doesn't it?

But maybe this is exactly what Edward Greenspan is complaining about. I'm not sure that the claim that we treat allegedly criminal business people no better than "heroin dealers, mafiosi or child abusers" isn't a bit hyperbolic, though.

What do "the most elementary notions of justice and morality" dictate here? Should the penalty for theft vary with the amount of the theft? The sophistication of the act or the number of advising counsel? The unwillingness of the victimized to protect themselves, e.g. by not buying stock in a bank whose operations they can't collectively control (or maybe comprehend)?

Glunicorn

Never before seen, now captured. Above, the shocking mug shots for this creature, once believed to be mythical.

Great moments in financial disclosure

Meanwhile, in the post-meltdown, post-Enron, post-Madoff world of financial regulation, it's apparently sufficient to disclose a transaction without disclosing what you sold, to whom, at what price, or whether you made a profit or loss on the sale.

See the details and great commentary here.

The outrage outrage

We all love a good scandal, especially a spending scandal that reconfirms our inherent belief that we're getting horrifically ripped off by someone else's free ride. However, I wonder if this whole process hasn't gotten out of hand, and I know that it's warped our sense of priority.
The current Ontario Lottery & Gaming Corporation scandal is a great example. The spending orgy! Five "hefty black binders" to outline all their incredible profligacy! Why, it's pigs at the trough, again!
I don't know about you, but I was really hoping for some Caligula-like excess that would be fun to read about. If what the Globe & Mail published today were the most outrageous examples of what they could glean from those binders, it runs the gamut from ordinary to inoffensive to ill-advised. I'm an Ontario taxpayer and all set to be cheesed off, but I have to say I question the editorial judgment that runs a large-type list of alleged excesses, attached to the employees' names, that includes an Obus Forme back rest and back support (total value about $200) for a guy making about $103,000 a year. Seems reasonable to me. And yes, expensing your $1.12 cloth bag from Sobey's doesn't seem smart, but why do I (or Canada's National Newspaper) care? And yes, "suit for meeting" or "ink cartridge for home printer" seem problematic on the face of it, but there might be some context in which they make sense - the attitude seems to be that just printing the list will elicit that Pavlovian reaction of fury that the editor is gunning for. From the government's point of view, at least, it seemed to work.
Surely we've got bigger things to worry about. The forecast provincial deficit for 2009-2010 is $14.1 billion. That's about 70.5 million back support sets at $200 per. Let alone the question of why we have a government agency to exploit gambling in the first place. I'm enough of a libertarian to think people should generally be able to do what they want with their money - but I have no idea why we need a government organization to run the activity. Yes, it raises revenue, but from whom and with what kind of implication? It makes the government complicit in some pretty ugly personal situations. And the efforts to "address" the social ills they're helping to create are laughable: according to their own statistics, "partnering in the education, research, prevention and treatment of problem gambling" cost $44 million, or less than $1.00 for every $36 awarded in prizes during the year (a total of $1.6 billion, in a province with about 12 million people in it). [Besides, is "partnering" the same as actually doing anything, or more like writing a guilty cheque? How much of that $44 million in fact paid for expenses of the employees of OLG's "partners"? Maybe the Globe needs to get on that.]
Finally, I think all the focus on nickels and dimes misses the best part of this story. Among the board members who have resigned (been forced to resign?) as a consequence of this is the "President and CEO of the Institute of Corporate Directors". The mission of this organization is "to represent the interests of directors — to foster excellence in directors to strengthen the governance and performance of Canadian corporations. We will achieve this mission through education, certification and advocacy of best practices in governance." Presumably the OLG is now a case study? It's also a shame not to note that of the six new directors, three are deputy ministers and two are assistant deputy ministers. So from this we can conclude, I guess, that government-owned corporations are better run by career civil servants than anybody else? Or maybe it's that the whole mess is irredeemably compromised by its confused purpose in the first place.

The best pie chart of all time

Courtesy: Tufte, the most erudite discussion of pie charts anywhere.

Presidential beer choices

Without getting into the politics of it, following are apparently the beer choices for today's White House meeting:

"The president will drink Bud Light, Gates will have Red Stripe, and Crowley will drink Blue Moon, [White House spokesman] Gibbs said."

Blue Moon, for Canadians, is just "Rickard's White". There are many better witbiers around that aren't made by Coors, but it's still the best choice of the three on a Washington summer day.

Good heavens, man, Bud Light? I agree with this guy. Given the historic outcry over dijon on the burger, I know that he's got to choose carefully, but Sam Adams would have been a better way to go however you look at it. Especially for a contretemps originating in Cambridge, Mass.!

* * *

Update: this would have been a far more entertaining result.

* * *

Further update: now CNN is saying that the beer choices were as follows:

"The president was drinking Bud Light, Biden was drinking Buckler (a nonalcoholic beer), Gates was drinking Samuel Adams Light and Crowley was drinking Blue Moon."

Leaving poor Joe out of it for the moment (nonalcoholic beer being like decaffeinated Diet Coke - why, o why?), where's the scandal over the Gates switcheroo? There needs to be a crack team of investigators on this. Was Red Stripe too culturally significant? However, Gates now gets the "best beer choice" award. Let's give the President the benefit of the doubt and assume he would have had the same but for the implications of siding with one of the combatants. Gosh, statecraft is hard.

Why I hate the DH

This finally occurred to me on the road today, and I don't know why it didn't make sense earlier. Normally, in baseball, all nine players in the field have to take a turn hitting as well. The designated hitter (or "DH") rule allows a team to have an extra player hit for the pitcher - usually, pitchers are the weakest hitters on the team. The pitcher gets to pitch, but doesn't have to bat; the DH gets to hit, but doesn't have to play the field when the other team is batting.

When there is no DH rule, managers of baseball teams commonly encounter this dilemma: the game is close, the pitcher has pitched well but it's not clear how much longer he can pitch, and the pitcher's spot in the batting order comes up in a crucial situation. Do you let the offensive opportunity pass by to keep the good pitcher in the game? Or do you take the pitcher out for a pinch-hitter to improve the chances of scoring and then take your chances with a relief pitcher?

And here's the problem in a nutshell - the DH rules says "you don't have to choose". You can choose what to do with your pitcher without any consequence for your offence; you never need to worry about the pitcher's spot in the batting order coming up at a critical time.

What I hate about this is that it's a symptom of a serious problem, which is the belief that we never have to make choices between two good alternatives, or two bad alternatives, or that we can always avoid consequences from the decisions that we make.

Cases in point:

- we think it's important that city workers have the right to strike to support their negotiating position, but when they don't pick up the garbage we don't want it dumped in areas the public accesses;
- once there are dumps in public areas, we don't want rats and vermin, but we don't want chemicals sprayed that will keep them away either;
- we don't show any signs of using less electric power, but we sure don't want nuclear, either because (geez!) it's nuclear or because we can't afford it (even after three years of study and a lot of public subsidy to the only qualified bidder); and we don't want power stations based on any other kind of fuel either, because they'll add incrementally to air pollution even though they're radically more efficient than what they replace. Nonetheless, we'll all be surprised when, mysteriously, there isn't enough power.

Sometimes, you have to accept that letting that pitcher go to the seventh inning will mean you forego an offensive opportunity in the sixth. You can't always just change the rules of the game to avoid the choice, or its consequences.

Blogging light

Chaos reigns. But Joey Votto's back with the Reds, and Doc Halladay is about to come off the DL, so there's always hope.

Quote of the day

The Toronto Star has a story today about the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation's head, Kelly McDougald. One of the vignettes is about a gentleman who won the jackpot on a slot machine that was clearly advertised as having a maximum payout of $9,025, but the machine told him he had won $42.9 million. Of course, he's suing. But leaving the dubious merits of the lawsuit aside, I love the following statement by Ms. McDougald as reported by the Star:

"We did offer him prior to going to the media a settlement of around $10,000 in
recognition of the inconvenience and frustration that he felt as well as,
obviously, the dinner (for four) that was publicized," said McDougald. "It's
very clear in the rules and in the signage that we do not pay on malfunctions.
It could have easily said – because nobody controls technology – `you've won $42
billion.'"

Wait a minute - nobody controls technology? Good heavens! I thought the coffee maker was looking at me funny lately, and that explains a lot about Vista.

Michael Jackson thought

I rarely have those, I must admit. However, if you're going to call your tour a "final curtain call" isn't it tradition that someone should actually be calling you to the curtain? Maybe I missed that. Or maybe he should just beat it?

Poor Obama

OK, so all of the nominees for Commerce, Health and "Chief Performance Officer" for the US government have tax problems, severe enough to cause two of the three to withdraw (so far). As Oscar Wilde's line about lost parents goes, one is unfortunate but two shows carelessness. It would seem to be impossible (i) to get to Washington DC without being pretty darn well-off and (ii) to actually pay all your taxes once you're pretty darn well-off. Is this a problem with a highly-complex tax system or a more basic issue of greed?

I Have Nothing Else to Think of on the Bus

Question:

Why does the word rueful have the same root as the french word for street? The origin is apparently middle-english for the former, or so-I-have-read. 

I am not sure about the rest of you HU-mans but streets and experiencing a variant on the emotion sadness do not necessarily go together for me. 

Anywho, I'd just like the public to know that I have been rickrolled not once, but twice today. That's right, twice in one day. AND the blog in question specifically promised that 99% of its links were not rickrolls. I like the idea of having rickroll disclaimers, even if they do turn out to be false. 

As well, I just want to let anyone who may happen across this post know about Kate Beaton. She does probably some of the funniest comics on the inter-wubbz. She should also be given credit because half the time I go and look up the figures she satirizes. As a result I know a lot about random historical figures. Case and point, Charles Babbage. I think the more I know about the figure, the funnier the comic was. Or perhaps it's an inverse relationship? 

Also, she is Canadian! Score one for us!

Hazel thanks you for your confidence

- which, by the way, is well placed.

And, I am sure, if asked, would respond: "Prorogue THIS!"