The other day, Sean, Pat and I discovered some bike locks on UofT campus which bore eerie resemblance to a world of warcraft graveyard. So Pat, photographer extraordinaire, took a photo of it, while Sean and I stood back and lent emotional support in the form of comments like "dude, why are you getting it on that angle?" and "that's gonna look totally stupid if you do it like that".

The result is an awesome photo that really does look like the setting for some sort of horror movie, possibly involving zombies.



For reference, world of warcraft graveyards look like:



I always knew that there was an association between undergrads and zombies. Now I finally know why.

I'm giving a talk tomorrow at Sheridan on "Surveillance and Information Control". So while I wait for a TA to respond to my questions about an assignment that I really need to be working on, I'm putting together some slides for my talk.

The most fun that I have about giving an invited lecture is the flexibility that's allowed when you're picking what you want to say. Whether it's showing up to an early childhood education class, lifting a piece of paper that has a stick person and asking the class to identify the difference between my drawing and child porn, or showing videogame trailers to the grad students in KMDI, there's always something fun to include.

So in my talk about "Surveillance and Information Control", I managed to include the following things, mostly for my own amusement:

• A photo of myself at Disney. (I'm gonna be mentioning the fingerprinting crap.)
• A video of Graeme being amusing at the Spy Store in Toronto. (Surveillance: it's not just for governments anymore.)
• The phrase "Surveillance + Censorship: why destroy one human right (privacy) when you can destroy two (privacy and freedom of speech) at the same cost!" (It's important to be cost-efficient when you're eliminating human rights.)
• The "did you spot the gorilla" game. (It's worth fitting that game into any talk you give; the audience reaction is priceless.)
• Several comics and movie clips. (People like pictures.)
• A rant about internet censorship. (If I'm not ranting about internet censorship, I'm probably sleeping.)
• An advertisement for FireFox. (I should get commission...)
• The phrase "You're not that important". (I think every single talk I give involves at some point me telling the audience that they're insignificant. It makes them chuckle nervously. And then look kinda sad.)

Oh yeah, and then there's a bunch of "filler" stuff, like actual content about what I'm supposed to be talking about.

It'll be great. And oh so much fun. It makes it hard to work on assignments when there's this fun stuff to work on instead. :)

Okay, pretend you're a prof. (Those of you who really are profs may have an easier time with this little pretend game.)

Your job is to give lectures, help students, write assignments and correct these assignments.

Now sometimes students probably come into your office and complain about an assignment. Usually it's because they got a bad grade, or they find it too hard, or they dislike their TA, or they disagree with your marking scheme.

So how do you sort out the "actually bad" assignments from the "hard assignments" that people like to complain about?

As a caring prof, you look at grade distribution and make sure that some people did really well, and others did poorly, and that the average is approximately where you want it to be. And then you go off on your merry way.

But here's a secret, brought to you by an undergrad...

...some assignments are crap!

I don't mean that some assignments are hard; because I actually enjoy hard assignments because they distribute the grade curve well and usually with me on the happy side of it. And I don't mean that some assignments are boring; because sometimes it's necessary to work through the boring stuff in order to learn something. Nor do I mean that some assignments are marked by TAs who couldn't tell the difference between quality and failure if you pre-divided the assignments into two little piles for them and pre-labeled them "quality" and "failure"; though I do believe this.

What I mean is that some assignments are just plain crap.

If you are teaching a class on how to bake muffins, and your Assignment 1 is to shovel a driveway as quickly as the students can, then the assignment is crap.

If you are teaching a class on how to bake muffins, and your Assignment 1 is to plot on a map where muffin retail stores are in Toronto, then you may think that you gave out a relevant assignment, but your assignment is crap.

If you are teaching a class on how to bake muffins, and your Assignment 1 is to guess what kind of muffin you personally like eating most, then I don't care that you have a marking scheme that you think makes sense, where "blueberry" gives them a B and "banana chocolate chip" gives them a B+, your assignment is still crap.

If you are teaching a class on how to bake muffins and your Assignment 1 isn't understandable by someone who bakes muffins as a career and has studied the field for several years, then your assignment is crap.

If you are teaching a class on how to bake muffins, then your Assignment 1 should involve muffins and the baking thereof.

I understand that coming up with an interesting, relevant assignment is by no means a simple task. I understand; really, I do.

But as a victory lap "been here, seen that" undergrad, I really don't have the time nor the desire to spend my energy on your driveway-shovelling assignment for your muffing-baking class. I'm not learning anything relevant, I'm not enjoying myself, and I don't think you're going to be able to determine anything about my ability to bake muffins. Which, by the way, is superb.

Don't get me wrong; most of my classes this term fall somewhere on the range between "kickass" and "awesometown", but it drives me nuts when I have to spend hours and hours on an assignment that desperately needs a rehaul.

</rant>

This was a news story that I just found too funny to ignore. The Canadian Red Cross has been sending letters to videogame developers asking them to not use a red cross to denote healing spells and health packs. They say that this use is illegal and damages the Canadian Red Cross.

Once this very evil trademark dilution has been resolved, I wonder if they'll move on to other institutions that dilute their trademark. (See some suggestions of mine in the title of today's entry.)

Boy, what a great use of charity dollars!

"Did you hear about the Gretzky scandal?", said one lady on the streetcar to another.
"Yeah, it's horrible. I saw the headlines about it."
"I know. It's like he betrayed hockey, he betrayed Canada..."
"He just got greedy."
"I haven't actually read the story in the paper yet, because it makes me feel sick to think about it."

Have you ever noticed how much we love to hate people?

(Don't worry, this isn't gonna get all touchy-feely.)

I don't know about the Gretzky scandal and I don't care about the Gretzky scandal, but the fact that these women hadn't even read the details and were already hating on someone, bothered me. It happens all the time.

The same thing happens with corporations too (though I feel less sorry for corporations). A company starts doing well, and people are just itching to find out that they're actually evil. We're just sitting and waiting for the reports to confirm our suspicions. We want to hear that the charity that saves the whales spends its spare time killing puppies, and that the big company that sells candy puts drugs in it to make them more addictive.

We love to hate.

We especially love it when it's someone in a position of power or fame. We love the idea of someone falling from grace. The closer you are to the top, the more we'd love to see you topple in some horrible scandal.

In fact, the closer you are to the top, the less you have to do for it to be considered a scandal.

Now maybe that's a good thing, because it means that we keep the "leaders" of our society (and I mean that more in terms of fame and influence than "official" power) in check. The more influence you have, the more careful you have to be about the image that you're advocating. I can totally see how that's a good thing.

But it also worries me on a personal level.

It's no secret that I have ambitions (read: every intention) of one day ruling the world. But before I control everyone's thoughts and emotions, there's gonna be those in between steps for many years where I plan on being very influential but not super-in-control yet.

And like every other human being, I screw up. I say stupid things, I make a dumb decision, I try to see if I can jump from one ledge to another when I can't. It happens.

And when that happens, there're gonna be headlines that talk about how I screwed up. Talk shows will make parodies of it. People on the streetcar will say my name and shake their head. Boingboing will post updates on the Catspaw scandal and old friends will come out of the woodwork to tell the press that they saw it coming for years now.

I know it's coming.

So I try to prepare for it in advance: grow a thicker spine, care less about what people say, get used to the media being fucktards. But it feels a little like keeping a sheet of paper to hide under in case of nuclear attack.

So instead I've started looking at how people have prevailed despite scandal. There are those rare times in history when someone gets the spotlight due to negative press and then says or does just the right thing, and turns it into positive press. "Wow, he handled that well", people say. "He did the right thing." And they think even better of that person than they did before.

....at least, I think there are those rare times in history. I haven't actually found any yet. Suggestions are welcome.

But I'm preparing in advance. I'm gonna totally get ready for this. So when it comes, and the morning paper one day is all about my massive screw up, I'm gonna already have a plan ready for turning it into my advantage.

Cuz people really, really love to hate. So there's no harm in being prepared.

I have an essay due in a week and a half that has to be on a sci-fi film. Rather than spending my own precious time and effort to do brainstorming, I thought that I might delegate these tasks to someone with less important things to do; and that someone is you.

The question is: Which sci-fi film should I choose?

The restrictions are:

1. It can't be one we're watching in class.
2. It has to be one that has been academically studied previously as a piece of film. This rules out very new movies like Serenity.
3. I don't want to choose one that half of the rest of the class is doing. This rules out the Matrix, Star Wars, Terminator, and those types.

I should probably start writing this within a few days, so brainstorm quickly. And then make me a pie.

A real conversation over brunch:
fLufFy: "I have cookie crumbs all in my coffee cup."
Me: "Huh. You know, C is for cookie."
CPwr: "That's good enough for me."

Why is it so funny to speak song lyrics? ... or is that one of those things that only I find funny, again?

Has anyone ever noticed that essays are backwards-experiments?

I chose to write this sci-fi film piece on A Clockwork Orange; a film which I hadn't seen before. After watching it several times and listening to the soundtrack on repeat for a day, brilliance emerged and I wrote an awesome little essay on how Kubrick's use of art, drama and music to control the emotional reins of the audience parallels Alex's use of the same to control his own emotions. Then I went on IM and gloated to a few people about how I deserve an award for being so brilliant. I have reverse self esteem issues.

Anyway, so I write up an outline of exactly what I want to say, and then I start looking for materials where I can find "professionals" and "experts" who say it for me. In the end, I collect 28 sources of books and journal articles where people have agreed with me and I can use their quotes to illustrate my point.

It's funny to me in the humanities that that's how this works. You've gotta find A Professional (tm) who thought your thought.

In essays, you're supposed to do research, then figure out a central core philosophy that's going to justify what you're talking about, and then allow a thesis to emerge from this knowledge base.

In experiments, you're supposed to sit around and magically conceive of a thesis, then search for a knowledge base to support it, and then design and execute research to justify your thesis.

Of course, this isn't really how experiments work (and everyone knows it) and this isn't really how essays work (and everyone knows it).

They actually end up working approximately the same:
You pick a topic-area that interests you, and then search for the shortest distance to something interesting to say about it. Then you fumble around for proof that you're not going to waste your time, to cut out any dead ends. While doing this fumbling, you build up a knowledge base, and then revise your thesis. And then, convinced that your thesis is correct and cool, do the research to justify it, though you're just doing it cuz you have to in order to make it formally presentable.

This makes me think that perhaps humanities geeks would be less scared of the sciences, and science nerds less scared would be less scared of the humanities, if they both realized that all that complicated formal methodology that the other side talks about is just the window dressing on a familiar interior.

There's your multidisciplinary thought of the day.