Category Archives: Uncategorized

Your Comment Is Awaiting Moderation

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Pre-moderating: sensible thing to do or petty censorship?

When it comes to pre-moderating comments on blogs I have to say that I’m a little bit baffled. If you’re a site for children I totally get it; and the same for a news or media outlet, but if you’re just one of a boat load of blogs out there, from the big name to the small time, what’s the rationale for pre-moderating comments?

News sites tend to moderate the hell out of their comments. Given that they are in the business of spreading news to hundreds of millions of people it behooves them to keep a tight reign on the content below their headers. The last thing they need is for some wingnut to fly off the handle in front of an audience the size of most nations.

For most things corporate I understand as well, though I do find it refreshing when the big players don’t turn every web page like a giant legal cover-your-ass exercise. The Google Blog doesn’t moderate their comments – at least it doesn’t pre-moderate them (it’s possible they just delete anything that doesn’t meet their standards for submission after it’s posted). While Google isn’t exactly a small time company they’re also well known for being a little more relaxed about things so I’m taking the absence of pre-moderation of comments for what it’s worth.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8gCV0KYdJc?rel=0]

As for my little corner of the blogosphere I just can’t wrap my head around the idea that a comment would need my approval before I allowed it on my site. It smells a little bit like censorship, don’t you think? Besides, who the hell am I to say what people can and cannot say about something I fully intended the entire Internet to read (or at least a few hundred people)?

Back in 2005 I had a different blog and one particular asshole starting commenting and causing a ruckus. For a time I just didn’t allow comments in hopes he would find someone else to hassle but realizing that it wasn’t fair to other readers who did want to comment I turned them back on. It was at this point that I tinkered with the idea of moderating the comments. In the end I chose not to, but had my finger on the “report” button just in case he got out of hand. He never did. Contrary to some beliefs, there are a lot of problems that will just go away if you ignore them.

A brief poll to a few friends who blog and a little bit of research on the web dug up the following nuggets of extrememly precise data:

  • A large number do not moderate their comments
  • Many only moderate for spam
  • Some use a form of word verification
It would seem that for those who moderate spam is the biggest concern. No one wants a slew of ads and unrelated links clogging up their comments section and this is where I think the word verification comes in. That was one thing I ended up implementing myself, and as far as a security feature goes; forcing a person to enter in a couple words just so you know they’re not a robot isn’t much, but it does keeps the spam down and in my case also allows anonymous comments (while I prefer people stand in front of their comments by putting their name on them, I can understand that some people may have concerns over privacy and things like that).

There’s lots of comment plug-ins for the popular platforms like Blogger and WordPress and both have at least a couple variations on moderation. Another one is Disqus, which I used for a while but abandoned for reasons I don’t remember.

But to the question at hand, is it just best practice or are we making it out to be worse than it is? As far as my blog goes, I’ve decided that until I actually have a problem I’m going to keep doing what I’m doing. I like to think of it as giving the public an opportunity to disappoint.

So far, they have not (except this person).

~ Andrew

For those interested, here’s a sampling of a few news sites and their moderation policies:

NY Times
Click this sentence for just the policy text

CBC
Click this sentence for just the policy text

Huffington Post

Size Matters

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When I started writing my novel I had a grand idea that it would be at least 100,000 words. Before I had even determined the full arc I knew I wanted to write 100,000 words. It was a nice round number and as far as I could tell it would make a pretty decent length book. The problem was that as much as I wanted the 100k the more I wrote the more I discovered that it was either going to be a stretch to get it there or it would wind up being a 150,000 word marathon.

So what’s the right number? If quantifiable numbers are your thing you can look to the Smashwords article from May 2013 for a very telling answer. A book’s success can be directly tied to its sales and the average length of the top 100 books on Smashwords is a hair over 115,000 words. Of course even Smashwords says flat out that most authors would be thrilled to be in the top 500. So, if you look at their top 500 the average length is just a bit over 77,000. Double the ranking and it only drops a couple thousand words. So, if the top 100 is any measure (which it should be) you’re writing a good length novel. If you’re happy sitting in the top 1000 (which you should be) then you can probably do with 40,000 words less – almost an entire novel – and still be doing just fine. Of course, when you look at the same Smashwords data you’ll see that the top book (#1) outsells #50 by a margin of 7 to 1 and #50 outsells #500 by another 5 to 1. I’m sensing a trend here…

That same Smashwords article also had a price point comparison and it looks like FREE and 99¢ are the big winners, but $3.99 seems to be the magic number, which if you’re an indie author could mean a serious advantage over someone who’s traditionally published and has all that additional overhead – and cost – associated with their book (that, or the author is taking a serious cut when it comes to royalties).

So what about the short story? Is it doomed? The numbers seem to suggest that short stories don’t sell very well at all. To me, this seems counter-intuitive, especially in the digital age. They make perfect sense, and all for one very simple reason: time! With every device under the sun capable of displaying a book, and in today’s go-go-go world I would think that it would simply be easier to pick up an anthology or collection and read a couple short stories and then move on as opposed to having to invest hours and hours of reading chapter after chapter (and if you’re reading Dan Brown, chapter after chapter after chapter after chapter after chapter…)

My theory seems to hold especially true for short story erotica. You may be asking, how is it that people can sell erotica for $2.99 or even $3.99 for a 10,000 word short story and get away with it? That’s the same price as an average length (and commonly priced) full length 115,000 word novel! Well, in addition to the time factor the the answer also lies in re-usability. You’re not likely to re-read that 400 page novel over and over, but any time you’re in the mood for a quick… um… “break”, you’ll bust out that erotic short story quicker than a prisoner on conjugal visitation day.

Now, as the writer of a blog (a new post every Sunday here at Potato Chip Math) I’ve been long curious about the optimal length for a blog entry. Now, it seems that if you go looking for this information you’ll find almost as many answers as you find experts. One recent article I found was particularly interesting. It basically says that people value longer copy over their shorter counterparts. While I think there is definitely some truth to that statement I think that the author goes out of his way to over-simplify. At one point he simply compares length of post (greater than or less than 1500 words) to number of tweets and Facebook “likes”. The posts greater than 1500 words got more of both. The scientist in me is going absolutely crazy over this. How many other variables are in play? Too many to be able to say with any degree of certainty that this is a result you can hang your hat on.

That being said, there was one interesting statistic that it mentioned which did make me go “hmm”: Google search results. Here’s a quote directly from the article and the graph they had to support it:

“The average content length for a web page that ranks in the top 10 results for any keyword on Google has at least 2000 words.“

So maybe there’s something to a post or article with a bit more meat to it. As for all my posts, as I eluded to above, views to word count isn’t a direct comparison because so many other factors go into each one. Did I tweet about it more often? Did I post in a comment thread on another blog or article? Did I try to engage my audience or just pump out noise? Ding! Ding! Ding! Here’s a pro tip for you: engagement works but it takes work! Frankly, I’m okay with the traffic I am getting for the amount of work I’m putting in. I know when I try to do more with it I get more impressive results, and sometimes that’s just what I do, but I have to be realistic with my time. Blogging isn’t my full time job. Heck, it’s not even a job at all. It’s a tool and like most tools, it’s all in how you use them.

So, size does matter but the experts agree, content is king. I don’t think this should come as a surprise to content providers and creators of the world. I know I like to ask, “Aren’t people impatient; with the attention spans of small children?” The answer is generally yes, but I have found that this doesn’t hold true for people who actually like to read. Sure, we all like snazzy infographics and quick information, but people who are looking for reputable information and who want to learn and explore new things and are generally curious will usually go beyond the fold to get what the’re looking for.

At the end of it all, and as far as my novel is concerned, agents and editors will have a better sense of what changes are needed to achieve results. That’s why they do what they do and why I’ll gladly pay them to do it. What this means means for me is that I should take as many words as I need to tell the story. No more, no less.

As for this post, well, by the time it’s done there will be 1,171 words on the virtual page. I’m already curious to see how many views it gets.

~ Andrew

From Russia With Gay Love

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A while back there was some news coming out of the Supreme Court of the United States regarding a ruling on marriage equality. I shared my thoughts on the topic in a very well received blog post. Well it seems that our cold war adversaries on the other side of the Bering Strait have a few thoughts on this as well.

Unless you’ve been severely news deprived over the last month you will know that Russia has passed anti-gay laws that could land a person in jail if they are caught promoting a “non-traditional” lifestyle. There have been protests, there have been riots, and more than a couple countries (Canada and the U.S. included) have waggled a mean finger in their general direction. Now, there’s a movement (albeit a small, and from what I can tell, largely ineffective one) to have nations boycott the Olympics taking place in Sochi Russia in February 2014.

While I think that it’s a nice notion, I don’t happen to think it would have any real impact on the situation. If every nation failed to show up then we’d have a story, but we all know that that’s more fantasy than the idea of a Beatles reunion. At least one reporter has an opinion on this and goes into great detail about past boycotts and their utter ineffectiveness. So, given that a boycott won’t happen, and  even if it did it wouldn’t make a lick of difference, what can we do?

Well, I suggested in the comments on that article that the Canadian (and American) governments make a slight change to our respective flags – temporarily, of course – such that whenever a medal was won the Russians would have to hoist something like this to the rafters:

Oh, Canada!

As unlikely a scenario as this is, I thought that this would produce the absolute best results. It would mean that the Russian Olympic Committee would have to willingly display gay propaganda – to the entire world no less – and it would not put any one athlete at risk.

For a brief moment I thought that I was a genius. Until it occurred to me that there was about as much chance of that happening as that aforementioned Beatles reunion. In mentioning it to a co-worker he had an even better idea: change the equipment! Can you imagine the entire men’s and women’s hockey teams staking around with laces on their skates and tape on their sticks that look like this?

 
  

Regardless of what form of protest would be considered the best, one thing I know is that if everyone stays silent on the issue then we fail. Individual athletes will step up, I’m sure of it, but they will be a very small voice in a raging sea of white noise and Russian propaganda – and they will be putting themselves at great personal risk. As much as those small voices matter, this needs to be tackled on a much larger scale.

In his inauguration address in 1961 John F. Kennedy said, “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.” My fellow humanitarians, I’m turning that quote around and asking my country to show a little courage and do something for us. If they won’t, then I’ll turn and ask the Olympic Committee to step up. If they won’t then we’ll just have to see how many of those small voices we can get together so they can show the leaders of the world how to actually make a difference.

~ Andrew

Brokeback Blogging

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Are you obsessed with “analytics”? I am. I was under the impression a lot of people were but I’m not so sure why I would think that. Certainly if you’re selling something I would hope you’re trying to figure out who’s buying, who’s looking, and all the trends that come along with the buyers and the lookers. Sales: now that’s something people love to track.

Me, I’m not selling anything – yet – but I’m positively hooked on knowing more about the people reading my blog. Are you a first time visitor or returning? Do I have a clue what it means when the ratio is skewed one way versus the other?

I’m also really interested in where people are reading my blog. I have had one person from Estonia spend a few minutes perusing, so that was exciting. I’ve had every province in Canada visit, but none of the arctic territories. What about the U.S., you ask? Well I’ve had people from 49 out of the 50 states stop by, which I think is pretty cool. The only one missing? Wyoming. 

What the heck is up with Wyoming? 
It’s been driving me crazy for a while now and I’m beginning to think I’m going about it all wrong. I need to blog about something that Wyomingites want to read, not stuff about the state itself, or just mentioning Wyoming. Right? Wyoming Wyoming Wyoming. What the heck do people in Wyoming want to read anyway? It’s clear I don’t have the foggiest idea.

In looking at that picture above it’s obvious that I have fans in New York, Texas, and California. With some other interested folks in Indiana and Georgia. That’s a good sign and there’s a bit more coverage up into Kansas and Kentucky than I’d expect but hey, I’m not complaining.

For some reason I even care about what browser people are using. I’m not sure if this is because Google has it as a criteria or if I’m trying to somehow justify my own personal choice of browser (it’s probably a little bit of both). Incidentally, #1 on the list has more visits than the next three combined.

Does it matter? Am I too obsessed? Am I not obsessed enough? Should I obsess about different things? What does it all mean?!?

Maybe I should just write and not worry about it – until I have a book to sell 😉

~ Andrew

P.S. Wyoming 

Tommy Can You Hear Me?

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A while back I wrote a post on how the general consensus is that for books that are made into movies, the book will almost always be better. After seeing not one, but two stage versions of The Who’s rock opera “Tommy” I have come to the conclusion that musical theatre is to music as movie adaptations are to books.

Rock & Roll music made into a movie with some of the
biggest names of that time in showbiz

There’s a reason there’s the musical expression “phrasing”. Music, you see, is a language. From our friends at Wikipedia: “Phrase and phrasing are concepts and practices related to grouping consecutive melodic notes, both in their composition and performance.” Music, much like the words on the page, allows the mind to wander, fill in the gaps, and fill the consumer with wonder and amazement.

Neither the 1995 nor the 2013 editions of “Tommy” did any of that for me and mostly for the same reasons. I expect a certain style when it comes to musical theatre, but I also have expectations when it comes to live music (not just concerts, but any non-recorded music). Live music should be bigger, louder, full of emotion and energy. It should invoke feelings, and lots of them.

I know, I know. $75 freaking dollars – for balcony?!

Granted, I was only 21 when I saw the 1995 show but I was no stranger to theatre. For its time the visuals were outstanding but I found the actors to be disengaged and tentative, almost as if they were afraid to make a mistake or personally offend the original creators. The music was definitely loud enough, but it was lacking most of the criteria I was expecting.

Now with a few more years behind me (eighteen to be precise), I can look at the performance from this week and, well, basically say the same things. Most of the players were pretty engaging, but I found the lead (teenage Tommy) to be weak. It was as if during the whole performance he was wondering what he’d be having for dinner after the show. The new fancy backdrop visuals were distracting and didn’t add any value. The music could have been louder, and it was lacking intensity. It was as if someone threw a towel over the guitarist’s amp and took away his distortion pedal.

Stratford Festival ticket deal for the win!

Now here comes a comparison with another stage show based on popular music: Abba’s “Mamma Mia!” (this could very well be the first time someone’s ever compared Abba and The Who. A quick Google search turned up 40,700,000 results of which I looked at the first two pages and found no such comparison. Feel free to check out the other 40,699,960 results and prove me wrong).

This principal difference between the two plays (aside from the vastly different plots) lies in the music and the musicians themselves. Abba songs are not rock & roll. Abba songs are poppy, toe tapping ditties and they lend themselves quite nicely for use in a live musical. Abba songs aren’t bigger than life; the stage production brought them to life and then gave them more heart. Songs by The Who absolutely ooze rock & roll. Songs by The Who are not toe tapping and the lion’s share are far from anything I’d classify as a ditty.

They are amplifier exploding epics that make you want to smash things.

You know what I expect when I hear someone play The Who? More freakin’ guitar, that’s what. Cowbell is to Blue Oyster Cult as guitar is to The Who and from what I heard in Stratford – and in listening back to the original 1995 stage recording – Peter Townshend should be rolling over in his grave (wait… what? He’s not dead?! Oh. Sorry, Pete. Moving on…) At the end of it all I simply found “Tommy” to be a little too much tea & crumpets and not enough rock & roll (finale excepted – it was great in both performances).

I can’t say I’m terribly surprised though. Music, really good music, packs so much into each song that it has got to be really difficult to breathe more life into it, short of performing the song live at an actual concert. Could this be a reason for there being such a lack of stage musicals based on popular music? I happen to think so. That being said, if anyone wants to go out and put together a stage production of RUSH’s 2112 I’d be all for it. Lord knows that would at least allow for a better comparison than ABBA.

RUSH’s 2112 “Starman”

~Andrew

Quiet Writer Drives Through

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There are a few (thousand) things that drive me nuts and my top three are: made up words, spelling mistakes, and improper grammar. Several years ago a friend and co-worker pointed out to me that language is an evolving tool. Humans have been communicating orally and in writing for thousands of years and it’s only natural that the manner in which humans communicate evolves along with the people doing the communicating. He cited a very acceptable example of Old English and how many of the words, phrases, and rules have fallen out of favour and changed to become what people use today. When he made the argument I had very little to say in terms of a retort other than, “Well that doesn’t mean I have to like it!”.

It all started when I was out at Tim Horton’s getting a coffee and I noticed that their sign on the outside read “Drive Thru”. There was more than enough room for them to write “Drive Through” but instead they chose a shortened version of the word. In an effort to attract a younger demographic, maybe they thought it looked more current; maybe three fewer letters were significantly cheaper to print; maybe, the marketing geniuses that they are, they didn’t like the way “through” looked. I suspect we’ll never know. All I knew is that I didn’t like it and I needed someone to blame. Fortunately, on practically every street corner I saw this:

Their spelling sucks and their food will make you fat
This generated quite a bit of discussion in the office, and seeing as this was in the early days of Google some of us took to the Internet to seek out the origins of purposefully misspelled words; and wouldn’t you know it, one of the earliest offenders was none other than Remington, makers of among other things, typewriters. That’s right, a typewriter company went and named a model using a made up word: Quiet-Riter.
Shame on you, Remington. Shame on you!
As you can see, there is no shortage of real estate on the front of that typewriter, so why bother to bastardize the word “writer”? One can only hope this was a purposeful example of irony, but I suspect we’ll never know.
I can accept the fact that English is a complicated language. There are more exceptions than there are rules, and there are a crap-tonne of rules. It used to be that you couldn’t get out of grade school unless you knew all the rules and could show proper command of the language. Over the last few decades things seem to have shifted. With computers that will auto-correct your mistakes and provide you with properly formatted sentences, actually knowing the rules and how to implement them has become less important.
Unfortunately, what this doesn’t do is prevent people from screwing things up time and time again, and putting their glorious mistakes on the very Internet that would provide them with the required correction within seconds. It’s a sad state of affairs when we’d rather post grammatically deficient drivel than spend the eight seconds it takes to Google it and post something proper. Fortunately, there’s an army of people out there who are more than willing to correct everyone else’s mistakes: they are the Grammar Police (also less affectionately known as Grammar Nazis) and they are a growing faction of grammarians to which I someday hope to belong. They’re an easy bunch to spot, just look on Facebook for posts like these:
If you don’t know what an Oxford Comma is, Google it,
and for God’s sake USE IT!
We all know that some rules were made to be broken, and that sentiment is holds true for writing as well. As much as the Grammar Police, literary purists, and academics would like you to believe otherwise, sometimes you have to break a few rules to get the result you are looking for (see what I did there?). Here are eleven rules that are just asking to be broken:
Breaking rules is fun!
I completely understand that in writing this post I am opening myself up to criticism and ridicule from just about every angle. Those lax in their usage of proper spelling and grammar will thumb their noses at me, or possibly give me the finger; those with a stronger command of the rules will look down their noses at me, waggle their finger, and utter something condescending under their breath; and there will be a few who take this opportunity to correct every mistake they can find in an effort to feel superior and make me feel shame. Well, I can guarantee you I will feel no shame. I can assure you that there are no spelling mistakes or typos in this post.  The lack of red squiggly underlines and a solid proofread have taken care of that.
As for the punctuation and grammar, well, it’s entirely possible that I know exactly what I’m doing and I have just embedded various mistakes in an effort to be clever. It’s also possible that I’m a giant hypocrite with limited grasp on the rules who just likes to criticize others. I suspect you’ll never know.
~ Andrew

SPOILER ALERT!

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Every once and a while a TV show comes along that you really enjoy watching. You know the one I’m talking about. The one where, week after week, you can’t wait for the next episode. The one where your anxiety levels climb in the weeks leading up the final episode of the season because you know that it will be the last of the show for months. The one that you faithfully record so you can watch it uninterrupted, free from commercials or other distractions, and just enjoy as everything unfolds in front of you for the first time.

And then there are the inconsiderate jerkwads on the Internet – specifically Facebook and especially Twitter – who see fit to watch the show in real time, crappy commercials and all, and live-stream every plot twist and “oh my gosh” moment that happens. They will claim it’s all part of the new media experience and this allows them to enjoy the show at a whole new level with other inconsiderate jerkwads. Networks will encourage this with various “follow us on Facebook” and “follow this #hashtag” gimmicks in an effort to entice more people to watch as they try to pump more advertising at the audience.

For me, there have been a few shows where the former has been true. Sopranos was one, as was The West Wing. Lately, it’s a show called The Newsroom – which fortunately for me not a lot of people watch, so there’s not a tonne of chatter around it – yet. As for the latter, there’s only one show I took to this level and it was Survivor (please, don’t judge), and even then I was very careful about not revealing key moments or twists in my Internet commentary. You see, if you want to follow a show in real time and experience the complete new media experience there are rules to follow so you don’t end up being a jerkwad. Actually, there’s really just one:

Let the people who aren’t watching at that very second know that you’re about to ruin something for them.

It’s affectionately known as a spoiler alert, and it’s an easy rule to follow. It really is. The problem is that some people either can’t figure it out or don’t give a damn. Granted, it’s harder for someone on Twitter to comply than it is for someone on Facebook. Twitter is set up in such an instant gratification kind of way that if you want to express an emotion about what just happened on your favourite show you’re much more inclined to type “OMG I can’t believe they just killed What’s-His-Name! #FaveShow” than you are “OMG, I can’t believe what just happened! #FaveShow“. Even if you are more likely to lean toward the second statement I can guarantee that someone somewhere will reply within seconds “@YourUserName I know! What’s-His-Name was my favourite character! #FaveShow“.

Unfollowing someone on Twitter is a bit of a pain just so their spoiler tweets don’t show up in your timeline. Setting up lists and filters is also quite a cumbersome exercise. Fortunately, a teenage girl in the U.S. came up with a way to redact your Twitter feed to avoid those unsightly plot twists – and she’s going to release the app for free.

Things are a little easier on Facebook and as such I have less patience for those who refuse to show a little courtesy. You see, Facebook won’t show a whole post if it’s more than 420 characters long. Anything more than that and you read a “read more” link at the bottom. So, just prefix your post with

“SPOILER ALERT: [YOUR-FAVE-SHOW]
——————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————–“

Tell your spoiler-prone friends to do this. Tell them they can just cut and paste the example above and then proceed to type whatever the hell they want.

[Editor’s Note: 2015-12-22 – this app is no longer available]
Naturally, someone has taken the idea from our teenage hero from above and made it just a bit better. This is what happens with technology, especially apps, and the consumer is the ultimate winner. In this case, you can take matters into your own hands with Silencer. A Chrome extension that lets you “Take back the internet, on your terms”. Even better you can tell your friends to not be jerkwads in the first place and if they’re true friends you won’t need the link to Silencer. But just in case, here it is:

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/silencer/liddmepmaofgllnbdbepbcgfgclcelno

~ Andrew

The Power of the Internet

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I am fortunate enough to have experienced the creation of one of the greatest inventions of all time: the Internet. Granted, there were a whole lot of events that had to transpire over several decades before it became accessible outside of military or academic circles, but when it did… it’s hard to argue that it didn’t have a major impact on society.

Image Courtesy Wikipedia

Much like anything else it didn’t take long for the Internet to become commercialized. Rest assured (and if you read my last post this won’t come as a surprise) if there’s a newer/better/faster/easier way to sell you something then the people selling it are going take advantage.

Then something interesting happened. People started using the Internet for something that wasn’t commerce. Of course, traditional media outlets began (and continue) to use the Internet as a cheap and easy way to get your attention, driving you to their paid services and racking up page views to satisfy deep-pocketed advertisers, but ordinary people also started to use it to share their message. They quickly realized that there was the potential to reach a tremendous audience and in less than a decade the Internet became the greatest resource the world has ever seen.

As with anything that’s publicly available and unregulated you’re going to get quite a wide collection of individuals involved. The Internet user community is, unsurprisingly, just a reflection of society as a whole. One quick peak and you’ll find:

  • the innovators; 
  • the salespeople; 
  • the socially conscience; 
  • the clueless; 
  • the intellectual (and the intellectually deficient); 
  • the radicals; and of course, 
  • the liars and the cheats. 
If you need to put “fair & balanced” in your logo
I have news for you…

It’s not just corporations like FOX News that are in on the game either. Sometimes our cravings for attention and the insatiable need for our 15 minutes of fame take control, and sometimes the less honourable see an opportunity to take advantage of the good nature of others. If you’re on Facebook you have most certainly seen the posts. The ones where some tear-jerking picture is accompanied by some text that reads “If I get a million ‘likes’ then…” or “So and so or this and that needs your help!”

Some of these are undoubtedly true… and some most certainly are not. I choose to focus on the good. It takes a bit more energy but the end result is worth it (my favourite sources of truth are currently Snopes and Skeptophilia). With just a little bit of research and minimal digging the same Internet that brings you the lie also brings the lie and the people behind it to light. Just as easily, the Internet can be used to affect positive change, and as it turns out there are more people out there using their powers for good instead of evil.

I firmly believe in the power of the Internet and all of its social media sub-components. Aside from allowing everyday folks like myself to have a voice, it can bring people together and affect change like never before.

Just ask Egypt.

~ Andrew

Got Stuff?

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What do Monsanto, Apple, Disney, and Stephenie Meyer have in common? The way I see it they are all in the business of creating stuff for the sake of turning a profit. Of course, I say that as I sit here at my laptop on my comfortable couch in front of my big screen television waiting to answer my iPhone (via Bluetooth).

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvgN5gCuLac?rel=0]
“Ever notice that their stuff is shit and your shit is stuff?”

Now, I am a big fan of a high functioning capitalistic society; money makes the world go ’round and all that… but at what cost? As much as I enjoy “stuff”, the more I look at my children and what we’re leaving behind for them, the more I begin to wonder if the costs of consuming are worth it. Is it possible to reverse the path we’re on and focus more of our time, energy, money, and attention on creating to improve instead of creating to capitalize?

Thankfully, there are concerned individuals much smarter than myself who are asking tough questions on the topic. These are the types of things they are asking us to consider:

  • If we grew food to actually feed people instead of to just sell food how many people would still be hungry?

  • What would our world look and sound like if music and television weren’t assembly line productions controlled by just a handful of companies?

  • If we invested in science and technology to learn and understand the universe instead of just to be the one who sold more phones/televisions/computers this year how much further would we go?

  • What would we see if the best selling books in the world weren’t formulaic, predictable, and based on the latest force fed trend?

Hmm…

Some of you are thinking, “Oh lord, the guilt trip continues” (or something to that effect). Don’t worry, I’m not here to make anyone feel bad about themselves or the lifestyle they keep. The goal of this blog is to provide my thoughts and observations, usually on topics based on my newcomer experiences to writing and content creation, to generate conversation or get people thinking in a direction they might not have otherwise.

Lately, I have found myself asking the question, why are we (as a society) creating the things we’re creating?

I have found all too often that the answer is to sell it, or even worse, I don’t know, and that’s a scary thought. What’s scarier though is that George Carlin released his bit “A Place for My Stuff” on vinyl in 1981 – 32 years ago – and it’s probably more true today than it was then.

Stuff is cheaper so we can afford to buy more stuff. Stuff is smaller so we stuff more stuff into our other stuff. We’ve made it easier and repeatable to create stuff so just about anyone can produce stuff and the internet makes it so that just about anyone can buy it.

My daughter created this with chalk in the kids’ area at a music festival.
For as long as we were there it was the only section no one erased.

Why are we creating the things we’re creating anyway?

I don’t know, but I’d like to issue a challenge to anyone willing to give it a try:

  • Have at least one meal this week made with non-genetically modified, locally grown food, or better yet, start a small garden of your own

  • Turn off the television or video game at a time when you would normally do such a thing and find a song by an independent musician and just listen to it (there are tons available on YouTube), or better yet, go watch a local musician play live

  • Invent something to fulfill a need, or better yet, do it without having to buy any new materials (as a note, this becomes noticeably easier to do if you have children or are capable of thinking like one)

  • Read a short story by an author you’ve never heard of on a topic you know nothing about, or better yet, write one about something you do

~ Andrew

Equality Means Equal

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Clearly the arguments pertaining to the separation of church and state as it pertains to the United States Constitution are nuanced and complex, as most arguments involving legal documents tend to be. Legal experts all the way up to the Supreme Court can debate, and many have, from here to tomorrow and still be no further along than they were yesterday. So it should not come as a surprise that when it comes to the general populous this debate rages furiously (and in circles) time and time again.

One observation I have is that there seems to be an over-abundance of people who refuse to see the bigger picture and acknowledge that as it pertains to matters of federal law it is a multi-layered and remarkably complex web in which it is all to easy to get tangled. I am certainly guilty of this, or have been on occasion, but also firmly believe that regardless of how the interpretation of law unfolds that there should be one indisputable characteristic: that the law is applied equally to everyone.

http://humanrightscampaign.tumblr.com/

Another observation I have is that there are always people who will selectively interpret highly complex documents in order to further an agenda or attempt to force specific belief on others. There’s a certain irony to this when the U.S. Constitution is involved, seeing as parts of that document and it’s amendments were specifically written to allow everyone the freedom to believe whatever the hell they want even if you disagree and especially if you disagree.

A final observation, it’s really just different instance of the observation I just made, would be that there are a rather large number of Americans who apply this notion of selective interpretation to the Bible in an effort to tell another large number of Americans how they can or cannot live their lives.

This completely boggles my mind.

My friend Gordon over at Skeptophilia posits that, based on a recent survey done in the U.S., as many as 34% of Americans would support a theocracy. Granted, the question asked wasn’t, “Would you support a theocracy?” but still, the fact that so many people supported the idea of adopting Christianity as a state (34%) and/or federal (32%) religion is absolutely insane.

What’s really interesting about this is there wasn’t a mention of which denomination it would be or how it would be chosen. This actually makes me laugh, and it should, because it’s just that ridiculous. I am quite certain that it would be a remarkably difficult task to pin it down to one but if anyone’s taking bets put me down for a stack of Benjamins on Baptist. I am also quite certain that when it comes to specific interpretation of any version of the Bible that achieving consensus on everything in it would be damn near impossible.

So, to bring all of this together, what it all boils down to is that there are people who for one reason or another will fight tooth and nail defending the right for people to be able to believe what they choose and in the same breath use those very beliefs to attempt to dictate what other people – the ones who disagree with them – can and cannot believe themselves.

But this is a post about equality, so of course I’m going to point to the 2013 decision by the Supreme Court of the United States to uphold the rights of all legally married couples – regardless of the gender makeup of the marriage. That’s right, if you are married, then the U.S. Federal Government will grant you all the benefits that this entails. It doesn’t matter if you’re gay, straight, gay pretending to be straight, or straight pretending to be gay (does that happen?); if you’re married, that’s good enough for the Feds.

Naturally, when the decision came down, a good number of people (see above observations) went completely batshit crazy. The more recent decision in the summer of 2015 even more people went batshit crazy (or maybe it was the same people and they were just louder, I’m not sure). Regardless, this made me angry. Really angry. I happen to be in the (barely) majority opinion that everyone should be treated equally. It’s not a new concept. In fact, almost a couple thousand years ago some guy named Mark told a nice story about some guy named Jesus who said, “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” [Mark 12-31] That’s a pretty cool concept if you think about it, and you can find it in all kinds of religions all over the place. They even gave it an awesome name: The Golden Rule.

Bernard d’Agesci (1757-1828), La justice, musée de Niort.

The funny thing is, as far as marriage is concerned, the U.S. Government has declared that it’s none of their business. Marriage is marriage as far as the laws are concerned. They’ll mark down your Social Security Numbers and the marriage certificate number and make the appropriate changes to their files. It’s actually quite a nice showing of equality, and if you’ll permit me one grandiose expletive, it’s about fucking time.

Remember:
Equality means equal.
There is no version of equality.
There is no sort of equal.
There is no equal, but…

Equality is an absolute, and on that there is no room for interpretation.

~ Andrew