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New Year’s Maximum Resolution

2009-01-06T07:22:26Z

Ah, New Year’s. With Santa’s footprints still fresh in the snow, we start making demands on another magical being: Our future selves. Diet! Lose weight! Exercise! Quit smoking! Quit Nail-biting! Quit watching TV! Quit slouching! We make veritable laundry lists of goals for next year, but very little in the way of strategies to achieve them. A British Mental Health charity called “Mind” even posits that New Year’s resolutions are bad for you, as your failure to live up to them simply magnifies your human foibles and inadequacies. It’s enough to make you swear off the whole resolution thing all together.

Then again, that would be jumping from one extreme to another. Setting goals and achieving them is the ultimate expression of free will. Sharing these goals one day out of the year brings people together and allows us to enlist help in making them a reality. Still, it’s easy to go crazy with them. I, for one, would like to write a novel, cook french cuisine, speak Japanese, Korean, and Mandarin, run a Marathon, learn to draw, Hack windows vista, and complete an open source video game project. I’m pretty sure most of that is not going to happen next year (I am, however, going to Japan in March).

I asked my wife Sara what her resolutions were and she gave me an interesting answer. She has one resolution, and that is to paint her nails more in 2009. I was a little puzzled, since her work rarely leaves her time for such high maintenance activities. She told me that was the whole point. Sara likes having painted nails because they make her feel more stylish and confident. Painting her nails also forces her to relax, as she needs to wait and do nothing while the nail polish dries. Painting nails seems like such a small goal, but achieving it gives her benefits well outside her pretty fingers.

I decided to follow suit and pick one and only one resolution. In 2009, I will entertain at my house more. I hope to have people over at least once a month, or 12 times this year. When Sara and I got married last year, we got gifts of fine china, linens, and kitchen gadgets, like most couples. This Christmas Sara’s sister and her fiancee got us Rock Band for the Nintendo Wii. Our basement suite is loaded for bear when it comes to entertaining guests, so why shouldn’t we take advantage of it? It’ll give me motivation to keep the house clean, as well as work on the art of interesting conversation. What’s more, I will spend less time messing with google maps trying to find people’s homes.

New Year’s Resolutions don’t have to be these grand achievements of self-control. Like the day they’re named for, they’re a way to mark change and progression in our lives. When we make resolutions and keep them, they remind us that life is fluid and dynamic, and change is one of the ways to make it truly worth living.

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Christmas Crush

2008-12-23T20:35:29Z

I think I identify more with the Grinch now than I ever did as a kid. The live-action movie’s mushy backstory had nothing to do with it. The Grinch, I found, is a gestalt of our love/hate relationship with the Holiday season. Sure we sing along when the voice of Tony the Tiger belts out “You’re a mean one, Mr. Grinch”, but on some level we all root for him. While he does take all of the Whos’ stuff, he also steals all of the fire-hazard Christmas trees, all of the fruit-cakes, and all of the “Jingle-cats” CDs. In the same way that Godzilla found legions of fans by destroying crowded transit systems and soul-destroying sales offices, the Grinch entertains us by battling the Christmas monster every year.

Most Christmas stories deal with that conflict between crass commercialism and the true meaning of Christmas. If that meaning is “peace on earth and good will to men”, why haven’t we dispensed with the whole rowdiness aspect of Christmas? We’ve tried several times over the centuries, but it just hasn’t stuck. How can we progress as a species if we spend our money on inflatable snowman displays? Then again, why are we defining progress as a lack of inflatable snowman displays?

This year, Sara and I have been involved in no less than 5 Christmas related live shows either through our church or Sara’s school. On December 20th, we braved bad sushi and stifling crowds to go shopping in Metrotown mall. Why would two seemingly sane people go through with all of this? Is it because we owe some money to a perversely festive loan shark? Not a chance. There is a high that comes from all this Christmas rigmarole. “Peace on earth and good will to men” may seem like a simple concept, but it’s meaningless if it is not expressed. We all have a primal need to express ourselves at some point in our lives. Christmas allows us to do that by putting our best foot forward. People attempt things with decorations, cooking, and singing that they would never do at any other time of the year. We need the hustle and bustle to communicate with our fellow humans in the strongest terms possible: “Peace on earth and good will to men”

Bonus:
Every year Sara’s school has a contest to rewrite Christmas carols. Sara’s class won this year, so without further ado, here’s “I Want An A+ On My Report Card”

And also, we have last year’s Holiday hit featuring Sara’s maiden name, “Miss Antak the Tiny Teacher”

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Parts Of My Geekiness I Am Losing

2008-12-17T06:51:08Z

According to some I should have turned in my geek card the minute I got married. Then again, there are many married geeks, and even my wedding wasn’t completely Star Wars free. However, just as Superman gave up his powers to be with Lois Lane in Superman II, I find I am losing components of my geekiness to the mists of time, such as:

-The ability to be personally offended by following: the Wii’s game line-up, Anime voice acting, Live-action adaptations of comic-books, novels or video games

-The ability to discern anime character designers

-The ability to participate in the eternal Star Destroyer v. Enterprise debate.

-The ability to stomach any Expanded universe Star Wars

-The ability to watch anime all night

-The idea that Freelancing is a romantic occupation of freedom and bad-assery as opposed to paper-work and shaking down clients for money

-The idea that spoilers will ruin any and all enjoyment of a book, movie or TV show

Does this mean that I’m just growing up? Hardly. I still watch Doctor Who and Macross Frontier. I check io9.com about twice a day and I often peruse Hobbylink Japan the way many people would peruse a Jaguar dealership. I still think professional sports is like paying to watch other people have fun. What has changed is how I perceive my free time. As I get older, time seems to move faster. It feels like high school lasted longer than my 20s. I no longer have the luxury of indulging my interests to completion. Delayed gratification has its merit, but not when you’re trying to be entertained. Slogging through a 52 episode series when 26 of those are filler is no way to go through life. In fact, it’s no way to enjoy a series. The same goes for relationships. Make an effort to enjoy yourself and those around you.

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Abbotsford and Social Justice 12

2008-12-10T04:09:43Z

It wasn’t the only bastion of intolerance in the city, but it was a good place to draw the line. Everywhere else in BC, Social Justice 12 was just another elective class for high school seniors. Students would learn how to analyze issues of intolerance in their world, as well as some strategies to combat that intolerance. The Abbotsford school board, however, voted to postpone the course and censor certain sections that dealt with homosexual rights. The irony was not lost on the 96 students who had already signed up for the course.

Over 300 people gathered in the rain at the University of the Fraser Valley last Saturday in response to the School Board’s decision. Some were indeed homosexuals, some of them were families, some of them were fellow students, and others were just tired of seeing this kind of thing happen in their town. Religion is kind of a big deal in Abbotsford. There’s practically a church on every corner, and the local editorial page usually has a letter every week advertising the book of Leviticus. There are people with the same approach to faith who make no qualms about injecting themselves into the local political process, hoping to turn this town into an idyllic version of something it was when there were 75,000 less people and it didn’t take up 5 highway exits. Intelligent people see something like this and they get scared. Nothing can wash away scruples like the belief that God is on your side, never mind that the same God has been known to have it out for those who practice religion without scruples, and never mind that the United Church flew a banner at the rally saying “We are all God’s Children”. Indeed, the people who supported the school board’s decision would see a rally like this as a form of persecution, further evidence they need to keep “people like that” out of the public sphere. That’s okay. This rally wasn’t for them, anyway. It’s for those who value tolerance and freedom of speech, yet are afraid to speak out themselves. It’s for the thousands who make their home in this town, yet feel shut out by the rhetoric they hear. This rally stands to prove that it’s not religious fervor that drives this town, it’s passion for our beliefs. Anywhere else in Canada, having passion is only a human right. Around here, it’s your duty as a citizen.

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Say It With Me Now: Prorogue!

2008-12-06T07:59:10Z

So after realizing that 143 seats does not a mandate make, Stephen Harper has convinced the Governor General to prorogue, or suspend parliament until early January. Personally, I wanted the coalition to oust the Prime Minister. Not because I think they’ll make a better government, but because I wanted someone to pay for the state of Canadian politics.

Dion was well on his way to being that person. The Liberal party lost all of those seats because they could not shake their image of an Ontario-centric Canada. They didn’t even seem to realize that they were talking down to the voters. They should have addressed that and made visible efforts to change.
With a new party leader, the Liberals could perhaps rethink their approach to governing and ultimately come up with a better party.

However, when Harper introduced the economic update, he made it clear that he should be the one to suffer. To cut his opponents’ election funding from the budget and to punish their voters (i.e. public workers) by taking away their right to strike means that Harper isn’t in Ottawa to make the country better, he’s just waging a personal war for seats in the House of Commons. He can yell all he likes about “what Canadians want”, but to pull a stunt like this after an election means that he has no idea what Canadians want. We want a minority conservative government. The reason Canadian politics has been so “boring” is that we as a people have no desire to go on these grand political adventures from the left or the right. A government where no party has a clear mandate has no power to carry out any kind of agenda, and that suits us just fine.

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Standards of Misogyny in Video Games

2008-11-25T07:26:59Z

Now, it’s been years since I’ve been anywhere near the video games industry, but I still like to keep up with it in an armchair capacity. One of my favorite sites by which to do this is a blog called gamesetwatch, a collection of essays and links to articles by many industry leaders. One article they had recently was a retrospective on “Time Gal”, one of those old laser disc arcade games that had animated cutscenes that you control via pressing the correct button or moving the joystick in the right way. The author, Todd Ciolek, (who also writes X-button, a fine column at the Anime News Network) pointed out that Time Gal was the first game to have a non-licensed character that players could recognize as human. He goes on to praise the game for having a heroine that was so cute and chirpy, but then there was one line that just made my head spin.

“Misogyny creeps in, of course: Time Gal’s already skimpy clothes get ripped away by T-Rexes and Fist of the North Star mutants alike, and she’ll scream about being struck on the chest or getting bitten on her partially exposed rear. Pioneers are not always proud.”

It wasn’t just what he said, it’s how he said it. Misogyny. You know, creeping in like that. Here you are, pushing through the glass ceiling, but let one of those things on your chest slip out and BOOM! There’s misogyny. The word here is written with such complacency, such blasé, that it’s almost as if the author was describing the sky as blue. To use such a powerful word as misogyny in that way tells me that he doesn’t even believe in what he says. And why should he have to? He’s only preaching the gospel truth. You can see it repeated all over the ‘net. To show women as sexual in any capacity is misogynist. That’s it. Finito. End of discussion.

When there’s an idea that becomes sacrosanct and, dare I say, unexamined, it bothers me. Untested truth is what keeps us from moving forward, making connections and seeing the greater scheme of things. This is part of a pattern I keep seeing again and again in video game criticism. Why is a scantily clad girl in a video game defined as misogyny? “How is that not misogyny!?” is not a valid answer.

Despite being male, I think I can put my liberal arts hat back on and take a crack at this one. Misogyny is the hatred of women. If a woman getting her clothes torn suggestively in a fight is misogyny, then there are a couple of assumptions at work here. The first is that this is sexual objectification, where a woman is judged by her physical attributes independent of her personality and intelligence. This is demeaning to women, and that makes it misogyny.

I have a problem with this. This also assumes that the way a woman looks and how she presents herself has nothing to do with her personal taste, her habits or the culture she comes from. It would seem that this imagery is only defined by how I see it. Big, white male me. Now this tells me that if I look at something and get a rise out of it, it immediately becomes misogynist. I am indirectly dictating what can and cannot be depicted in regards to women. It doesn’t matter if anyone else finds the game cute or funny. Is that feminist? Hell, is that even humanist?

So now that we’ve found out what misogyny is, what’s feminism? What images do game companies produce if they want to be forward-thinking and catch that ever-elusive female audience? Many would point to a game called Portal. It’s about a battle between a sarcastic computer and Chell, a barely seen female protagonist in a formless jumpsuit with no dialog, no expression, and no personality. She is seen as the perfect feminist archetype, as opposed to blond-haired traitors like Super Mario’s Princess Peach. Of course, this can’t explain why Peach herself has female fans all over the world and why her own game, Super Princess Peach, has sold over a million copies.

That, my friends, is why we can’t have compelling video game characters. This is why we live in a video game world populated by bald space marines and sullen amazonian axe-murderers. When we intentionally wall off a part of human nature, we blind ourselves to potential avenues of creativity. A specific, easily recognizable character can make the difference between millions of dollars in revenue and billions.

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The Civic Election, Abbotsford Style

2008-11-16T08:27:12Z

Image provided by http://www.abbotsford-real-estate.info/

My vote has been counting for a lot this year. We had a federal election last month, a civic election yesterday and we’ll have a provincial election this May. It goes without saying that the local sign makers are ecstatic. During the grand to-do of the US presidential election, there have been many grumblings on forums that we Canadians don’t have to deal with politicians who think The Flintstones was a documentary and other such nonsense. In Abbotsford, the town I grew up in and where I have chosen to live, the situation is a little different.

I would like to direct your attention to an organization called Abbotsford Families United. If you click the preceding link, you’ll be taken to their voting guide for the civic election which they e-mailed to anyone who signed up for their newsletter. You may notice these candidates are not chosen for their ability to run the city, but for their “strong stance” on homosexuals, sex shows and casinos. Never mind about the homeless on the streets or that school classes are overcrowded, if we don’t elect these candidates, as they claim, “You can expect to see pro-homosexual indoctrination right down to the kindergarten level in the public schools starting next year.” Yeah, you know, because if we allow that into the curriculum, how are teachers supposed to fit that in between classes on burning witches and oh, I don’t know, learning how to READ and WRITE!?

Luckily, this group’s choice for mayor didn’t come within spitting distance of winning the election. That honor went to George Peary, an man I’ve known to display capability and integrity in every position he’s taken. However, 4 out of the 5 council members and all of the school trustees in that voting guide were elected to office.

I find myself thinking about how California and several other states just passed measures banning gay marriage. The passage of Proposition 8 in California strikes me as a monstrous decision as I imagine it is to many Californians. Gay Marriage has become a more emotional issue for me recently. Over the past 8 months there have been many times when I’ve been sitting at home, watching TV with my wife and thinking “Yup, life is pretty close to perfect right now”. When I got married, I was able to celebrate my relationship with her in front of all my family, my friends and my community. It was, and still is, the best day of my life. If someone made a law that said that I couldn’t have that, that is was somehow wrong for us to be together, then I would break that law with a clear conscience and extreme fervor.

The Mormon Church spent over $40 million dollars to get that amendment passed, but it all had to start somewhere. Civic and school board elections may seem small in comparison to the break-neck races at the national level, but they are all vitally important to preserving our freedom. I shouldn’t have to tell you that even now people are literally dying for the right to elect their leaders and control their destinies. We will always have a section of society that believes order is achieved through fear, cruelty and dominance. Sometimes all it takes is one seat, one election for them to gain a foothold in the halls of power. So next time your local paper is full of candidates you have never heard of, take the time to learn about them, and for heaven’s sake, vote! Abbotsford Families United cannot claim a monopoly on all values. We all have values of one kind or another, and the only way we can honor those values is if express them in the leaders we elect.

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What will Canada Do With Barack Obama?

2008-11-06T05:59:54Z

In case you didn’t know it was the 21st century, America has just elected Barack Obama, the first African-American President. Personally, I think this turn of events benefits everyone, even Non-Americans like me. It isn’t going to matter exactly what kind of President he is, the fact that Obama got elected the way he did is enough to rewrite the playbook on political campaigns. A vivid and compelling vision of your city, province or country is a requirement for any run for office. Now that we have the internet, that vision can be as vivid and compelling as you want. You can have as much information out there as you want, and the candidate with the most information wins. This increases voter confidence and energizes your core base. Early statistics place US voter turnout at 70-80 percent. Forget that there is a black US president, that number is an even greater achievement!

However, since Canada’s relationship with the US still resembles that of a humpback whale and a cluster of barnacles, a change in regime should always be a concern. The US Ambassador warned the Fraser institute that Canada will miss Bush if Obama wins the election. I’m sure we will miss Bush just as much as that lovely 30% duty he decided to put on our softwood lumber exports.

Obama’s site says that he will work with the leaders of Canada and Mexico to change NAFTA in such a way that benefits America’s workers. The campaign promise is vague in a way that’s unsettling. Is he appealing to his democrat base, or is this a vision of things to come? Of course, there are also elements within Canada that believe we got the raw deal on NAFTA. Perhaps if all parties meet on the basis of a shared distrust of the agreement, some common ground can be found and a better NAFTA will result.

No matter what Obama’s actions as president we’ll be, it’s a sure bet that he will think of his own people first. We should ask nothing less of our own parliament. However, we should take solace in the fact that he got to where he is right now by listening to the people around him, rather than just hiding behind his talking points. Where his opponents demanded obedience, he demanded inventiveness and passion. If he invites Canada to join in his plans for the future, he will do it by trying to inspire that same inventiveness and passion. Even if he turns out to be an adversary to Canada’s interests, the only way we’ll do right by Canada is if we respond with a strong vision of Canada and our place in the world. Either way, we come out with the Canada we wish for.

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Kirtsy.com and the Future of Web Software

2008-10-29T05:38:29Z

For the first few months of our marriage, my wife Sara would ask me how I could possibly spend so much time surfing on the internet. Recently I found out this wasn’t a complaint, but an actual question about how to find good stuff to read on the web. I told her that I frequent sites like Digg.com and Fark.com to receive the latest news about technology, video games and STAR WARS! In other words, sites that would not interest Sara in the slightest.

The state of affairs continued until I found an article on Digg called “Top Five Reasons Why I Want Digg for Girls”. It basically outlined what I had thought when I had tried to introduce Sara to news aggregate sites. Most of them are sausage parties, populated by nerds who try to break the site for no other than a surplus of time on their hands. You’re unlikely to find articles about non-geeky arts and crafts, parenting or anything else relevant to women. Considering how much of the publishing sector is created by and for women, having web software like Digg and making it completely male oriented is like building a Saturn V Rocket and using it as a Christmas tree. It seemed like the author had pointed out ripe territory for revolution, but many commentors pointed out that the revolution had already happened at www.kirtsy.com.

Intrigued I headed down there and was taken by surprise by how nice the interface is. It’s just 9 self-explanatory categories, and you don’t even have to join to give a “kirtsy” since the site measures the click-through count, not just votes from registered users. What’s more, the users don’t seem to use misleading headlines like “Bike Seat Cuts Off the Nose to Save the Penis!” in order to garner votes.

Now, I’m still going to use sites like Digg and Fark for most of my link hunting needs, but it’s really nice to know that a site like this exists. For one thing, it proves that lines of code and a server don’t make a software package any more than a truckload of hamburger meat and a suitcase full of money makes a McDonald’s. It’s amazing that you can create a news aggregate site that functions like Digg and have it come off as being completely different. It’s a tribute to the human element in software design. And what does Sara think of Kirtsy? Let’s just say she curses my name now that she knows how to waste time on the internet!

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The Canadian Election, Same As It Ever Was

2008-10-23T08:10:39Z

Image provided by http://www.mackaycartoons.net/

After a month of salacious tv ads, accusations from all sides, and 300 million dollars we have achieved…absolutely nothing! Actually I think everyone got what they wanted in this election. The Conservatives have more seats, but still a minority which is what most of Canada wants anyway. I don’t think the Conservatives have themselves to congratulate for their 19 new seats. The Liberal party’s media presence, at least in the west, was next to nothing. I think many people voted for their Conservative MP candidate just so Harper would get out of that goofy sweater vest and stop attempting to smile. However, it’s more likely that the Liberals have done nothing to shake the image that they only care about Ontario and Quebec. Not only that, if you have a place like BC with bad memories of a provincial NDP government, we are left with no centrist alternative to vote for.

Now, I’m not saying that Canada is going through a new phase of Reaganomics, Thatcherism, or any other variation “Big government=Bad, No taxes=Good” philosophy. It’s just nice to know that we can pay for the kind of services we expect from the government without burdening future generations. We love the idea that we can get our medicine, military and employment insurance without running a deficit. The Conservatives bring this ideal to the table, but it doesn’t cover other issues that Canadians are concerned about, like the environment or poverty. The other parties were very passionate about these issues, but offered little information as to how their strategies would work without bankrupting the country.

The Liberals “Green Shift” plan that cost them so much seats could have been a blessing if they had simply published some data on how it would work. It could have created jobs and spurred innovation in many industry sectors, but we wouldn’t have known that because the other parties had control of the plan’s image. The average commercial webserver can send out the equivalent of the library of congress in a matter of hours. It shouldn’t be a stretch publish white papers, datasets, or bill drafts of any kind.. The Liberals chose to respond by repeating themselves rather than provide more detail, like they were guarding the plans for the atom bomb. The rumour mills provided by the NDP and Conservatives were able to build on that uncertainty until both parties had gained seats in the election.

I want to point out a recent article in the Boston Globe about the nature of rumours. Researchers at the Rochester Institute of Technology studied over 280 internet discussion groups to find out how rumours were born, spread, and killed. They found that rumours are based on a genuine attempt to find the truth. If you want to fight a rumour, first you cannot deny it if it’s true, and if it’s not true, make sure the truth is more vivid than the lie. The Democrats in the US are unwittingly putting these conclusions to the test in the forthcoming presidential election. Some Republican supporters have literally accused Barack Obama of being the Anti-christ. The website fightthesmears.com, along with the shear volume of information being published about the Democratic candidate are strategies dedicated to producing that more vivid truth. Forget the man’s stance on international trade. If he wins in two weeks, this will be a new chapter on how to use media to in politics. The internet has shrunk the costs of communication by exponential factors. No one will be interested in a repeated lie when the truth can be repeated just as easily. Candidates no longer be able to win elections based on hearsay and conjecture, but by communicating the most comprehensive vision of prosperity for all of their voters.

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