Thought for the Day

If an infinite number of monkeys working on an infinite number of typewriters will eventually produce the complete works of Shakespeare, a sufficiently powerful computer could auto-generate random combinations of letters, numbers, punctuation, sounds, and pixel maps, until it owns the copyright on every work of art that could ever be created.

One application of this machine would be to generate income by suing popular artists. Another would be to render all future art illegal.

Since going about your everyday life would inadvertently create an unauthorized performance of a copyrighted work, it would be illegal to do anything, at least for 120 years, except act out old books and films that had already entered the public domain.

Happy New Year!

[Writing] [link] [19 comments]

Dear Warner Bros.

You remember me. You bought the film rights to my novel Jennifer Government, for Steve Soderbergh and George Clooney. Didn’t work out, but that’s not your fault. These things happen. I hope we can work again some day. That’s not why I’m writing.

I’m writing because yesterday I rented The Dark Knight, and I couldn’t watch it. I tried. But when I popped that DVD into my home theater PC and snuggled up on the sofa with my wife, it wouldn’t play.

At first I thought the disc must be damaged. I tried it in my laptop: no dice there, either. So I took it back to the video store and swapped it for a new one. They were very apologetic, by the way, Warners. I guess they understand that physically traveling to a bricks-and-mortar store is kind of a pain, and when you’re in business against digital downloads, you don’t want to make your transactions more difficult than they already are.

Home with my fresh DVD, I tried again. But still: didn’t work. A little Googling later, I discovered the disc was indeed damaged, and by who: you.

You’ve installed some new anti-piracy protection onto The Dark Knight DVDs, which prevents the disc from playing in my PC. Well, “prevents:” it took me an hour of messing around to figure out how to rip it. I didn’t want to rip it, Warners. I only wanted to watch it. I think it may actually be illegal to rip copy-protected DVDs where I live. But you engineered your disc so that it wouldn’t play in my DVD player: this was the only way I could access the content I’d paid for.

Now, I understand that home theater PCs are kind of new-fangled, Warners, and not everyone wants to watch their DVD on a computer or laptop. But some of us do, more every day. I think you need to get over the idea that PCs are just for pirates.

Please, help me out here: who does your protection scheme target? It can’t be the real pirates; they are barely slowed by such things, and you surely know this. If I’d wanted to download The Dark Knight illegally, it would have been quick and easy; there’s no shortage of places to find it, and the copies are high-quality. Unlike your DVD, they are also ad-free, play without a hitch, and would have spared me three trips to the video store.

I think your target must be the average consumer: someone with a PC and a legitimate copy of your DVD, but limited technical knowledge. This person will be defeated by your anti-piracy protection, at least for the moment. But what does this gain you? I’m honestly stumped. These are not the people who are distributing copies over the internet. They are, at worst, time-shifting a rental, or handing out a copy to their friends. A copy of a store-purchased DVD, that is. They are that tiny, precious slice of the population who has decided to give you their money: your customers.

When you optioned my book, Warners, I noticed the contract provided for a cut of the film’s eventual revenue to the MPAA. I felt a little uneasy at this, because even back then I wasn’t comfortable with the shenanigans that organization was up to. The unskippable copyright notices at the start of movies, for example: that’s half the reason I swapped to a home theater PC in the first place. There is something wrong, in my opinion, when a machine I purchased, playing a DVD I purchased, tells me I’m not allowed to use the fast-forward button.

I understand piracy is a serious problem for you. I really do. You’ll get no argument from me that wholesale downloading of copyright material easily available from legitimate channels is morally indefensible. If we can sensibly fix that, I’m right there with you. But you seem to be hell-bent on converting your entire customer base into pirates. You are facing competition that offers your product at zero cost and maximum ease of use, and you respond by breaking your own DVDs.

So, next film deal, I’m striking that clause out. No more MPAA funding from my material. And Warners, it’s not because I’m angry. It’s not because I want that hour back I spent trying to get your busted DVD to play. It’s because you need to stop this. Really, it’s for your own good.

[What Max Reckons] [link] [21 comments]

The War on He

I was reasonably confident we had this whole gender inequality thing licked, until I fathered a girl. I mean, I was aware things were not perfect. I worked in corporate-land; women were clearly held to different standards than men. But still: close enough, I thought. In the grand scheme, there were bigger problems.

Now I realize the smallest hint of sex discrimination is A GLOBAL CONSPIRACY TARGETING MY DAUGHTER. And it’s everywhere. Why is every animal assumed to be male? Why is “he” used interchangeably with “it” in a great swathe of children’s picture books? I’ll tell you why: because male is the default setting for everything, unless it’s soft and pink. Or a cat. I’m not sure why cats are the exception. But everything else is “he.”

I realized this was a problem when Fin began naming her teddies. I don’t mind her having boy teddies. Boy teddies are fine, in limited quantities. But she thought almost all of them were all boy teddies. That didn’t seem right. I realized I was doing that thing: using “he” as default. I had imprinted her.

So I switched defaults. It’s a simple rule: you assume that everything is female unless there’s clear evidence to the contrary. Animals, teddies, unseen car drivers: all girls. It proved surprisingly difficult. I’ve been doing it about a year and I still sometimes slip up.

I also began converting Fin’s teddies. Now, possibly I’m teaching her that boys sometimes spontaneously turn into girls. But I had to do something about that men’s club. She’s picked up on it: many of them now waver between male and female, according to Fin, and a few I think I’ve turned completely.

Just the other day we saw a dog in the street and Fin asked if it was a boy or a girl. I asked what she thought. “I think it’s a girl,” she said. That was new.

That’s why all my examples now are going to be “she.” I used to try to mix it up: a “he” example here, a “she” example there. To, you know, be balanced. But now I realize the world is full of “he.” I don’t need to add any more.

Next I plan to father an illegitimate child with a Kenyan and discover we still haven’t solved racism.

P.S. Last day of Movember! I’m so happy; I finally get to shave off this monstrosity. Look at me! I’m a broken man.

[What Max Reckons] [link] [25 comments]

Mo Bad Blues

At first it wasn’t too bad. In the right light, my mo looked fairly legit. It was rough and tough and ready to rumble, just like you might think I am, if you don’t know me very well. Seven days in, I could even be considered debonair.

Then the gingers came in.

Now, I don’t have anything against the ginger peoples. Some of my best friends—well, no, all right, that’s not true. I shun them. But I have several close ginger relatives. Lovely people. Really courageous. Also, there’s no problem with ginger if you’re a woman. For chicks, red hair means: “I am so aflame with animal passion, I could burst into fire at any moment.” I think we can all agree on that. But on a man, ginger hair is not popularly translated as “fiery, dangerous love beast.” It’s more “weird pervert from Accounting.”

On top of that, I keep accidentally cruising for gay sex. I don’t mean to. I just haven’t adapted to the signals my mo is sending out. For example, on my run this morning, I jiggled my eyebrows in greeting to a runner passing by. Usually, this means, “Nice morning.” But now, apparently, it means, “Nice thighs.” At least, that’s what I’m getting from the look of terror that crossed the guy’s face.

I’m beginning to catch glimpses of it in my peripheral vision. When I have a drink, it gets there before I do. The other day I blew my nose, and three hours later realized my upper lip was hoarding bits of tissue. Also, despite my private hopes, Jen has not been harboring a secret passion for circa 1970s tennis stars. Hairy, scratchy, ginger lip caterpillar: apparently not a turn-on.

It’s just as well I’m doing this for a good cause. Thanks so much to everyone who donated. I just want you to know, it’s because of you that I’m stuck with this thing until December.

[ Sponsor Max’s Moustache! ]

[Max] [link] [12 comments]

I’m growing a moustache

“I’m growing a moustache,” I told Jen.

“No you’re not.”

“It’s for Movember. You know about Movember?”

“I know Movember,” she said. “But no. You’re not growing a moustache. They’re creepy.”

“Jen! This isn’t about the moustache. It’s for a good cause. It’s about raising awareness. You think I want to grow a moustache? Do you? Like, what, as if I’ve always secretly wanted to, but until now been denied by social pressure? Honestly!”

She eyed me. “You don’t actually know what the cause is, do you?”

“Of course I do,” I said, offended. “Frankly, it’s that kind of attitude that makes it so hard to get this particular cause taken as seriously as, obviously, this particular cause demands.”

Jen sighed.

“I believe it’s something to do with prostate cancer,” I said. “But I have a whole plan. I’ll announce it on my web site, see, and people can sponsor me.”

“Sponsor your moustache.”

“Right! Yes! They can sponsor my moustache.”

“It’s not just prostate cancer,” Jen said. “It’s men’s health issues in general, including depression.”

“Well, there you go. You can’t say no to that.”

She sighed again. “You’d better get some donations.”

[ Sponsor Max’s Moustache! ]

[ See Max’s Mo Page! ]

[Max] [link] [13 comments]

I Should Buy Some Cement

I should buy some cement, in case I need to hide a body. I don’t plan on hiding a body. I have no particular body in mind. But that’s the thing: if you wait until you’re there with a bloodied lamp in one hand and a cooling body in the other, it’s too late. You can’t jump in the car and head down to the hardware store for cement at that point. You’d need to change your clothes, stash the body somewhere it won’t arouse suspicion, and this is assuming you can even get to an open hardware store. It might be two in the morning. You might not have a car—or you might, but with a fender caved in around a head-sized crater, this being the reason why you need cement in the first place.

And think about how bad it would look. You have to assume the police will investigate. At best, there’s a missing person, at worst, they already suspect homicide. “Where were you on the night of the 24th?” they’ll ask. If your answer is, “Buying cement,” you have a problem. Sure, you can lie. Say you were tucked up in bed. But that’s another thing to go wrong. Did you use your credit card to buy the cement? Did you visit an ATM for cash? They’ll find out. They’ll track down the clerk who served you. And that clerk will say, Yes, I do remember a sweaty, frightened-looking customer in urgent need of cement. I remember very well.

Consider how much better if you can simply trot down to the basement, flick on the light, and haul out those 60-pound bags of cement you stashed there for precisely such a contingency. No need to leave the house: just get mixing. You’ll have to pull up some floorboards, of course, or find a nice, quiet spot in the garden, and do quite a lot of digging. There is hard labor involved. I’m not saying it’ll be a breeze, something you can knock over before catching the end of Letterman and retiring to bed with a book. My point is when the payoff is avoiding spending the rest of your life in prison, it’s worth putting in some effort.

Like I said, I don’t plan on killing anybody. I’m a reasonable person. But I can’t say there’s absolutely zero chance that one day I’ll find myself with a dead body that needs hiding. I bet everyone thinks that, until it happens to them. It’s like insurance: I don’t really think my house will be destroyed by an earthquake, but I’m covered, just in case. Those kinds of things, I don’t like leaving to chance. I’m not a gambler. A bag of fast-setting cement retails for six dollars. A team of lawyers after the fact will cost me hundreds of thousands—and probably do less to keep me out of prison than timely application of cement. I think the economics speak for themselves.

Then there’s the peace of mind. You can’t put a price tag on that. Right now, even though I’m just home by myself, I feel a vague sense of unease. I know that through a series of strokes of misfortune, I could find myself with a body and no way to hide it. Having bags of cement in the basement, even though I’ll probably never use them, means I can relax. It’ll give me a warm feeling, just knowing they’re down there. Ready for a rainy day. I’m going to get some now.

Author’s Note: That was fiction.

[Writing] [link] [41 comments]

The Ad About Nothing

Microsoft has a new ad! And experts are divided over whether the quirky, banter-heavy, no-need-to-mention-a-product spot is 90 seconds of pure Seinfeldian genius, or a sad demonstration of what you get when you try to advertise something that has no selling points.

Well, when I say “divided:” Microsoft thinks it’s pretty neat, and everybody else seems underwhelmed. In the face of this howling gale of criticism, Microsoft has responded: That’s just what we wanted! The ad is just a “teaser,” they say, meant to “get the conversation going.”

The Associated Press picked up this idea, ending its article with:

Even if the reaction was mostly negative, Microsoft’s ad has clearly succeeded in getting people talking.

And it popped up in lots of other places, too:

“It was a very odd commercial but it has the effect that people are talking about it now… so didn’t they get their money’s worth?” wrote ‘Amanda.’

I wonder when we can kill the idea that even colossal marketing blunders are secretly brilliant, since they at least got people’s attention. Because it sounds like I’m being asked to believe Microsoft deliberately blew $300 million as a strategic move to get everybody talking about what a waste of money that was. That must have been some pitch meeting. “Here’s our idea: a series of pointless, meandering ad spots that don’t actually promote your product, but spark worldwide debate about what the hell you thought you were trying to accomplish. Everyone will be talking about it!”

Presumably this firm would go on to promote Presidential candidates by having them drown puppies on live TV. You can’t beat that kind of exposure.

Personally, I don’t mind this ad. It’s the introduction of a long campaign; they’re just warming up. I’m prepared to believe it will be effective and entertaining. But if it sucks, that won’t mean it’s genius in disguise. It’ll just mean it sucks.

[What Max Reckons] [link] [20 comments]

Orwell: Blogger

So are you following the Orwell diary? Me, I was in a state of near-sexual excitement when I heard they were posting George Orwell’s 1938-1942 diaries online, seventy years after he wrote them. But that’s a whole other story; back to Orwell. Imagine! A peek at the intimate thoughts of one of the 20th Century’s literary giants: a man whose searing intelligence produced works of majestic satire, whose vision seems to only grow more relevant.

What crackling intellectual thunderstorms, I wondered, raged inside this man’s head? In 1938, with a world war a mere twelve months away, what socio-political clouds did he see brewing? I signed up to the live feed right away. Orwell blogging: was there anything the man didn’t anticipate?

First entry, August 9: Orwell relates how he caught a snake. I wondered briefly whether this was a reference to the Munich Agreement—the snake could be Chamberlain or Hitler, maybe, even Daladier. But no. He was talking about an actual snake. Well, okay: I guess if I caught a snake, that would be exciting. I’m not sure I’d blog about it. But still. I could see, I suppose, that even one of the world’s great thinkers might, upon encountering a snake, temporarily cease pondering the human condition to remark, “Ooh, snake.”

Next entry, then:

August 10
Drizzly. Dense mist in evening. Yellow moon.

That’s the whole thing. All right, so maybe my expectations were a little high. He wasn’t writing essays. He was writing for himself. And the important thing wasn’t the prose; it was the train of thought.

August 26
Hot. Dense ground-mist early this morning. Many blackberries now ripe, very large & fairly sweet. Also fair number of dew-berries. Walnuts now nearly full sized. Plenty of English apples in the shops.

Lots of apples, really? Well, that’s… good, I guess. You need apples. The more the better. Especially in shops.

August 28
Night before last an hour’s rain. Yesterday hot & overcast. Today ditto, with a few drops of rain in the afternoon. The hop-picking due to start in about a week.

Hops-picking. You can’t begin looking forward to that too soon. Got to love the delicious anticipation of looming hops-picking.

August 29
Overcast & chilly. Heavy rain last night. Dahlias now in full bloom.

This was when I decided to claw out my eyes to relieve the boredom. At least then something would be happening.

They say you should never meet your idols, because you’ll only be disappointed. Maybe you shouldn’t read their diaries, either.

(Or their web sites, ha ha, yes, very clever.)

[Writing] [link] [14 comments]

Making Sense of Babel

Atheism seems to be on the rise lately. I say this as someone who has examined no studies nor historical data, but who reads a lot of web sites. I see more people more comfortable with declaring their atheism than ever before. I think it’s at least partly because of the internet, which provides a meeting-place for sharing and reinforcing ideologies: that’s something new for atheists, whereas people of various faiths have always had churches, plus, in many places, pervasive support from their community.

And the internet is not only good at uniting geographically dispersed but like-minded people: it’s also disproportionately popular amongst people with technical and scientific backgrounds, who in turn are disproportionately atheist. So, on balance, the web seems to me to be a net negative for major religion.

Which got me thinking of the Tower of Babel*. According to the Bible, a great tower was built long ago in the city of Babylon; the builders of said tower were a little too pleased with themselves and their achievement, at least for God’s liking. There’s a whiff of the Titanic about this story: arrogance so great that it practically begs for comeuppance.

Which God delivers, of course. It didn’t take much to set God off in the Old Testament; he’d smite you for a backward look. But here, he reacts in a way that at first seems a little odd: no smiting, no plagues; he doesn’t even—stop me if I have this wrong—destroy the tower:

And the LORD said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.

Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech.

God is not concerned about the tower itself, or even the arrogance of its builders. That makes sense to me: you can be arrogant in any language, just look at France. God’s issue is with the ease of global communications.

So, as a story about the internet’s role in the decline of organized religion, the Tower of Babel makes perfect sense. I think that’s nifty.

(* Note: Religion is one of those touchy subjects you can’t write about without people looking for hidden agendas. Which is a shame, because religions are crammed full of stories that are interesting and meaningful regardless of how true you consider them to be. In the interests of full disclosure, I personally don’t believe the Bible to be a non-fiction work, but I hope that doesn’t bother you too much, and we can still be friends.)

[What Max Reckons] [link] [30 comments]

House of Cuteness & Horror

A lot of parenting is like this: your gorgeous almost-three-year old daughter hops toward you, shouting, “Look, Daddy! Big jumps!” and you think: I hope she doesn’t trip and impale herself on that tree branch.

I don’t think I’m especially paranoid, but when I’m playing with Fin, I get flashes of her horrifically injuring herself about every ten minutes. When she actually does hurt herself, I’m mostly just relieved, because it’s so much better than it was in my head.

It’s a little weird to have your life filled with interlocking moments of joy and abject terror. They don’t mention that in the parenting books.

The other way parenting is like a horror show is how you periodically stumble past dolls arranged as crime scenes. Maybe it’s just me, but when I see something like this, I can’t help but think multi-vehicle pile-up:

And this strikes me not so much as “laundry day for Miffy” as “Hostel 3”:

And I’m sorry, I know Baby Puss got wet in the bath and needed to be dried, but there is no way to look at this and not see a baby on a hook:

But then you see this and forget all about it.

By the way, sorry for that long break between blogs. What the hell was I doing? I don’t even know.

[Max] [link] [25 comments]