I am Two-Face to Maynard James Keenan's Joker

Last week, I bought a few music CDs. Like, CDs with music already on them. And not MP3s. I know, totally old school, but I'm an old school kind of guy. Anyway, a couple of them were from a band called A Perfect Circle which features Maynard James Keenan, the lead singer of Tool. I had never heard any music by this band, but I like Tool and Keenan has a distinctive and strong voice so I took a chance. But the band isn't what this is about.

The CDs I got were their first and second albums Mer de Noms and Thirteenth Step. On the back of the Thirteenth Step CD case, it says "Copy Controlled", which I assumed was some technology to prevent people from making copies of the disk. It never occurred to me that this would prevent the tracks on the disk from being ripped by programs like iTunes, because everyone uses iTunes or Windows Media Player or something like that, right? I mean, considering the number of iPods and other MP3 players out there (recent surveys say there are approximately 4.23 gazillion of them), no record company in their right mind would knowingly put technology on an audio CD that prevented it from being imported into iTunes. Would they? Yes. Yes, they would.

(Note that I'm giving the record companies the benefit of the doubt here. It's possible that they've done this so that people who wanted MP3 copies would be forced to buy the album twice. I'm going to assume that the copy protection is there solely to prevent piracy and not as a way to rip off consumers.)

Neither iTunes nor Windows Media Player can read the disk at all. I can't even play the disk on my computer. So now I have an audio CD that I legally own and yet I cannot listen to it on my computer or iPod. If I'm in the car, I could use the CD there (if it works on that player), but that means either leaving it in the car all the time or deciding in advance what music I'm going to listen to when driving. That's a pain, and avoiding that is the reason I bought an iPod in the first place. I sometimes listen to music at work through my iPod, but this album would be unavailable. The other A Perfect Circle album rips and plays fine. Keenan's voice is obviously a big part of it, but the songs are shorter than Tool, and a little more mainstream. There is far less ambient stuff – one of the songs on Undertow (a Tool album I also bought) (and successfully ripped) contains almost ten minutes of near-silence. But the band isn't what this is about.

So what are my alternatives? I've searched the internet and have found some instructions on how to rip such CDs, so I may try one of those. I could just buy the album digitally, but that means paying for it twice and since I haven't even been able to listen to it yet, I'm a little reluctant to pay again. But there's another alternative.

I could steal it.

I could probably search the internet and find an illegal copy of the album someplace and download it in ten minutes. Make no mistake, I realize that this is theft, but I already paid for the album, so the band / record company is not really losing out on anything if I download it. At least, I could use that logic to justify it to myself. But I'm not a music pirate.

I work in the software industry. The software package I work on is not a huge piracy target, but the concept is clear – people downloading SQL Anywhere and not paying for it are stealing from my company. Similarly, downloading A Perfect Circle would be stealing from the record company and, indirectly, the band members themselves.

I'm also a little gun-shy. A few years ago, I downloaded some torrents of TV shows (just episodes I missed of CSI or something from network TV, not PPV or anything), and I got an email from my ISP saying "we've been told that you're downloading copyrighted material. You'd better stop." I did stop, and so if I decide to look for A Perfect Circle's album online, I'm a little concerned that I'll get caught and they'll cut off my internet.

So integrity and fear means that I probably won't steal it. If the methods I've found of ripping the CD don't work, I'll probably just buy the damn thing online. I'll grumble and I'll complain, but I'll fork over the $10. And I'll probably buy their third album as well. But the thought of downloading a pirated copy of the album did cross my mind, and not just for a few seconds. I seriously considered it.

The record industry is trying to prevent piracy, but the method they've chosen (this type of copy protection) is making a non-pirate like me consider stealing the album. They have taken a law-abiding citizen who is against piracy and turned him into a potential criminal.

Talk about unintended consequences.

Toxic thinking

I've been seeing more and more articles and blog postings like this one recently, all about "detoxifying" your home or your life or your body. They all talk about these vague "toxins" generally but never say what toxins. Then they talk about some of the dangers to society and how to either avoid or fix them but most of the time, the "dangers" aren't actually dangerous and the "solutions" are either non-existent, ineffective because they don't work, or ineffective because there's no problem to solve in the first place.

The author of this story has a son who was diagnosed with autism and says that our "toxic" environment is the cause for her son's illness. (Somewhat surprisingly, she makes no mention of vaccines.) She then describes ways to "de-toxify" your life. She certainly makes some good points in the article – drink water instead of other stuff, eat lots of fresh fruits and vegetables, avoid processed snacks, eat rice crackers or veggie chips, go to farmers markets, these are all great suggestions. But here are some of the points she makes that directly contradict modern science and medicine:

The world in which our children are currently growing up, is significantly more toxic than the one in which we did as children, exponentially more so than our parents.

Really? How do you figure? We and our parents lived through lead (in the pipes, paint, toys, etc.), asbestos, DDT, Thalidomide, and other actual toxins, all of which are now known to cause no end of health problems. Specifically what toxins are you talking about that are significantly or exponentially worse than those?

We know organic is best. Food dyes and colors make our kids wild. GMOs are terrifying. Gluten, soy, corn, and dairy are the high allergens and can cause all sorts of issues. Juice is unnecessary sugar and calories.

Nope, probably not, nope, nope (provisionally), OK. Organic food is no healthier or safer than non-organic (See references 1, 2). I did read about a study that food dyes may cause hyperactivity in children, but the FDA in the US has thus far declared that "a causal relationship between exposure to color additives and hyperactivity in children in the general population has not been established" (3). GMO food is no less healthy or safe than non-GMO (4). If you have Celiac disease, gluten is certainly something you want to avoid. But if you don't, it's harmless (5). Soy, corn, and dairy are indeed allergens and can cause all kinds of problems if you are allergic. But I could find no articles indicating that they're a problem if you are not allergic. (6). The juice one I'd agree with.

Allopathic medicine is a term coined by Samuel Hahnemann, the father of Homeopathy, in reference to ‘mainstream Western medicine’. In simple terms, it refers to our constant need to address and suppress every symptom our body sends us of illness.

"Western medicine just treats the symptoms" is a common misconception in the alternative medicine community. If that were true, doctors wouldn't prescribe antibiotics for pneumonia, they'd just give you a cough suppressant. If you have pain because of appendicitis, do they treat the pain? No, they remove the appendix – that's treating the cause, not the symptom. I recently heard Dr. Steven Novella (a neurologist and prof at the Yale School of Medicine) talking about this, and he said that other than managing the pain of terminal patients to make them comfortable, so-called "Western" medicine is entirely about treating the cause of health problems and not just the symptoms. So is alternative medicine, but the two just disagree on how to determine the causes. Western medicine uses science, alternative medicine uses magic.

I had severe acute pancreatitis a few years ago and spent two months in the hospital. One of my biggest symptoms was intense pain, caused by my pancreas effectively choking on a gallstone. Did the doctors treat my pain? Of course they did. They also performed major abdominal surgery, an MRI, several X-rays and ultrasounds, countless CT scans and a number of other procedures to deal with the cause of this condition, not just the pain. Three years later, except for being a type 2 diabetic I am fully back to normal, and I owe my life to those doctors and nurses. How would an acupuncturist deal with pancreatitis? They wouldn't – they'd either (a) send you to a hospital because they know they can do nothing, or (b) ironically attempt to treat the pain and not the cause, thereby killing you.

The author says that fever is our body's natural reaction to an infection (true) and that we shouldn't attempt to reduce the fever because of that. But then a couple of paragraphs later, she says we should use "good old fashioned 'grandmas recipes'… like placing the soles of the feet in water for a fever". Didn't she just say we should not try to reduce fever?

Look to Homeopathy. … Or find a local homeopath to work with, Queen Elizabeth does!

Not only has homeopathy never been proven effective, it's actually harmful to those who would use it instead of seeing a real doctor and getting real medication (7). In fact, there is no known mechanism by which it could be effective.  It's nothing but water or a sugar pill – the very definition of placebo. The fact that Queen Elizabeth has been duped into using homeopathy means nothing.

And finally EMF. Electromagnetic Fields. We live in a world of wireless. There are frequencies from our cell phones, internet connections, microwaves, smart TVs, etc, all around us and our cells are not accustomed to that. The damage is not yet fully known.

Electromagnetic sensitivity has repeatedly been shown to be nonexistent. People who claim that they are negatively affected by electromagnetic fields consistently show symptoms until proper blinding is added. When they don't already know whether they are being exposed or not, they can't tell. (8, 9)

The article then links to a couple of web sites that sell products that are supposed to help people with EMF sensitivity. Since EMF sensitivity doesn't exist, these products can't work, and some of the claims they make are ridiculous. But that doesn't stop these people from charging $89 for something that "protects you from cell phone radiation",  between $310 and $380 for a plate that "clears EMF pollution and geopathic stress", and even $160 for the ultimate in irony: a USB thingy that uses your wifi router to somehow broadcast EMF protection.

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These kind of articles frustrate me to no end, because the more articles like this there are, the more likely people are to read them and believe them. Science and modern "Western" medicine has given us the world we live in today – people are healthier now than ever before, life spans are longer, fewer people are dying of hunger, and so on. We haven't solved all the problems – people do still die of hunger and there are still many diseases that science has not yet found answers for – but the human average lifespan has more than doubled since 1900 and that's due to science, not to people harmonizing their life energy field with that of the earth.

The entire goal of science is and has always been to advance human knowledge. So why is it that so many people are now rejecting science and getting their health information from whoever on the internet? They ignore just about every doctor in the world and listen to Jenny McCarthy when it comes to vaccines. They believe that anything "all-natural" must be healthier than anything that's not (as I've said before, e. coli and salmonella are all-natural, while Tylenol is not). They read Natural News and believe the guy who tries to convince the world (without evidence) that the entire healthcare and pharmaceutical industries worldwide are global conspiracies and that millions of people wouldn't die of cancer every year if they just listened to him.

The worst part is that it's not just the cranks and tinfoil-hat people who believe this stuff – the general public seems to think that GMO food will kill us all and that obviously organic food is healthier than non-organic. What happens if some company uses genetic modification to create a type of wheat or rice or corn or whatever that is resistant to diseases and has extra nutrients and can be stored for longer without going bad and allows farms to increase their yield tenfold? Note that this is not outside the realm of possibility – these kinds of things are why we do genetic manipulation in the first place. Crops like this could solve much of the world's hunger problems (and yes I know that's a little simplistic) but if enough people are scared of GMO food, it may not matter because the research will get shut down before we get there. That's really sad.

I can only hope that sometime in the not-too-distant future, people start embracing science once again and abandoning things like medicine based on magic or remedies that are popular only because they were used in China a few thousand years ago or fear of things just because they are not well understood. Let's start moving human knowledge forwards again, not pushing it backwards.

References

Unlike the original article, I am including references for all the claims I've made here.

1. The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition
2. The Annals of Internal Medicine, produced by the American College of Physicians
3. An FDA quote from CBS Chicago
4. The World Health Organization. You may disagree with the business practices and policies of GMO companies like Monsanto, but that's a problem with the companies, not the GMO food itself.
5. The Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics
6. No references here, because I couldn't find any from reliable science-based medicine sites talking about corn or soy problems or dairy problems that weren't related to lactose-intolerance. But bullshit sites like Natural News were filled with articles saying dairy is universally harmful, which implies to me that it's not.
7. The Journal of Medical Ethics
8. Psychosomatic Medicine, from the Journal of Biobehavioral Medicine
9. The World Health Organization

Horseshoe Adventure Park

Horseshoe Valley is one of the most popular skiing destinations in Ontario. But if you have a hotel that's full all winter and empty all summer, what do you do? Easy – you set up some stuff to do in the summer, and that's what the Horseshoe Valley people decided to do. They created Horseshoe Adventure Park and gave people a reason to come out in the summer as well. Last week, we spent my birthday there and had a fantastic day, even if the original reason we were going was not even available.

A few years ago, we started a new Christmas tradition. Each of the four of us would come up with something that we wanted to do (some sort of outing), and make up a poster about it. Then after Christmas, we'd schedule these outings throughout the year. The only rules were that it had to be less than $200 (or at least close), and it had to be close enough to make it a day trip. The first year we went snowboarding, to an aquarium in Niagara Falls, and canoeing on the Grand River near Paris. (We only did three because Gail and I coincidentally both chose canoeing.) Since then we've been to another aquarium, the HMCS Haida in Hamilton, a butterfly conservatory, and skating at Nathan Phillips Square.

This past Christmas, Nicky's poster was for Horseshoe Adventure Park, which had a thing called Aqua Ogo which he was dying to do. In a nutshell, the Aqua Ogo is a big rubber ball with water in it. Two people get in the ball and then you are pushed down a hill. Here's a video of Rick Mercer at the park riding motorbikes (which I don't remember seeing) and the Aqua Ogo. Nicky thought this would be the greatest thing ever (and it does look like fun) and so we planned on going sometime over the summer. When Gail found a WagJag coupon to get us in at half-price, that made it even better. We ended up going on my birthday just because it was a convenient day rather than a birthday present for me.

But a couple of weeks before we went, Gail got an email from WagJag saying that the Aqua Ogo (which was included in the package we bought) had been shut down until further notice. No further details were given, but we assumed that someone had gotten injured and the ride was shut down until (a) any pending lawsuits were settled, and/or (b) the safety of the ride was improved. Nicky was pretty disappointed, but we decided to go to the park anyway.

The other major attraction was the zip line, billed as the fastest in Ontario. This was a blast. I'm not always Mr. Thrill Seeker, in that I'm too chicken nervous to bungee jump or skydive or things like that (I don't even do tall roller coasters), and I have to admit I was a little concerned at the top of the tower that I would be terrified the whole way down. Some people find being terrified exhilarating. Not me. But no more than a few feet down the line, I realized that this was going to be fun. It went fast enough to make it fun but not so fast that I felt out of control – not that there were any brakes or any way to get control should I have needed to. Nicky and I went at the same time and as I pointed out to him at the end, I totally dusted him – without even trying. (Thanks, gravity.) Gail's as much of a thrill seeker as I am, but she loved it as well. And thanks to the closure of the Aqua Ogo, three of us got to go a second time.

After the zip line, we wanted to try another thing called Treetop Trekking, which was basically a high ropes course through the trees. This looked fun as well, but after we filled in the waiver forms we found that reservations were strongly recommended, and we didn't have one. Since they were fully booked for the rest of the day, we were out of luck. We had no idea that we needed to make reservations so we missed out entirely on this part of the park. Dear WagJag / Horseshoe Valley: you really should add that into the description of the attraction. The Horseshoe web site makes that clear, but the WagJag thing did not.

But this place had even more to do. There is a beautiful mini golf course built into the side of a hill. It was well-designed and well-built and had nice waterfalls and wooden fences and gardens throughout. There is a big rock-climbing wall though the boys didn't have a chance to try it. There's a "Euro Bungy" thing, with trampolines and bungee cords that bounce you 10+ feet in the air. There's a big maze which is fairly easy once you figure out the secret (both boys timed themselves getting through it after they figured it out – 50 seconds for Ryan, 49 seconds for Nicky) but until then, it's tougher than it looks and a lot of fun.

I mentioned earlier that three of us got to do the zip line twice. We each got a ticket as part of our package deal, and because the Aqua Ogo was closed, we all got the option of either a second zip line ticket or a "mining" bag, which was a bag of dirt containing small gem stones. Gail wasn't sure she was going to want to go on the zip line twice and Nicky loves to collect rocks so Gail chose the dirt (and then Nicky walked around all day paraphrasing Captain Jack Sparrow – "I've got a bag o' dirt!"). Turned out that she enjoyed the zip line enough that she could have gone again, but we had some fun using a sluice to filter out the rocks from the dirt and got a little collection of chunks of topaz, amethyst, and obsidian. The last thing we did before we had to leave was Archery Tag, which is just what it sounds like. You get a bow and some arrows, and you try to hit other people to knock them out of the game. This sounds like just about the least safe activity you can imagine, but everyone is wearing a helmet with a full face mask, and the arrows have a big cushiony thing at the point that looks like a marshmallow. This not only cushions the impact so it doesn't hurt but it slows the arrow down significantly – enough that Ryan was able to catch one out of the air. For a while it was just me against Nicky and Ryan (with photographer Gail covering from the sidelines), and then another family joined so it was the three of us against the four of them. They were clearly more skilled at this sport than we were, since I was knocked out less than a minute into the game, and by the time the game had ended, they had knocked Nicky and finally Ryan out as well while we took out none of them. This was also a lot of fun, though I felt a little weird shooting arrows at my kids.

This isn't the cheapest place around, but it's not outrageous either. The package we bought would have cost us $25 each plus another $45 for three extra zip line rides. The WagJag was about $50 for the four of us and that included the extra zip line rides (and the bag o' dirt) because of the Aqua Ogo closure. There was your standard snack bar / chip wagon, and I believe there's a full restaurant in the hotel though we never went in there. There was even a big pavilion for some shade and lots of picnic tables around. We had a ton of fun and Gail will be scouring WagJag for a similar deal so we can go back next summer. Truth be told, we had enough fun that we'll probably go even if we can't find a deal, but don't tell the Horseshoe people that.

More pictures:

	View from the top of the zip line. You can just see Ryan on his way down.
	Ryan going hands-free
	Graeme going hands-free
	Nicky didn't get the hands-free memo and is having more fun that it appears
	Ryan showing fine form
	Nicky prefers the crossbow stance
	The maze

Give up telling people about Facebook hoaxes? Done.

Yet another "Facebook is making all your data public!" hoax is making the rounds. This one has to do with the new Facebook Graph thing that was just rolled out over the last couple of weeks. And once again, as we see so often, people are posting it without thinking. Here's the text:

Hello to all of you who are on my list of contacts of Facebook. I would like to ask a favor of you…. You may not know that Facebook has changed its privacy configuration once again. Thanks to the new “Graphic app”, any person in Facebook anywhere in the world can see our photos, our “likes” and our “comments”. During the next two weeks, I am going to keep this message posted and I ask you to do the following and comment “DONE”. Those of my friends who do not maintain my information in private will be eliminated from my list of friends, because I want the information I share with you, my friends, to remain among my friends and not be available to the whole world. I want to be able to publish photos of my friends and family without strangers being able to see them which is what happens now when you choose “like” or “comment”.

Unfortunately we cannot change this configuration because Facebook has made it like this. So, please, place your cursor over my photo that appears in this box (without clicking) and a window will open. Now move the cursor to the word “Friends”, again without clicking and then on “Settings”. Uncheck “Life Events” and “Comments and Like”. This way my activity with my family and friends will no longer be made public. Now, copy and paste this text on your own wall (do not “share” it!). Once I see it published on your page, I will un-check the same for you. Thanks so much!!

Let's do some critical thinking and examine this, shall we?

1. Facebook has over a billion users. Granted, the company has never been known for its tight security and in the past they have changed default settings (i.e. those for new users or those who were using the defaults anyway) so that they were less secure than before. But changing existing security settings would likely piss a lot of people off. Are they likely to do this?
2. Facebook security settings are kind of silly anyway. You should always assume that anything you post on Facebook or anywhere else on the internet will be available to everyone in the world forever. Regardless of what you post and how you attempt to protect it, there's nothing stopping someone from cutting and pasting it or taking a screen shot and posting that or even printing it on a piece of paper. Internet privacy is, for the most part, an oxymoron.
3. The average number of friends that any one person has is 130 (reference). Some have many more than this – I know people with 500+ friends. If you post this request and 75% of your friends respond, you're going to have almost 100 comments on that posting (or hundreds if you're really popular). Did you really plan to go through your entire friends list in a couple of weeks one by one and "unfriend" those who didn't respond? Admit it, this was an empty threat.
4. If you really pay attention to the security settings, you should realize that what you're telling people to do is actually change their own settings so that they will not see your "life events" or "comments and likes". It has nothing to do with what other people will see.
5. With very rare exceptions, any time you see a posting asking you to repost it or send it to all your friends, it's almost certainly a hoax. This has been true for many Facebook hoaxes as well as email chain letters and such that I've been seeing for over twenty years.

I don't expect everyone to immediately realize that these things are fake; they are getting more and more "realistic" and I've seen people who really should know better get caught by them. But surely anyone who's been on Facebook for more than a year has seen a few of these, and know better, right? 'fraid not.

I saw one the other day and left a comment (the very first comment on the posting) saying that it was a hoax. By the next morning, there were three "Done" comments – obviously these people had taken the time to read the entire posting and believe it, but not to read my one-line comment and believe it. I guess this makes sense, since these people are friends of the original poster but none of them knew me. Why should they believe me? So I left another comment with a link to the snopes.com article about it. Surely that will convince people, won't it? By the end of the day, here's what I saw:

<bangs head on desk repeatedly>

Oh Canada! Ribfest 2013

Waterdown's 4th Annual Oh Canada! Ribfest was a couple of weeks ago, and I almost forgot to write about it! This is hardly a disaster – probably the only person who'll read it is me next year when we try to remember who we liked this year. Articles describing previous years are here: 2010, 2011, and 2012.

Anyway, I love this event and look forward to it all year. We had the same seven ribbers as last year, but my opinions of some were quite different. They were:

Kentucky Smokehouse – The ribs were pretty good, though the few at the very end of the rack were pretty tough. This is not unusual for ribs, but these ones were impossible to eat. The sauce had a bit of kick though, and we bought a bottle of it to take home. I believe these guys ended up second in the people's choice awards.

Silver Bullet – These guys had our favourite sauce in previous years and this year it was still pretty good, but I found it sweeter than before. Their ribs were really good. For the third straight year, we bought a bottle of their sauce, and also bought a pound of pulled pork to take home.

Bone Daddy – My personal favourites this year. The sauce was nice and smoky and the ribs were great. I believe they won the judges voting this year.

Ribs Royale – Once again, we were somewhat disappointed with these guys. Their sauce wasn't bad, but the ribs didn't have much meat and were tough.

Tennessee Fatbacks – Wasn't too impressed with them last year and no huge improvement this year. The ribs were juicy so that was good, but the sauce was kind of bland.

Camp 31 – Last year I said their sauce wasn't as sweet as the year before, but this year it was sweeter again. The ribs weren't great though – kind of chewy.

Boss Hog – The ribs were dry, but the sauce was good and spicy.

I just realized that I've written this article with the implicit assumption that sweeter sauce = bad, spicier sauce = good. That's not always the case – some sweeter sauces are really good – and of course, it's only my opinion, but I do tend to prefer smoky and spicy sauces over sweet ones.

We volunteered once again this year, but didn't get off our butts to sign up until quite late, so there were only a handful of spots open that we could make. We ended up at one of the recycling tents again, and I have to say that these are a fantastic idea. There are no garbage cans in the park at all, just three or four recycling tents where people bring all of their waste. All the rib containers were made of cardboard and so they were compostable, along with all the food leftovers. All the plastic cutlery, beer cups, pop cans, and little plastic cups for sauce were recyclable, so there were blue bins for those. Even the coffee cup lids from Tim Horton's (across the street) were recyclable and the cups themselves were compostable. Probably 95% of the time, we removed forks from the rib containers, threw the forks in the blue bin, and dropped the rest into the compost bag.

The only things that were thrown in the actual garbage were straws, plastic candy wrappers, and, ironically, the ties that held the bundles of empty compost bags together. Oh, and one used diaper. We stayed in the same tent for four hours and didn't collect enough garbage to warrant changing the garbage bag at all. Meanwhile, I must have carried 20 four-foot-tall compost bags and 7 or 8 huge bags of recycling over to the collection area.

In previous articles, I wrote about the bands we saw playing during the day, but this year I only know of one for sure: Borrowed Time, which is my friend Ron's band. We arrived shortly before they finished their set so I only saw a couple of songs, but they were good, especially considering they had only been together for several weeks. The oom-pah-pah band (with the great name of Subourbon Street) that's there every year were there again, there was a guy that sang and played guitar by himself, and there was at least one band that played mostly Canadian classic rock (I distinctly remember hearing Trooper, Doug and the Slugs, and the Tragically Hip), so I enjoyed them.

It was a little cooler this year than in previous years. But that just means mid-20's rather than mid-30's, which was beautiful. Like I said, I look forward to this every year, and this year Waterdown is having a chili festival in September. That's only one day rather than a whole weekend, but I'm already looking forward to that as well. Then maybe we'll head to the Westfield ice cream festival and the Winona peach festival. You just can't have too many festivals dedicated to food!

Sad songs say so much

When I was a kid, between ages 7 and 10, I was a Wolf Cub (now called a Cub Scout). I had the Cub Book which contained a list of all the badges and stars, ideas for things to do at camps or outdoors, lyrics to campfire songs, and lots of other Cub-related stuff. One of the campfire songs was My Darlin' Clementine. I only knew the chorus of the song, which included the lines "You are lost and gone forever, oh my darlin' Clementine." I didn't know the rest of the words, so I figured it was about a man whose wife or girlfriend had left him, a theme not uncommon in songs. One day I read the actual lyrics and found that Clementine was actually the guy's daughter and she didn't just leave, she drowned in a river. She died. I was stunned. This was about the saddest thing I'd ever read and from that day on, I hated that song for making me sad. I didn't even want to look at that page in the Cub Book again. No word of a lie, I memorized what page it was on and intentionally skipped it when looking through the book for anything.

That experience taught me at an early age just how much of an effect music can have on a person emotionally. Here are a few other (non-campfire) songs that tug on the ol' heartstrings.

Hold on – Sarah McLachlan

This is a heartbreaking song about a woman tending to her dying husband. She switches back and forth between hoping that he'll get better and accepting the fact that he's not going to. Sample lyrics:

So now you're sleeping peaceful
I lie awake and pray
That you'll be strong tomorrow
And we'll see another day
And we will praise it
And love the light that brings a smile
Across your face

Oh God, the man I love is leaving
Won't you take him when he comes to your door

Castle on a Cloud – Les Misérables (young Cosette)

I wrote about this one many years ago, when I said "No child should ever have to feel that much despair". It's sung by Cosette, a young girl whose mother died when she was a baby and has lived in poverty and neglect ever since. She dreams of a place where she would experience none of the terrible things that happen to her on a normal day.

There is a lady all in white
Holds me and sings me a lullaby
She's nice to see and she's soft to touch
She says "Cosette, I love you very much"

I know a place where no one's lost
I know a place where no one cries
Crying at all is not allowed
Not in my castle on a cloud

4AM – Our Lady Peace

This one is about a man with a strained relationship with his father, who is filled with regret after he passes away.

Walked around  my good intentions
And found that there were none
I blamed my father for the wasted years
We hardly talked
Never thought I would forget this hate
Then a phone call made me realize I'm wrong

If I don't make it known that I've loved you all along
Just like sunny days that we ignore because
We're all dumb and jaded
And I hope to God I figure out what's wrong

The River – Bruce Springsteen

A ballad about a young couple who married young when she became pregnant. They then watched their dreams fade away and their lives pass them by.

We went down to the courthouse
And the judge put it all to rest
No wedding day smiles, no walk down the aisle
No flowers, no wedding dress

Now all them things that seemed so important
Well mister, they vanished right into the air
Now I act like I don't remember
Mary acts like she don't care

Cat's in the Cradle – Harry Chapin

Possibly the quintessential tearjerker song. It's about a father who never makes time for his son only to find that once he's older and finally wants to spend time with him, the son has no time for his father. Excuse me for a minute while I go hug my kids. <Muzak> OK, I'm back now.

My son turned ten just the other day
He said, "Thanks for the ball, Dad, come on let's play
Can you teach me to throw", I said "Not today
I got a lot to do", he said, "That's ok"
And he walked away but his smile never dimmed
And said, "I'm gonna be like him, yeah
You know I'm gonna be like him"

I've long since retired, my son's moved away
I called him up just the other day
I said, "I'd like to see you if you don't mind"
He said, "I'd love to, Dad, if I can find the time
You see my new job's a hassle and kids have the flu
But it's sure nice talking to you, Dad
It's been sure nice talking to you"

And as I hung up the phone it occurred to me
He'd grown up just like me
My boy was just like me

A Month of Sundays – Don Henley

This is a retired farmer talking about his life, some of the hardships he's been through, and how different things are now. The song touches on politics but doesn't get preachy (unlike a few other Henley songs), but the last line (listed below) is the one that really gets to me.

I've seen dog days and dusty days,
Late spring snow and early fall sleet
I've held the leather reins in my hands
I've felt the soft ground under my feet
Between the hot, dry weather and the taxes and the cold war
It's been hard to make ends meet
But I always kept the clothes on our backs
I always put the shoes on our feet

The big boys, they all got computers
Got incorporated too
Me, I just know how to raise things
That was all I ever knew
And now it all comes down to numbers
Now I'm glad that I have quit
Folks these days just don't do nothin'
Simply for the love of it

I sit here on the back porch in the twilight
And I hear the crickets hum
I sit and watch the lightning in the distance
But the showers never come
I sit here and listen to the wind blow
I sit here and rub my hands
I sit here and listen to the clock strike,
And I wonder when I'll see my companion again

Man, is it ever getting dusty in here. <sniff>

My first business trip: Elizabethtown, PA

I have loved programming computers since I wrote my first program on my Commodore VIC-20 back in grade 9 (that would be 1982 – damn I'm old). I also got pretty good at it, which explains why I'm still doing it over 30 years later. Being a programmer has had many rewards for me over the years, and one of the perks (before Sybase/SAP, anyway) was travel. I worked for Microsoft in Redmond, Washington for four months on my last university co-op work term, and flew out there again a few months later for grad interviews. While working for Corel, I went to New York City for a day. I was only at Comnetix for three years, but while I was there I went to Boston countless times (roughly once a month for those three years, sometimes for weeks at a time), Washington DC, New York City (again, for a day), Ottawa, San Francisco twice, Naples Florida, and I would have gone to Spain for a project if I hadn't already had a vacation booked at the time. In my sixteen years at Sybase, I've only been on three business trips, all to Baltimore, but now that I have a family, I'm fine with that.

But my very first programming-related trip was to Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania. Now I know the programmers among you are wondering "Damn, Graeme, how did you score that?" This is a place that I would wager very few of you have ventured. And if you actually used the term score, you have definitely never been.*

When I was in grade 12 (this would be the spring of 1986), a few of us were asked by our computer science teacher Miss Gray if we wanted to participate in a programming contest run by the American Computer Science League. We would be given a few questions, and we'd have a limited amount of time to write programs to answer the questions. This sounded like fun, so we entered and did really well – well enough to garner a trip to the finals. And not just the Canadian finals, this was for high school students across Canada and the US. (Actually, another guy that went, Faisal, reminded me that we didn't actually make the finals, but some other team wasn't able to make the trip so we took their place.) The finals were held in, you guessed it, Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania. Five of us were chosen to go: me, Faisal, Glen M., Glen F., and Paul. Miss Gray and our school principal Mr. Peleschak came too.

Mr. Peleschak was an interesting guy. He was the principal of the school for our entire five years there. He was an older gentleman, very friendly, almost grandfatherly. He had a full grey beard and always wore a smile. Back in the politically incorrect past, every school day began with a recording of O Canada followed by the Lord's Prayer. (I remember being a defiant atheist and not bowing my head during the prayer. I was such a rebel.) There were numerous different recordings of the Lord's Prayer, all done by Mr. Peleschak himself, and all different in some way. For example, in some he said "forgive us our trespasses", others had "forgive us our sins", and still others had "forgive us our debts". His various forms of prayer earned him the nickname "The Pope". Note that this was not a Catholic school.

We all drove down in Mr. Peleschak's van, and I think I remember more about the trip down and back than the contest itself. iPods were still 15 years away, so a few of us brought tapes and Walkmans (Walkmen?) to listen to music. Mr. Peleschak said he would put our tapes in the van's tape player so we could all listen, but we'd have to alternate – one of our tapes, then one of his. This was OK with us, except that all of his were John Denver. I wasn't much of a John Denver fan at the time and after that trip, I'm still not. But I don't think Mr. Peleschak was much of a Triumph or Van Halen fan, so I guess we were all even. Mr. Peleschak also smoked a pipe, so now and again the van was filled with pipe smoke (though I believe he opened a window when he lit it). Certainly by the end of the drive I was sick of the smell, but I did have to admit it was better than cigar or cigarette smoke.

The contest was being held at Elizabethtown College, and all the competitors stayed in residences there. Faisal and I were in one room (foreshadowing our time at the University of Waterloo, when we were roommates or housemates for almost four years), the two Glens were in another, and Paul was the lucky one who got to bunk with Mr. Peleschak. Miss Gray got her own room. I have no memory of what we did for food, or even how many nights we were there. Everyone got a welcome package, though the only thing I remember it including was a baby blue frisbee with "American Computer Science League" on it. Outside the residence where we were staying was a large open area. I don't remember if it was a football field or just a big green space but much of the time we were there, there were blue frisbees flying all over the place. Twenty-seven years later, I still have mine (pictured above). The words have faded a little, but it's still functional. It takes a lot to break a frisbee, when you think about it.

The contest itself was a complete disaster for our team. Each team could request the types of computers they needed, and we asked for Commodore PETs, which were the computers we were using at school. When we arrived, we found that they had provided us with the right machines though an older model. But the problem was that they had a different language installed. The machines shipped with a version of the BASIC language, but our school computers were using Waterloo Structured BASIC**, which was BASIC with extra stuff added. We were forced to adapt to using regular BASIC, and while not a huge disadvantage, it was certainly frustrating and distracting. I don't remember where we finished exactly, but I have a feeling we might have had full solutions for one or maybe two of the five questions, and partial solutions for the rest. And I think "partial solution" is pretty generous. In short, we got smoked.

The way home should have been memorable, since we stopped at Hersheypark in nearby Hershey for a day of fun. But the only thing I remember about that part of the trip were the street lights in town (shaped like Hershey Kisses) and the fact that many of the street names were chocolate-related. I have no memories of the park itself, though apparently we played mini-golf, since Miss Gray wrote something in my grade 12 yearbook about that.

About a year and a half after this contest, I began my studies at the University of Waterloo, though I didn't choose computer science as a major until second year. I guess my next computer-related trip was to Seattle in 1991 to work at Microsoft. That trip was pretty memorable as well, but you always remember your first.

---

* – That was just a joke, really. I have no negative memories of Elizabethtown itself, though we made fun of the place while we were there because it was so small. We lived in a town of about 50,000 just outside of Toronto, a city of 4 million. Elizabethtown had a few thousand people and wasn't close to anything big. At one point we saw three people walking together and Faisal said "hey look, an Elizabethtown gang!"

** – This ended up being an interesting coincidence years later. Waterloo Structured Basic was developed by a company called Waterloo Computing Systems, which later renamed itself WATCOM. In 1994, WATCOM was acquired by Powersoft, and a year later Powersoft was acquired by Sybase. I started working for Sybase, in the same office where WATCOM was located and with many of the same people, in 1997. We've moved buildings but I'm still there, and some of the people who were on the languages team in the '80s are also still there though many have moved on and some have retired.

Help the Iroquois get back in the blue

I don't write about lacrosse here very often anymore, since I have a separate lacrosse blog. But this is an important issue and, dear readers, your help is needed. I've posted this article there as well.

In 2010, the World Lacrosse Championships (field lacrosse) were held in England. A controversy erupted when the UK refused to allow the Iroquois Nationals team into the country. The Iroquois team is entirely separate from the Canadian and US teams and is one of the top teams in the world. The team uses passports issued by the sovereign Haudenosaunee nation*. Citizens of the Haudenosaunee consider themselves neither American nor Canadian, and have their own passports which, I believe, are accepted in Canada and the US and recognized by the UN.

* – Haudenosaunee is the native word for the Iroquois people, which consists of six Native American tribes (known as the "six nations") banded together in New York and southern Ontario.

Originally, the UK refused to grant visas to the players because there was no guarantee that the US would allow the players back into the country. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton got personally involved and offered to grant US passports to everyone on the team but they were determined to travel using their own passports. Clinton then granted the team a waiver that effectively constituted the guarantee the UK was looking for, but they refused to change their minds. As a result, the team missed the entire tournament.

The tournament is held every four years, and the next one will be held in Denver in July of 2014. While travelling to the tournament will not be a problem this time around, the FIL (Federation of International Lacrosse) has decided that since the Iroquois did not compete in the last tournament, they will be seeded 30th. This puts them well out of the Blue division, which traditionally represents the top six teams from the previous tournament. Many lacrosse people, Iroquois and otherwise, are protesting this decision. There is only one reason why the Iroquois team was not in the top six, and that reason had nothing to do with lacrosse – it was entirely political. Punishing the team for decisions that were not only unfair but beyond their control only serves to legitimize the UK's decision.

It's not just the Iroquois team that would be affected by this decision. Lacrosse is hundreds of years old in North America, but it's quite new in a number of countries that are participating for the first time. Consider the countries that are just good enough to make it to this competition (think the German or Latvian Olympic hockey teams in 2010) and then find out that they are in the same group as the Iroquois team. If your position in the next tournament depends on how you do in this one, do you want to be disadvantaged by having one of the strongest teams in the entire tournament in your division when they really should be a few levels up?

The game of lacrosse was invented by Native American people many hundreds of years ago in eastern North America. The Iroquois people are directly descended from those people – in a nutshell, this is their game. Should the Iroquois team automatically be put into the top division just because of that? Honestly, no. But it does earn them some respect from the lacrosse community. That in addition to their play in other competitions should earn them some flexibility on the part of the FIL.

The Iroquois have earned their place among the best lacrosse teams in the world. They should not be punished because of a purely political incident.

An online petition has been created to attempt to convince the FIL to reverse this decision and allow the Iroquois team to play in the top division, where they belong. I am asking my readers to please sign this petition and help restore the Nationals' rightful standing as one of the top lacrosse teams in the world.

Update: The FIL has voted and decided that the Iroquois will be in the Blue division in 2014. I don't know whether or not the petition had anything to do with the decision, but it's not unlikely that the outcry from the lacrosse community was a factor. Thanks to everyone who signed the petition!

The only good spider is a dead spider. And they're not that good.

How much do I hate spiders? I'll tell you how much I hate spiders.

We have a cold room (i.e. pantry) in the basement, stocked with food we buy on sale. We have enough boxes of cereal in there to feed a small army. This is also where we keep the pop and beer to keep it cold, even in the summer.

A few days ago Gail went grocery shopping. When she returned, she put a bunch of stuff in a cardboard box so we (that is to say I) could bring it all down to the cold room at once. I brought the box downstairs and was about to open the door to the cold room when I saw a spider on the floor. It was about an inch and a half wide – not huge, but not tiny either. I put the box of food down on the spider and moved it around to make sure it was good and squished. Then I saw another spider on the wall. The door to the cold room is off of the workshop, and I keep a pair of slippers in there in case I'm working with wood – I don't want to drag the sawdust around the house on my socks. I grabbed a slipper, squashed the second spider, put the slipper back down and walked back upstairs.

Three days later, the box of food is still sitting on the floor outside the door of the cold room because I don't want to look at what's underneath it.

Facebook advertising

This is hardly a revelation but ads on Facebook are targeted, which means that Facebook looks over your profile and shows you ads that it thinks you'll be interested in. For the most part, it does a pretty decent job. I've seen ads for Rush and the Tragically Hip, both of which I like. I even once clicked on an ad for a musician that I had never heard of because the ad said he was similar to Dream Theater, which I also like. I've seen ads for programming jobs (I'm a programmer), guitar lessons (I play guitar – sort of), books that are along the lines of what I might read, and games that I might play if I were into video games at all.

The other day I saw an ad for a golf video game and another for golf equipment (I like golf), another about Blackberry tips (I'm an Android guy myself, but given my technical job and interests this is a good guess), one that said "Western graduate?" (yup), and another that said "Star Trek fan?" (yup) – all on the same page at the same time. I have to say I was pretty impressed with the ad selection.

I've even seen ads for lacrosse-related things. You may or may not be aware of my interest in lacrosse.

Just the other day, I posted a status about my garage door spring having died. A day later, I saw an ad for a company that services garage doors in my area. Neither Home Depot (where we bought the door) nor Rona service garage doors, so seeing this ad was perfectly timely. I gave the guy a call and he came out on Saturday to give me a quote. Thanks Facebook.

But it doesn't always work. I frequently see ads for "Find Mature Love – for Singles over 40". My status is clearly "married", so I'm not sure why it decides to show me that. I wonder if it takes into account the fact that my wife is not on Facebook.

Some of the ads are premium and show up regardless of whether they match anything in your profile, like these ones from a group that tries to get pardons for convicted criminals. I'm OK with this idea in general – if someone commits a crime, pays his or her debt to society, and is unlikely to re-offend, in certain cases granting a pardon may be reasonable. But the advertising people in this group may want to re-think the pictures they choose. I know this is totally judging a book by its cover, but I'm not sure I want these scary-looking people who have already committed crimes walking the streets:

I found it interesting that each of the ads (captured at different times) has a different "deadline". I'm not saying these deadlines are all meaningless and fake, but… oh wait, yes I am.

Many people complain about advertising on the web, but we all know that Facebook and Google and Microsoft and all these other companies aren't providing all of these services for free just because they're nice people. They're in it to make money. They can do it in a number of ways but the easiest two are (a) sell advertising, and (b) charge users to use their services. Most companies choose (a) because if you charge people directly to use your services, your services better be useful, reliable, easy to use, aesthetically pleasing, and popular, not to mention either unique (i.e. nobody else offers such a service) or the best available, otherwise who's gonna pay for it? But lots of people will use a web site that's free, even if it isn't the absolute best available. And having to sign into your account in order to do things like web searches is a pain (to say nothing of privacy concerns) so people won't do it.

But the only way a company is going to allow you to do stuff for free is if someone else is paying for it. You don't pay to listen to the radio, do you? Nope, because there are advertisers. TV used to work the same way, but now you pay the cable and satellite companies. Technically, they'll tell you you're paying for the delivery mechanism and not the TV content, so I guess it kinda still does work the same way. But anyway, if some advertising is what lets me use gmail and blogger and google and twitter and facebook and the majority of the rest of the web for free, I'm OK with that. As much as I like facebook, I'm not going to pay for it.

Yahoo decides this mobile thing is a fad

According to All Things D, Yahoo has made a change to their company policy on working remotely. The new policy is, in a nutshell, don't. Employees who currently work remotely will have to either move so they can work in a Yahoo office or resign. This seems to apply to workers who work 100% remotely as well as those who work from home one or two days a week. Does Yahoo really not understand mobile yet? The entire point of the mobile industry is to allow people to do stuff wherever they happen to be – you don't have to go to your bank to do your banking. You can shop without going to a store. You can send email, surf the web, watch TV and movies, and listen to whatever music you want from anywhere. But Yahoo employees must be physically located in their offices in order to be productive? Really?

The reasoning Yahoo has given for making this decision makes little sense: they had lots of people who worked remotely and weren't productive. So instead of firing the unproductive workers or making them come into the office, they decide to punish all of the productive remote workers as well.

Many tech companies talk about hiring the brightest and the best. Google is notorious for their hiring conservatism; they'd much rather pass on someone good than hire someone who turns out to be a bad fit. Yahoo is obviously not concerned with this. It sounds like they'd rather hire someone who lives physically close to a Yahoo office (or is willing to move) than someone awesome who doesn't (and isn't). Maybe they have great people up the wazoo and have decided they can afford to lose some of them, which they will. Maybe this is a cheap way of getting rid of some employees without having to pay them severance. That strategy would only work if the remote employees are the ones you want to get rid of and you don't mind having some that you'd rather keep quit.

I work from home at least once a week (and more if there's nasty weather), and have for ten years. Even though I don't work for Yahoo, I take it personally when I read stuff like "Speed and quality are often sacrificed when we work from home". I obviously can't speak for everyone who works at home, but it's quite the contrary for me. I frequently get a fair bit done at home – at least partially to avoid this very stereotype. If my manager decides that I don't get as much done at home as in the office, he may decide to revoke this privilege, and that's a privilege I greatly appreciate and don't take for granted. I certainly have the occasional work at home day where I don't get much done, but I also have the occasional work in the office day where I don't get much done. I also have days both at home and in the office where I'm very productive. And this is all ignoring the fact that I work at least two hours longer when I work at home since I'm not driving to Waterloo and back.

I've done work in a number of different rooms in my house. I've brought my laptop and gotten work done in mechanic's waiting rooms, doctor's and dentist's offices, hotel rooms, friends' houses, my parents' and in-laws' places up north, and even a couple of Tim Horton's. Every SAP employee worldwide is given a laptop so that they can work remotely if necessary. If I worked for Yahoo, their company policy would ensure that none of that would ever happen again.

Dear SAP/Sybase: I'd advise against this strategy. The goodwill that you'd lose from your employees would vastly outweigh any potential (and purely theoretical) productivity gains. Not only does it limit the people you can hire in the future, but I know of a few people who'd likely quit. In fact, I know of one brilliant engineer who you'd lose because he lives far away from the office and works from home a lot. And trust me, you really don't want to lose this guy.

Yes, that's right – you'd lose Ivan. Oh, and I'd probably be outta there too.

Disclaimer: I am not speaking for Ivan, nor am I making any kind of ultimatum to SAP/Sybase. Just saying that I disagree with this policy.

Chocolate: the poisonous killer that… ah, never mind

Being a blogger who writes about skepticism can be frustrating. After reading yet another "Never eat <whatever>! It's a poison! THEY don't want you to know!" article, I had this grand plan of writing something similar, but satirical. I was going to write an article that warned about something many people love – chocolate. This was going to be similar to the hilarious "dihydrogen monoxide" hoax from a bunch of years ago. I chose chocolate because it's something that is enjoyed by many people but few know much about what's in it or how it's made. Could there be toxic chemicals used in the manufacture of chocolate? Sure, maybe, I don't know.

I was going to do some research into the chemical make-up of chocolate, the growing and manufacturing process, packaging, marketing, all that kind of stuff. Anything even remotely negative was going to be blown out of proportion. Facts would be exaggerated. I wasn't going to add outright lies, but maybe stretch the truth a little here and there. I'd stress that chocolate contains chemicals and genetically modified foods. I'd point out alternate uses for some of the chemicals in it. The longer the chemical name, the better. I'd point out things in chocolate that were "chemically similar" to some actual toxin, as if that means anything. And I'd make sure to use the word "chemicals" a lot.

Then I'd add some stories about "people I knew" or had heard of. So-and-so got really sick and stopped eating chocolate and got better. Hell, I could even use my own experience – I had some chocolate the morning of my pancreatitis attack (true) and spent the next two months in the hospital (true). But then after two months without chocolate (true), I went home and I'm totally fine today (true)! All of those things marked "true" are true, even if they're completely unrelated. And there you have it – a compelling story that is completely true! Totally misleading, but true!

Finally, I'd point out that many people know that chocolate is toxic to dogs and cats (and this is completely true), so how can something toxic to them be safe for humans? (Answer: easy, we're not the same.)

The result was going to be an article that would make people think that chocolate was a horrible toxic product, child slavery was used to make it (though this may not be far from the truth, unfortunately), companies that made it were hiding the truth, and the FDA was in on the whole conspiracy. It was going to be fun! Then at the end I'd explain how I'd stretched the truth and exaggerated things and such, thus making the point that when you see articles talking about how toxic aspartame is (or high-fructose corn syrup, or genetically modified foods, or whatever) you should think twice about what you're reading, and realize that these types of articles routinely use misleading wording to scare people.

But I can't write such an article for one simple reason: people already have, and theirs isn't satirical. It's full of the same half-truths and scary-sounding words and stuff that I was going to use, but these people actually believe it.

Skeptical writers have known about this type of situation for years, and even have a law called Poe's Law describing it. Poe's Law states:

Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humor, it is impossible to create a parody of Fundamentalism that SOMEONE won't mistake for the real thing.

Poe's Law was originally coined to refer to Creationism, i.e. you can't write a parody of Creationism that someone won't mistake for the real thing. It was then modified to include any other "extreme ideology" like alternative medicines or (especially) conspiracy theories but it applies just the same. No matter how wacky you write your parody or satire, someone believes something that's wackier than that.

Discovering this article scuttled my whole idea, since mine was going to be essentially the same. So not only are these people publishing half-truths and deliberately misleading stuff to try to play on people's fears (not to mention scientific illiteracy), but now they're screwing with my blog. I won't stand for it. I'm going to eat some chocolate right now. That'll show 'em.

Blogging about NOT blogging

Hey! Remember me? I used to blog at this site quite a bit. But in the last year or so, things have really gotten quiet around here. It's not that I've stopped writing, in fact I'm writing more than ever. It just ain't here.

Back in 2008, I wrote 165 articles on this blog, including 20 articles in September alone. In 2009, I dropped to 122, and then dropped by exactly half to 61 in 2010.  But I was sick for half of 2010, and came back a little in 2011 with 82 articles. In August of 2011 I joined In Lax We Trust (now InLacrosseWeTrust.com) and moved all my lacrosse writing over there. Four months later, I created my own lacrosse blog, nllchatter.com,  and a month after that I started writing for ILIndoor.com. I'm actually a pretty big player in the world of indoor lacrosse now. (I can write that here because the lacrosse people who know that that's a total crock don't read this blog and the people who read this blog don't follow lacrosse to know that that's a total crock. Except that I just told you. Crap.)  I still do a lot of writing for those two sites, and as a result my output here has dropped off. I dropped again by over half to only 33 in 2012, and this article (early February) is the first one of 2013.

For those of you who have been disappointed about this apparent drop in productivity (hi Candyce!), you have my sincere apologies. It was not my objective to abandon this site. But in order to stay current on the National Lacrosse League, I have to focus a lot of my spare time there so that I (appear to) know what the heck I'm talking about. Between that and taking the boys to soccer and swimming during the week and spending time with Gail and the boys on weeknights and weekends and visiting relatives all over Ontario and oh yeah, that pesky full-time job, I don't end up with a lot of time for other writing. I do miss it though, and when I look and see that my most recent article was posted six weeks ago, I get kinda sad for my poor neglected little blog.

That said, please understand that I am not under the delusional impression that there are thousands, hundreds, or even dozens of people clamoring for me to write more. I write here because I enjoy writing and the occasional discussion that comes out of it.

There are two other other reasons I don't write here as much as I used to. The first is to stop annoying people. In looking back over my previous non-lacrosse articles, many of them in the last year or two are related to skepticism, eg. why vaccines are good, why legislating some alternative medicines makes no sense, why the 9/11 conspiracy theorists are all nuts, stuff like that. I decided to tone it down a little on that front since I felt like I was starting to become that guy that people stop listening to because he just rants all the time. I still have an article or two in the queue in this vein, so it won't entirely disappear. Natural News aficionados, beware.

The other reason is Facebook. Other than skepticism and lacrosse, most of what I wrote were comments on random articles I read on the web and short funny stories about my kids. These days, I frequently find myself posting these to Facebook instead of writing a whole article about them. This isn't a conscious decision, it's just how things have worked out. If I have a lot to say on a subject I'll write an article about it, but there have been a few times where I've wanted to say something but just didn't have the time to say it all so I just post it on Facebook.

I have at least ten articles in the queue. Most are just ideas that I've had and currently consist of single sentences that I will eventually expand. A few have been started, some are about half done, and at least one has been mostly done for a year but is likely way out of date so I almost have to start it over. There's one I'm having fun with but it involves a lot of creativity and thus is very time-consuming.

So the take-home message here is that I have not abandoned this blog and will still post things from time to time. Some of them might even be entertaining – you know the old bit about the blind squirrel occasionally finding a nut.

Star Wars Episode VII: Shut up and take my money

As my faithful readers may already know, I am a big Star Wars fan. In fact, the name of this blog is a quote from Star Wars; as the X-Wing fighters are approaching the Death Star, Luke's friend Wedge (callsign: Red Two) says "Look at the size of that thing!" (meaning the Death Star) to which one of the leaders responds "Cut the chatter, red two!"

Given that, it may be surprising that it's taken me this long to post something on the recent big news of Disney's acquisition of LucasFilm, and the even bigger news of a new Star Wars movie on the horizon. No plot descriptions have been given, and I imagine the writing is still in its very early stages. But they do have a writer and producers, and now they're talking about who's going to direct it. While I don't have any suggestions on who should be in it, who should direct it, or what it should be about, I do have a few requests:

1. New main characters. If they want to bring Luke, Leia, Han Solo, and the gang back for the odd cameo or at the beginning to pass the torch, fine. But everyone is thirty years older than they were in Return of the Jedi. Hell, Mark Hamill was never that great an actor to begin with. I'm sure Harrison Ford could still pull it off, but do we really want a 70-year-old Han Solo as the star of the movie? So we need new characters. That said, making it about Luke's kids and Han and Leia's kids would be just too easy. If you want their kids in it as part of an ensemble cast, fine, but it can't be just them.
2. No Darth Vader. As awesome a character as he was, Vader died and was redeemed at the end of Return of the Jedi. His story is over. Move on.
3. Disney should hire a bunch of people over the next 6-12 months and then announce the director and major cast members at a single press conference. Then they should shut the hell up about the movie until it's close to ready. Don't scatter press conferences every few months for the next three years, and definitely not for the non-major players – we don't need a huge event to announce who the second unit assistant stunt coordinator will be. Don't have a production blog where notes and pictures from the filming and post-production are posted daily – save all stuff that for the Special Edition Blu-Ray release. Super-die-hard fans like myself may like stuff like that, but there's a limit to even the most ardent fan's interest level. And don't forget that for the majority of people, this will be just another movie. If there is constant news about this movie for two years before it's released, people will get sick of hearing about it. And if they're sick of hearing about it, they won't go see it.

A small part of me doesn't even want this movie made. The first six movies were the story of Anakin Skywalker (not Luke as we might have thought after the first three), and as I said that story line was concluded with Episode VI. So Episode VII will have to be an entirely new story line that happens to be set in the same galaxy far far away. I'm not sure that's necessary.

Of course, the rest of me is giddy with anticipation. Gail and I were both huge Star Wars fans as children, and we saw each of Episodes I, II, and III on their opening days. Gail was 5 months pregnant for Episode I and 9 months pregnant for Episode II (Nicky was born less than 2 weeks later). I can't guarantee we'll be there opening day in 2015, but it won't be long after – and assuming it's in mid-May like the other six movies, we'll likely have our fifteen-year-old and almost-thirteen-year-old Padawans with us.

Unclear on the concept

This is an actual conversation I had with Nicky (age 10) after school today.

Nicky: Dad, can I play on the computer?

Me: No. Remember during the last school year when we did what we called "screen-free weeks"? You and Ryan would go from Monday to Thursday during the week with no computer, no TV, no Nintendo, no iPod because otherwise that's all you'd do. You'd never read, never play outside, never play board or card games, never play with any other toys, just video games and TV. Sometimes you'd even ignore homework. Once we started with the screen-free weeks, you found other things to occupy your time. For whatever reason, we've managed to get away from that recently, so you guys are spending too much time staring at computer or TV screens. So we're going to start that up again. If you need the computer for school work that's fine, but otherwise you'll have to find something else to do.

Nicky: Ok.

<five minutes later>

Nicky: Dad, can I watch a movie?

Why skepticism, and how I became "that guy"

The Flamborough Santa Claus parade was a little over week ago. Gail and Nicky were on the Scouting float, and Ryan and I went to watch the parade with some friends. One of them bought some cotton candy for her kids but rather than buying the one bag each they asked for, she bought one that they all could share. This was partially because it was $5 per bag (which probably contained 35¢ worth of sugar and 2¢ worth of food colouring) and partially, she said, because she didn't want her kids bouncing off the walls all night. I almost spoke up to tell her that sugar doesn't affect behaviour and that there's no such thing as a "sugar rush", but I didn't. I said nothing at all. Why? Because I remembered the avocados.

A little while ago, Gail bought a couple of avocados, something we don't eat very often, and made some guacamole. Once we finished it (mmmmmm), she bought some more avocados, and when we finished those she bought some more again. I mentioned that she seemed to be enjoying the avocados lately and she said yes, but part of the reason she had bought them was because she'd heard that they're a "superfood". Before I could say a word, however, she added "but I don't want to argue with you over whether they really are a superfood". I wasn't planning on arguing about it or even talking about it, but I had to wonder why she felt she had to head me off.

(Aside: Please don't take this as a criticism of my wife. If the "superfood" thing had any bearing on her decision to buy the avocados, I know that it was a distant second to "They're yummy". She's not as into the skepticism thing as I am but she doesn't get caught up in this kind of hype.)

I realized that since I started getting sort of caught up in the skeptical movement about a year and a half ago, my skepticism has become a defining part of me. I am not embarrassed or ashamed of this at all; I'm proud to be a skeptic. Each of my last few blog articles has been skeptical in one way or another, it inspired the first piece of fiction I've written in decades, and I listen to no less than four different skeptical podcasts every week. But I did not realize that this might have a negative effect on my friends and family. Perhaps I have become "that guy" – the one that nobody wants to talk to because he argues with everything. I certainly don't try to argue with everything, and I wouldn't in general call myself an argumentative person.

But when someone talks about how they had acupuncture the other day and how it made them feel better, I want to point out that it was almost entirely due to the placebo effect, i.e. the belief that what the acupuncturist is doing will help. This is a well-known and well-documented, if not entirely well-understood, effect. In addition, here was a caring and helpful person who was making an effort to help you relieve your pain – that interaction with the acupuncturist likely played a role in the pain relief as well.

But as you can imagine, explaining this to the acupuncture patient isn't likely to get the desired response of "Oh really? I'll have to do some research into that before I spend money on it again. Thanks for the information!"

Yes, going to the acupuncturist probably did relieve some of your pain. But the truth is that it's only partial relief, it's only temporary, and it doesn't relieve the actual cause of the pain in the first place. The truth is that the needles themselves serve no purpose. Alternative medicine is a pet peeve of mine, leading to one of my favourite quotes:

There's a name for alternative medicine techniques that have been proven effective. They're called "medicine."

Acupuncture is just one type: the truth is that your homeopathic remedy relies entirely on the placebo effect. The truth is that your plastic power bracelet does nothing. The truth is that most products prescribed by doctors work even if they're not all-natural and contain (gasp) chemicals.

This applies to a lot of other things too: the truth is that sugar doesn't make kids hyper. The truth is that being outside on a cold day with wet hair will not make you sick. The truth is that taking vitamin C (in large or small doses) will not prevent you from getting a cold. There are plenty of other things that everyone "just knows" that are patently false.

But people don't always want to hear the truth, and the guy that is always pointing out the truth is "that guy" – the annoying guy who doesn't believe in anything.

Why is the search for truth annoying? I'm not trying to be a know-it-all. I'm not trying to argue for the sake of arguing. I want to know how the world actually works, not how people think it should work, or how people used to think it worked. My assumption is that others want to know how it works as well. If my wife is buying avocados because she likes them, great. But if she's buying them because of some magic property that they don't have, she's wasting her – our – money. If you're getting acupuncture and it's making you feel better, great. But I strongly believe that you deserve to know that the needles themselves are not doing anything. If you know that and still decide to go, that's fine. You're making an informed decision.

This is not a rant about "why doesn't everyone believe what I believe?" There are many things that are unproven (and unprovable). On these issues, some people believe one way and others believe another. I'm not trying to change anyone's mind on anything.

But when numerous clinical studies show that some herbal remedy does not work, and reliable, unbiased studies showing that it does work are few and far between, you have to start believing that maybe it doesn't actually work, even if you think your own experience has shown the opposite. Human memories are far from perfect, and without controls, there are too many variables. Good scientific studies eliminate the variables, and are not subject to imperfect memories or things like confirmation bias. Science is the search for truth. Trust the science.

I'm not trying to be "that guy". I'm not trying to be irritating. I just want the truth. I tell others because I assume they want the truth as well.

We can handle the truth.