Weekend Diversion: Sam Smith (again)

It’s been a very busy week for work, so much so that I had to work over the holiday weekend to get everything done. That didn't really leave time for blogging—or much else, to be honest. But I did have a chance to see the video above on the day it was released, and I wanted to share it here.

The video is for Sam Smith’s latest single, “Lay Me Down”, from his multi-platinum debut album, In The Lonely Hour. The song is one of my favourites on the album, and I like this video just as much. I think it’s very well done, telling a story that fits the song.

The video was filmed inside an Anglican Church, and the wedding sequence makes it controversial since same-gender couples can’t currently marry in Anglican Churches.

Smith wrote on his Facebook page:

This song holds a very dear place in my heart. With this video myself and Ryan Hope the director have decided to make a statement and showcase something we passionately believe in. This video shows my dreams that one day gay men and women and transgendered men and women all over the world, like all our straight families and friends, will be able to get married under any roof, in any city, in any town, in any village, in any country.

I like that sentiment. But, I don’t know why, because I know better—I really, really DO know better—I read the YouTube comments on this video. The cruelty of the world temporarily broke the spell of the song and video. Most of the comments were positive, but many of those positive comments were in response to homophobic (sometimes viciously so) comments from others.

One religious person took it upon him/herself to trot out an implied “I’m not anti-gay, but…” when s/he suggested that gay people should be "allowed to love each other" (aw, gee, thanks!), but we shouldn’t be allowed to call our legal union marriage because that’s “sacred” and only for heterosexual couples. Yeah, right, whatever. S/he had no logical reason for that, apart from “it’s always been that way” (no, it hasn’t, actually…), and gays are stupid for disagreeing with him/her.

The vile commenters I can dismiss—most of them are probably just trolls getting their jollies from causing a reaction. But the people who say bigoted things and apparently sincerely believe they’re not bigoted just because they think LGBT people should “allowed” to love each other make me really sad. I feel sorry for them, blind to their own ignorance, prejudice and privilege/entitlement, but it makes me sad because it reminds me how very much work remains to be done. Coincidentally, Frank Bruni just wrote about that in the New York Times.

Pop music, I think, can help us transcend the ugliness in the world, and it can help us to see a world that might be some day, just as this song and video do. But the current world too often insists on forcing its ugliness upon us, intruding into our temporary aesthetic vacation. When the world tries to insist on being ugly, I just turn the volume up a bit.

Solving commenting problems

Today, I solved problems with commenting on this blog, and it was a family affair. Which is appropriate, really. Mainly, though, I’m just glad to finally find out why the problems were happening, and to end them.

Last month, I published a post, “How to comment”, which I did to deal with a particular problem, namely, that the way to comment isn’t necessarily as obvious as I think it should be. I don’t know whether that post helped anyone or not, but it at least explained what to do.

However, there was a larger problem that my January post couldn’t help.

My sister sent me an email last week, and at the end, she added, almost incidentally, “By the way, I still can't comment on your blog site without signing up first in order to gain access.” This confused me, understandably, because no one needs to register for anything in order to comment.

So, my sister sent me a screen capture of what she saw, and it turned out to be the log in to Blogger itself, and the reason she saw that was that since the Disqus element didn’t appear at all, she clicked on what is actually a way for the blog author (me) to log in to edit the post. This told me the problem was that Disqus wasn’t loading, and then all I needed to do was solve it.

It turns out, the problem was with the HTML code in the template for this blog. The photo below is from the Disqus help pages:

Step one isn’t actually current. Here’s how that step actually works: First, I click on “Design” in the upper right of my blog (this only works if I’m signed in, which I almost always am). At the top of the page that opens is the stuff relating to the Template. Under a thumbnail of the blog is a button “Edit HTML”. From there. the steps on the Disqus help page I linked to above. The code in question will be near the top.

The bad code was forcing Internet Explorer to emulate IE7, and Disqus only works on IE8 or later. So, anyone who used IE—even the most recent version—saw the page as if they used IE7, and that, in turn, meant that any reader who used Internet Explorer almost certainly was similarly unable to comment.

After I changed the code, my sister was FINALLY able to comment. I had quite a sense of accomplishment, of course, and it was all thanks to my sister helping me get to the heart of the problem so I could fix it.

I should note that this problem is largely unique to Blogger. Google doesn’t automatically update templates, and doesn’t exactly go out of its way to let users know that there are things needing updates. Wordpress, on the other hand, has automatic updates, which is a very strong advantage over Blogger.

In any case, a problem I wasn’t easily able to define before, is now fixed. Hopefully, anyone who wants to will now be able to comment. Thanks, sis! (and that’s funny because I don’t actually call her that…)

They really need to grow up

The CNN video above is of Mike Huckabee, potential 2016 Republican presidential candidate, making a dick of himself—as he tends to do rather a lot—by saying stupid things about gay people (yet again). It’s part of a larger pattern, and I feel a rant coming on.

In the video, the Huckster said his opposition to marriage equality isn’t “just a political issue”, its’ a “biblical” issue. He then said that asking him, as a fundamentalist “Christian”, to support marriage equality was “like asking someone who’s Jewish to start serving bacon-wrapped shrimp in their deli.” Say, what?!

This particularly boneheaded comment led one person to ask the Huckster on ThinkProgress’ Facebook post, “…and when you ask the Jew to eat the bacon and he declines, does he insist that you not eat the bacon?” Fair point. NO ONE cares in the least whether the Huckster supports marriage equality or not—his approval is not needed and his support (or not) is irrelevant. But neither does he get to dictate to loving same-gender couples that they can’t get married just because his particular subset of Christianity doesn’t like it. And, by the way, there are plenty of Christians who DO support marriage equality, just as there are plenty of Jews who’d have no problem selling “bacon-wrapped shrimp”; the Huckster always assumes that all religious people are all far-right fundamentalists like him.

This pompous superciliousness among far-right “Christian” extremists is becoming quite common. In a recent “Stoplight” propaganda video from a rightwing “Christian” professional activist organisation called Focus on Your Own Damn Family (or something like that), the host declared that as a “conservative” he was opposed to marriage equality, “…especially now that we all can see that the goal has always been to use the force of government to silence Christian beliefs about morality.” Say, what?!

I hate to break it to him, but the goal in enacting marriage equality has never been about anything other than the freedom to marry for same-gender couples. As Jeremy Hooper put it on his site, Good As You:

Nearly Twelve years ago (and nearly six years ago, under law), I pledged a lifetime to one man for any number of reasons. I can assure you that pissing off Stuart Shepard and his Focus on the Family employers was not even kind of on my radar. In fact, neither Mr. Shepard nor Focus are ever on my radar, outside of my work challenging their constant onslaughts against my freedoms as an American taxpayer.

To complete today’s trifecta of crazy, there’s good ol’ reliable Tony Perkins, head bigot at the professional anti-gay hate group, “Family” Research [sic] Council [LOL]. Tony declared that LGBT people are persecuting “Christians” by posting photos of our lives on Facebook—yes, seriously!!

Tony was responding to a caller to his radio show who claimed that he’d seen a photo of “two naked guys sitting on each other”, but that’s a transparent lie because Facebook doesn't allow any nudity whatsoever (they don’t even permit photos of mothers breastfeeding their infants). Maybe he didn’t mean “naked” literally, but if that’s the case his bearing false witness kind of gives a lie to his claim of having complained “in a nice, respectful, Christian way.” Do these people not know they can “unfriend” someone on Facebook?!

Tony joined in the lying, however, by claiming that ALL LGBT people were “haters” who are “projecting”. But Tony himself did some high-grade projecting when he pretended that it was all LGBT people, not merely ONE mentally disturbed man, who took a gun into their corporate headquarters:

We’ve had them come into our building with guns, shooting, to try to kill us. We harbor no bitterness in our hearts toward them, which is something they can’t understand. They want to project and that’s why they like to call us haters and so on and so forth, but they’re projecting. [emphasis added]

The Huckster, Stu and Tone are all so up themselves that they that really, truly believe that the entire world revolves around them and their fellow travellers on the USA’s extreme right. The reality is that these people are arrogant and hubristic authoritarians who want to force their particular religious political ideology onto everyone else, but, much to their extreme dismay, normal people couldn’t possibly care less about them.

So, when we demand civil marriage equality, we absolutely don’t care whether far-right “Christians” approve or not, and there’s absolutely no way we ever think of them for even one millisecond when we’re getting a legal civil marriage. And, if those poor delicate flowers on the extreme right don’t like seeing perfectly ordinary Facebook photos of us living our lives—exactly the same sort of photos as they themselves post—well, too damn bad!

The fact is, disagreeing with them is not oppressing them, posting photos on Facebook is not persecuting them, and when we win the exact same freedom and liberty that they have—to marry, and to be free from discrimination in employment, housing, and public accommodation—we are not diminishing their freedom and liberty, we're expanding it for us all.

They really need to grow up and learn that the world doesn’t revolve around them.

Haunting video

The BBC video above, shot using a drone, shows the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp as it is today, 70 years after it was liberated by Soviet troops. I didn’t see it when it was first posted, but I’m sharing it now because I think it gives a good impression of the size of the place.

I wanted to post something to commemorate the anniversary of the liberation of the camp, but I frankly didn’t know what to say. What is there left to say that hasn’t already been said a million times? Videos like this one, I think, help offer witness to the scale of the horror.

One part of the video shows the courtyard between blocks 10 and 11 at Auschwitz I, but without any explanation. Executions took place between Block 10 and Block 11 and posts in the yard were used to string up prisoners by their wrists. The banner fluttering above the end of the courtyard has a triangle that is either (I can’t tell what colour the triangle is) red (for political prisoners) or pink (for homosexuals), and mounted on a banner made of the striped cloth of prison uniforms. It’s the only visual reminder I saw of the victims themselves (and I presume that the empty flagpoles usually have similar banners with other colours of triangles).

Remembrance of the Holocaust is always a good thing, but I think that it’s as hard to see it in new ways as it is to talk about it in new ways. That’s why this video struck me as so profound—it gave me a new way to look at the death camp. And that’s why I’m sharing it.

Remembering is the first step in ensuring that it never happens again.

Stop the presses

Newspapers are in business to make money, and they do it by trying to be first, but always by being fast. Old news is not news, after all. But Rupert Murdoch’s The Australian has proven slowing down a bit is a good thing.

Yesterday, Colleen McCullough, Australia’s best-selling author, died unexpectedly. While the paper apparently published some good coverage, for some utterly inexplicable reason, they ran a bizarre obituary that began with this paragraph:

COLLEEN McCullough, Australia’s best selling author, was a charmer. Plain of feature, and certainly overweight, she was, nevertheless, a woman of wit and warmth. In one interview, she said: “I’ve never been into clothes or figure and the interesting thing is I never had any trouble attracting men.”

This obviously did not go down well. It led Aussies to take to Twitter writing similarly bizarre obituary lines under the hashtag #myozobituary. Some of them have been downright brilliant. The story went global, as news outlets reported on the obituary itself, along with samples of the sarcastic Tweets.

What the hell was WRONG with The Australian?! According to Crikey, the obituary was written many years ago by a man who is dead. Papers have long pre-written obituaries of famous people in case they’re needed in a hurry. In this case, the editors at the paper apparently didn’t see anything wrong with the opening paragraph. I wonder if the editor responsible for this worked on his C.V. today in anticipation of being fired?

The obituary was breathtaking for its sexism and misogyny, but it was also obvious that the unnamed journalist had a strong personal dislike of McCullough, and seemed to consider her fame undeserved. It was a very bad obituary.

However, the real issue here isn’t the awful writing in the obituary, it’s the crass sexism in it and the fact that the newspaper ran it despite all its many faults. Consider the contrast of the paper's obituary when Bryce Courtney died several years ago:

BRYCE Courtenay was one of Australia’s greatest storytellers, touching the hearts of millions of people around the world with 21 bestselling books including The Power of One.

Comparing and contrasting the two introductory paragraphs, Rebecca Shaw asks in her piece in The Guardian:

Now, what do we learn from this introduction? The fact that she was a best-selling author is quickly tossed aside in order to discuss her looks and her success with men. In the first paragraph. Of her obituary. Which is meant to sum up her entire life. McCullough was a woman who penned The Thorn Birds, still the highest-selling Australian book of all time.

I’d like to think The Australian will learn from their disgrace, but I doubt they will—it IS a Murdoch paper, after all. But maybe other papers will review their own practices for such things, and I bet there will be more careful scrutiny of pre-written obituaries in the future.

Nothing can make up for what The Australian did, though a front-page apology would help. But if editors do learn to be a little more careful, and to slow down just a little bit to make sure this sort of thing doesn’t happen again, that will be a good result.

But The Australian really ought to apologise.

Love Letters to Richard Dawkins

This video—language NSFW—shows Richard Dawkins reading some more hate mail. It’s hilarious for how pathetically stupid his haters are, but I noticed how prominent viciously anti-gay hate speech was.

Rightwingers hate atheists and gay people almost equally, depending on the day, and these simple, stupid people often declare that all gay people are atheists and vice versa. Of course we all know that truth and facts are meaningless to the rightwing, but you would think that they would focus their hatred and bigotry just a little bit—sorry, that requires intelligence, which the far right entirely lacks, but strategically, it would make sense not to SOUND so stupid.

The political divide in the USA—and I’d bet money that most of the hate messages came from the USA—is so deep and severe that I wonder if any dialogue is even possible any more. No, I don’t wonder—dialogue is clearly impossible.

When people feel free to say such hate-filled things, and when they think that using anti-gay hate speech is making a valid political point, it seems to suggest that the two “sides” in the body politic are utterly irreconcilable, and that doesn’t bode well for the future of democracy in the USA.

I wait for someone—anyone—to stake out a more cheerful and hopeful position. So far, I haven’t seen any. Actually, I could even say I dare them—because I really don’t think it’s possible.

Is America beyond all hope? Don’t just protest my cynicism, show me why it isn’t warranted.

Labour’s ‘State of the Nation’

Today Labour Party Leader Andrew Little delivered his State of the Nation speech outlining Labour’s vision for moving the country forward. The next Labour Government will be focused on jobs—and a rational approach to the economy.

I’ve read the speech, and it’s forward-looking and focused on solutions, rather than the current government’s tired, “everything’s fine, nothing to see here, move along” non-solutions to nagging economic problems and fast-increasing inequality. While John Key and National are content to pretend nothing’s wrong, Andrew Little and Labour are focused on once again making New Zealand a fair and decent society, one in which there are real opportunities and growing wealth.

Andre Little proposes to do this by utilising what has worked well in so many cases—partnerships between business and the workforce—to forge real solutions and real growth. In particular, Labour will harness that expertise to help small businesses, those with fewer than 20 employees, who already account for a third of New Zealand’s economy, and accounted for 41% of all the jobs created last year. This is a very smart thing to do.

The main difference between the two main parties is that Labour knows that the economy can never grow when workers are exploited and don’t share in the successes they help to generate. Labour knows that growing inequality is holding our country back, weakening society and communities, and even destroying our nation’s soul. Labour knows that the nation grows best when we work together, and if fails when whole segments of society are deliberately, and callously, cut off. And Labour also knows that New Zealand business is FAR more than only those on the NZSX 50.

In the months ahead, Andrew Little will be expanding on the themes he raised in this speech, providing the practical solutions that the next Labour Government will deliver. He’s already off to a good start.

Click on the image below to read the speech.

State of the Nation 2015

How to comment

From time to time some people will sometimes have some problems commenting on some posts on this blog. In other words, it’s erratic. I thought I’d mention how it should work so if it doesn’t, it’ll be easier to tell me what’s wrong.

This blog uses the Disqus commenting system, something I converted to almost two years ago to fight the epidemic of spam comments I faced every single day. It solved that problem completely.

However, nothing on the Internet is perfect, and sometimes Disqus, too, doesn’t work properly. Here’s what should happen.

There are several options available for commenting. As you can see in the example at left, someone who isn’t signed in to Disqus is greeted with the option of signing in with—left to right—Disqus, Facebook, Twitter or Google. Someone who doesn’t want to use any of those options can still comment.

Simply click on “Id rather post as a guest”, as in the image at right. Enter a name—any name, your real name or a nickname, it doesn’t matter—then enter an email address. According to Disqus, “Guest commenters are required to provide an email address for notifications and moderation purposes. However the email address will of course never be displayed and does not require verification.” Among other things, entering this helps prove you’re not a spambot.

Click on that white arrow in a gray box and your comment will instantly be posted—there’s no moderation before posting. That’s it.

I strongly recommend using one of the sign-in options for commenting, and for several reasons. First, it allows you to include a link to your profile to help people find your blog or site. Second, and particularly if you sign in with Disqus itself, you can look at your comments across all sites using Disqus, and can even have a digest of comments—yours and replies to you—emailed to you if you want. It’s a great way to put the “social” in social media.

All the sign-in methods are used all over the Internet, but I realise that some people are reluctant to sign in through Facebook. Others may not like using Twitter or Google, either. Disqus is a commenting system that’s widely used and it doesn’t link to your Facebook or other social media identities, so it seems to me it’s a good alternative to logging in through a social media account.

Whether you log-in to comment or comment as a guest, the system will probably work more often than not. If it doesn’t, it could be a temporary glitch, or you may have attempted to log-in rather than comment as a Guest.

But if you try to comment and have problems, I’d like to hear about it. You can send me an email by clicking on the email link in the right sidebar, under “Contact Me”.

Part of the fun of blogging is having a conversation with the blogger and other readers. Disqus is supposed to help facilitate that. Mostly, it does. I hope it works for you, too.

C is for cricket

Cricket is a game played in many counties, though it’s especially popular in countries in The Commonwealth. This year, New Zealand and Australia will jointly host the ICC Cricket World Cup (http://www.icc-cricket.com/cricket-world-cup). In this part of the world, this is a big deal.

The ICC Cricket World Cup will be held 14 February to 29 March 2015, and will feature teams from 14 countries divided into two pools. Pool A is Afghanistan, Australia, Bangladesh, England, New Zealand, Scotland, and Sri Lanka. Pool B is India, Ireland, Pakistan, South Africa, United Arab Emirates, West Indies, and Zimbabwe.

The game of cricket began in England in the 1600s, and in about two centuries became their national sport. It was carried to the far reaches of Empire, which is part of why it’s not as popular—or particularly well-known—in the USA.

The international governing body is the International Cricket Council (ICC). It sets the rules for the game and governs it. There are 106 members, of which 10 are Full Members (also known as Test Nations), 37 are Associate Members (which includes Canada and the USA), and 59 countries are Affiliate Members. The ICC is headquartered in Dubai in the UAE.

The reason the 10 Full Members are known as “Test Nations” is that they play the long form the game, known as Test Cricket. It takes up to five days, making it the only game in the world that takes five days and might still end in a draw. Players for both teams dress in white. The shorter version of the game, which is what will be played at the World Cup, is the One Day International (ODI), which is MUCH shorter and reminds me, as an American-born Kiwi, of baseball (particularly when watched in person).

So far, I’ve avoided talking about what the game is and how it’s played because I’ve always found it’s difficult to explain it. Fortunately for me, it turns out that Wikipedia has pretty good summary:

Cricket is a bat and ball game, played between two teams of eleven players each. One team bats, attempting to score runs, while the other bowls and fields the ball, attempting to restrict the scoring and dismiss the batsmen. The objective of the game is for a team to score more runs than its opponent. In some forms of cricket, it may also be necessary to dismiss the opposition in order to win the match, which would otherwise be drawn.

The rest of the information on Wikipedia fleshes out how the game is played. Fair warning: If you’re not into sports, and maybe even if you are, your eyes may glaze over if you read it. In that case, trust me, on this: The game is much more interesting to watch than it is to explain.

I’ve been to several ODI matches in Auckland, but I’ve never been to a Test Match, and I frankly think it’s unlikely that I’ll go to one any time soon (I don’t have that much stamina…). However, the first cricket match I ever saw played was between some university students in Ontario. I was about 11 at the time, and had NO idea what they were doing.

A cricket wicket.
When the bales won't move,
it's a "sticky wicket".

Nowadays, I enjoy watching at least part of some ODI matches, and I also like how gentlemanly it is: Sportsmanship is VERY important in the game, which by the 19th century led to the expression, “it’s just not cricket” to describe anything unfair or underhanded.

The game has actually given English several expressions. For example, “sticky wicket” describes a difficult situation. Someone who’s had a successful run—especially, someone who’s died after a long life—may be described as having “had a good innings”. To be shocked or taken aback may leave one “bowled over”. All these expressions are still commonly used in New Zealand, among other countries.

And that’s a look at Cricket. It’s big in New Zealand, though rugby is our national game. It’s Australia’s only truly national game, with rugby popular in some areas and Aussie Rules Football popular in other areas. Now, the two countries are hosting a sort of Australasian ICC Cricket World Cup.

Many people in the world won’t even know the cricket world cup going on. But for some countries, it’ll be important. I’ll be watching—some of it, anyway.

The image of a cricket pitch at the top of this post is by Nichalp, and is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Generic license. It is available through Wikimedia Commons. The image of cricket wickets, also with this post, is by §hep, and is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International, 3.0 Unported, 2.5 Generic, 2.0 Generic and 1.0 Generic license. It is also available through Wikimedia Commons.

Click the badge above to visit other bloggers taking part in ABC Wednesday—there are a lot of interesting and very diverse blog posts!

Anniversaries

Today is Auckland Anniversary Day, its 175th birthday and a public holiday. But this weekend had another anniversary, one I didn’t have a chance to acknowledge on this blog. The first will return again next year, but the other one?

On Saturday, January 24, 2009, Nigel and I had our Civil Union ceremony and a party afterward. This year, the anniversary was also on a Saturday—six year to the very day. We weren’t in Auckland, however.

My brother-in-law, his partner and their kids moved to another house, and we went down to help, though nearly everything was done by the time we got there. Which was nice, to be honest. It was also incredibly hot, much as it was the Saturday six years earlier.

I wondered if the anniversary of our civil union might fade, now that we’re married. In 2009, the only way for us to have our relationship officially recognised was to have a civil union, so having one made practical sense. I think that the civil union anniversary will always matter because of that fact, but I think that in future it may not be a big focus—but, who knows? This year a niece is getting married on the same date we did—October 31—so we won’t be the only ones to whom that date is special.

But that’s really the larger point, isn’t it? Personal anniversaries are important to people precisely because they’re personal. Others may join in celebrating, or not, but that doesn’t change anything for the couple. So, our civil union anniversary will be important to us for what it meant, and so will our marriage anniversary, and partly because it completed what began that horribly hot January Saturday back in 2009.

We may not have celebrated our anniversary on Saturday this year, but that doesn’t mean it was forgotten. I doubt it ever will be, but, just in case, I’m including a list of all my previous posts about this anniversary.

Auckland Anniversary will definitely be back next year, though.

Posts from previous years

2009: Perfect Day – where it began
2010: One and Fifteen
2011: Second Anniversary, squared
2012: Three years ago today
2013: Fourth Anniversary
2014: An anniversary

The future of computing?

Based only on what’s already happened, it seems to me that the future of computing is clearly interactive, and will quite probably involve greater immersion of the user in the experience. But will it require goggles?

Microsoft has announced HoloLens (promo video above), a stand-alone (wear-alone?) set of goggles, which, they say, “seamlessly blends high-definition holograms with your real world.” The video shows the basics of how they envision it working and how it might be used.

I think there’s definitely a place for technology like this. It looks like it would be particularly useful for industrial and architectural design, medical research, and for being able to more fully look at other planets without actually going there.

That’s what NASA thinks. They plan on using the technology to virtually explore Mars (see photo below). That seems to me like a particularly good use of the technology.

I’m less convinced that ordinary people will use it in their ordinary lives in the ways depicted in the promo—because people have to wear those goggles. Microsoft says, “Holograms will improve the way you do things every day, and enable you to do things you've never done before.” But, strictly speaking, they’re not actually holograms, but merely projections on the goggles’ screen that’s combined with movement-sensing technology to help users interact with those projections. That’s fine for playing games that combine real world and imaginary worlds, but for everyday use? I dunno, those goggles are kind of clunky…

Still, touchscreen computing has already become ubiquitous on pads, smart phones and even some desktop computers. It’s changed the way people interact with and use computers from keyboard and mouse-click to tap and swipe. It’s not hard to imagine that computing will evolve to include motion-sensing control of the computing device.

I’m sure that the goggles will improve over time, and one day there will probably be actual holograms and, if so, one day goggles won’t be needed. But all of that is a long way from now. HoloLens may be the first taste we’ll get of what future computing will be like. Or not. Technology doesn’t always work out when it’s first introduced (Apple Newton, for example).

Change is inevitable, and HoloLens seems to me to be a glimpse of where computing is headed. We’ll see—with or without goggles.

"New NASA software called OnSight will use holographic computing to overlay visual information and data from the agency's Mars Curiosity Rover into the user's field of view. Holographic computing blends a view of the physical world with computer-generated imagery to create a hybrid of real and virtual." Image and caption Credit: NASA.

Tip o’ the Hat to our nephew in the US who shared the C|Net article on Facebook.

The Art of naming

The naming of kids is a difficult matter: Pick the wrong one, and the child could be scarred for life. Even a simple, non-controversial name can become a source of torment for a child when forged into a tool for ridicule. But, names can always be changed.

I’m named for both of my grandfathers and an uncle. That’s a lot of work for one name to do, so it remained at full strength—Arthur—up until junior high school (ages 12-13) when my science teacher (whose own name I’ve long since forgotten) suddenly decreed that I should be known as “Art”. I resisted at first, lamely—one simply didn’t argue with teachers about such things.

This had two main results. First, I immediately had to deal with other kids calling me “Art the Fart”, which I didn’t appreciate. Of course. The other result was that I was called Art for roughly the next 17 years, until I insisted people again call me Arthur. To this day, you can tell how long someone has known me by what they call me.

This comes up every year at my birthday when I get Facebook greetings from people calling me Art. They’re people who knew me prior to the late 1980s, like my family and oldest friends who still call me “Art”—as Jason did in a nice blog post on my birthday.

The people who have known me from the late 1980s onwards, including everyone I know in New Zealand, call me Arthur—as, indeed, I do. How did it come to be, this re-renaming of myself?

Part of the answer is that at some point in the late 1980s I simply got tired of a name I didn’t choose and never fully embraced. “Art’s the name of a plumber!” I declared, before quickly adding, “Not that there’s anything wrong with that—it’s just not me!” I’m not sure what, exactly, I meant by that, or what I was thinking (I never wrote anything down about it), but I was at the height of my political activism at the time and I think that I felt that Art just didn’t have the gravitas I was trying to project to elected politicians in my lobbying work.

The name also gave me problems at work. I noticed about this time that when I answered the phone, and people asked my name, I’d say “I’m Art” and the person would start calling me “Mark”. Going back to Arthur fixed such problems.

But, there was more going on.

It was also a period in which I was reinventing myself. An abusive relationship ended and I was beginning to reassert the ME who had been somewhat lost up until that point. Part of reclaiming my identity was reconnecting with what I perceived to be a more authentic self, and part of that meant using a name I chose rather than one imposed on me (although, logically, if I’d consciously chosen Art, it would have had the same effect).

It turns out, though, that I’ve been uncomfortable about hypocorism my whole life. When I was a very little boy, my parents nicknamed me Ace because they thought it was “cute” to have such a little guy called something so “big”. But one of my earliest memories was of the neighbourhood bullies, who I called my “eminies”, calling me “Ace From Outer Space”. I was furious and demanded that my parents stop calling me Ace, and they did. I wasn’t even in school yet.

Nowadays, I don’t really care what people call me, though I only use Arthur. I’ve revised (rather than reinvented) myself many times over the years, and have become more relaxed about a great many things, my name among them. Basically, I’ve decided what to call myself, and what others do is up to them.

Our names are the second thing that parents give us (after life itself), but if we don’t like it, we can change it (unlike our parents…). My name has now changed twice, but back to what my parents gave me in the first place, which is neither a deep nor inscrutable singular name.

With apologies to T.S. Eliott for the brazen theft in this post.

The annual increasing number: 56

When I talk about my birthday each year, I try and find something different to say. Understandably, this becomes more difficult over time: There are only so many ways to talk about the same thing, after all. But I persist because I like the topic so much.

I talked about that part a little in my ABC Wednesday post for this week, when I said about focusing on my birthday: “If that sounds a little self-centred and narcissistic, well, that’s the point! It’s the one day a year that I can be the centre of attention, be pampered and spoiled, and not feel in any way guilty about it.” And that’s certainly a major aspect of this annual reflection.

But I’ve also become increasingly aware as the years pile up of how important it is to record all sorts of things that mark progress through life. Memory isn’t anywhere near as reliable as many people assume, but it tends to become less reliable as the years pass. I sometimes joke that I’ve forgotten more than I knew as an 18 year old. That’s an exaggeration, of course, but maybe not as big a one as I might hope.

Narcissistic: The obligatory birthday selfie.

These annual posts—along with ordinary posts about ordinary things—serve as a sort of institutional memory, a kind of “Arthur Cloud”. But they also do more: These posts help me remember things I’ve forgotten, or they might inspire me to reflect on memories that maybe I hadn’t examined before. Those are good things, too.

For example, it was through writing these posts that I realised just how highly I regard my birthday, not merely for the celebration or being the centre of attention, much as I like both, but because birthdays symbolise for me a fresh start, a new beginning, with the promise of unexplored territory ahead, sometimes laying just at the horizon or maybe around a bend, but there all the same. Looking back, then, has reminded me how much I value looking forward, and moving ahead.

Which is not to suggest that everything is flowers and chocolate bars all the time—every life has good and bad all mashed together. But, for me, birthdays are the day I get to forget all the bad stuff, and instead think of the good: What I have (especially my Nigel, family and friends), as well as what may yet come my way. And if all that’s not worthy of a blog post, I don’t know what is.

So, happy birthday to me. With luck, there’ll be many happy returns of these posts, too.

The Illinois Route 56 sign is a public domain graphic available from Wikimedia Commons. I should probably note that as far as I can remember, I’ve never been on Illinois Route 56, but it’s in my home state and says “56”. That’s reason enough to include it, since I often use such signs as an illustration. The photo of me is my own. Duh. It’s the “photo for another post” I referred to in a post earlier today.

My Previous Birthday posts:
2014: The annual increasing number: 55
2013: The annual increasing number: 54
2012: The annual increasing number
2011: The annual increasing number
2010: The annual increasing number
2009: Happy Birthday to Me…
2008: Another Birthday

Gratuitous Bella photos

Today I was taking a photo for another post, and I looked over and saw that Bella was watching me. So, I snapped photos of her. But I couldn’t decide which one I liked best, so here are all four. Besides, she probably doesn’t get enough photos taken of her.

Yes, she’s posing next to a dead palm frond I haven’t cut off yet, but to me it just makes it look like she’s a model posing for a fashion shoot. I guess that means she’s ready for the catwalk.

You’re welcome.

B is for Birthday – mine!

I suppose it was bound to happen sooner or later: ABC Wednesday letter “B” happens to correspond with my birthday. So, what better topic?

Truthfully, there are probably many “better topics” for “B”, but my birthday is my favourite day of the year, so none of those other topics are quite as appealing at the moment. If that sounds a little self-centred and narcissistic, well, that’s the point! It’s the one day a year that I can be the centre of attention, be pampered and spoiled, and not feel in any way guilty about it.

I’ve felt this way pretty much my entire life, for as long as I can remember. When I was a little boy, my mother made sure to make a fuss of the birthday child: We got whatever we wanted for dinner, our choice of cake for our birthday cake, and, of course, presents. Sure, my parents no doubt gave a lot of attention to us all year round, but that one day a year we were the undisputed centre of attention in the family.

Fast forward many years, and I moved to New Zealand. I found that Kiwis weren’t all that big on greeting cards, even then, so I didn’t get many birthday cards in the mail (apart from my mother in law). Birthday cards, when they were given at all, were handed to the birthday person (with or without a gift). All of that is still pretty much the case.

Typically, birthdays of grownups are celebrated by going out to dinner with friends, or maybe having some people round for dinner or a barbecue. Some people do have birthday parties, but in my experience, they start to become less common as people get older. All of which is what I found in the US, too, as I got older.

What I found very different in New Zealand, though, was that at work people often brought in treats on their birthdays to share with co-workers in their department or team or whatever. In the US, it was rare that co-workers even acknowledged my birthday, but sometimes one might buy me a muffin or something.

At my Kiwi workplace, though, I found that it was common, though not required, to bring in treats on one’s birthday. Nothing elaborate—maybe some cookies, a cake, things like that. It was considered kind of bad form to eat treats brought in by a co-worker, but not bring in any on one’s own birthday. Not that anyone said anything—Kiwis are far too polite for that.

All of this wasn’t standard, however, and there were variations in what happened. For example, some people I worked with put on a morning tea (which is like a small meal, really). Most of us never did that! I also went out for lunch with some co-workers a couple years, and, typically, people pay for themselves when they do this, birthday person included.

When I was a kid, many of us had birthday parties (I wrote about one of my favourite birthday parties a few years ago). Kids in New Zealand, I’m told, also have parties. A relatively recent development is that kids attending other kids’ birthday parties are given a goodie bag to take home, which made me think that my mother was ahead of her time in wanting to have something for my guests to take home.

So, Wednesday is my birthday, and it’s time for ABC Wednesday’s letter “B” for this round. Perfect timing, really.

The photo up top is—quite literally—the first photo ever taken of me, on January 22, 1959, when I was one day old.

Click the badge above to visit other bloggers taking part in ABC Wednesday—there are a lot of interesting and very diverse blog posts!

Sharing and suprises

I’ve come to an understanding with Facebook: I kinda like it, and it kinda tolerates me. We get along now. I post some things there that never make it here, but other things become blog posts. It’s—interesting…

Most of the stuff I post only to Facebook includes things that would be of interest only to people who actually know me, more or less. I have, however, sometimes posted things to Facebook that became blog posts, and this is one of those times. Because I was surprised.

I posted the photo of a sign at my local countdown, and said of it:

I get that closing a grocery store to do a re-jig would lose them too much in profit, but based on what I saw & overheard today, they're losing customer good will. I'm curious what you all think: Do you think the possibility of losing customer support is a big risk? Or will customers just moan and keep coming back? Me, I can just go to New World, so it's no biggie, but some people get quite irate!

At another time, that might have been an angry rant of my own, but I’m a little more mellow these days, and I was more interested in the reactions of the customers in the store, and curious how my Facebook friends saw the situation.

As I wandered around the store, I saw several units with empty shelves (and noticed how dusty the shelves were behind the products we normally saw…). Small printed notices told customers where the missing products could be found, but I found the type on them too small to bother reading; from a distance, they looked more like notes to the people moving the stuff around.

I was able to find the stuff I wanted until I got to the toothpaste: Those shelves were behind a tape barrier, like those used to separate lines of people at a bank or whatever. This was because they were emptying some shelves about a metre or so further along. So, I walked around the barrier, got my toothpaste and left. None of the workers said a word to me or, truth be known, took any notice.

At the checkout I saw and heard a middle aged, middle class lady complaining to the checkout operator about it. I heard her say, “it’s so annoying!” and asking the operator, “so, have you been getting a lot of complaints?” The operator, whose English skills were sorely lacking, said something non-committal to the lady, but I wasn’t close enough to hear if she was being vague or if she didn’t understand what the lady was saying. It seemed to me that the operator just didn't want to engage—and why should she? She has nothing to do with the inconvenience.

When I shared the photo and my comment on Facebook, I quite frankly didn’t expect anyone to comment. For me, the things that are most likely to get a “Like” or a comment are things about me personally, Nigel, the two of us, or about our furbabies. When I share links to things that I find interesting, sometimes they seem to get no notice whatsoever (like links to some blog posts). So, I tend to share more real-life stuff about me and my family than I do things in the world.

Well, apparently this Facebook post hit a nerve—well, several nerves. People talked about Countdown’s bad business practices, about how New World wasn’t any better, or how they were all bad. Mostly, it was quite civil and all that, but it did veer pretty sharply from my original question. I hadn’t seen that coming.

One friend mentioned that when their local New World was done up, they had maps and posted a lot of signage. This is when it hit me that the Countdown had no actual signage, just those small notes with too-small type. I realised that if they’d put up better signs, customers wouldn’t have been nearly as grumpy.

I can easily stay away until the revamp is done—there are three other Countdowns nearby, in addition to the New World I now go to most of the time. And this particular Countdown could use a bit of a tart up—I don’t think they’ve had a big one for many years. I just hope they clean the shelves while they’re at it.

And the consensus was that customers will return. I’m sure I will, too.

Summer Sunday

Today was a beautiful, though hot, summer Sunday. There was no sign of yesterday’s sprinkles of rain (they may return tomorrow), and it got up to the mid to high 20s officially (upper 70s to low 80s Fahrenheit). At our house it was over 31 degrees (around 88F). And the sun was intense.

Since we were out and about, and noticed the air was crystal clear (probably after the rain), we stopped by Birkenheard Wharf, where I snapped some photos. Three of them are with this post.

The photo up top is of Auckland and the Harbour Bridge from the end of the wharf. It's my new cover photo on Facebook. I didn’t post the two that are below.

Heat aside, it was a lovely day.

Looking toward Little Shoal Bay form Birkenhead Wharf, January 18, 2015.

Looking toward Chelsea Sugar Refinery from vehicle area near Birkenhead Wharf, January 18, 2015.

Saturday adventures

Today was a good day. We had food and adventures, and adventures with food. And we even had a little rain, for the first time in ages.

We went out for lunch with a couple friends, which was nice in itself, but it was also Japanese, my favourite. It was a great time.

Then, it was time for errands. There’s nothing unusual in that, but at one point we were at Pakuranga Plaza, a shopping centre I’ve never been to before. I thought it was quite nice—small, as malls go, but bigger than the local shopping centre I go to the most. I also noticed that the clientele there was far more ethnically diverse than any NZ mall or shopping centre I’ve visited. We may have stopped for an ice cream while there…

I mentioned to Nigel that I’d seen on Facebook that Martha’s Backyard had put a bunch of stuff on clearance to make room for a new container coming, and since it was on the way, we stopped in. The results are in the photo above.

It’s worth noting that Martha’s has a lot of non-food items, including US flags and bunting and such, but what’s always drawn me are the food products, junk food in particular. I can get substitutes for pretty much all the products I used to use in the US, sometimes better than what I liked, and increasingly I can get American products at my local grocery stores. Countdown, for example, has a section of American products, and New World sells Pop Tarts in boxes (Coundown sells packs of two, which, if I really thought about it, is a better option…).

Even so, Martha’s sells things I can’t get anywhere else, even if I can get others from the same manufacturer at my grocery store. Pop Tarts are a good example of this, actually: Martha’s has the unfrosted version, which I prefer, while the grocery stores sell only the frosted version. Sidenote: When the chocolate frosted ones came out when I was a kid, I tried one and I thought my teeth would fall out from the sugar in them. This is why I don’t like the frosted version: They’re far too sweet for me.

Most of the other stuff in the photo I’ve bought before, but some bear special mention. For example, the garlic salt is because Nigel was curious what it was like, as compared to our usual local brand (it’s small, so if we hate it we can throw it out without any real loss). The sauerkraut is because we like to make our own Reubens and sauerkraut isn’t necessarily always easy to find. The ranch dressing was on clearance (and, actually, cheaper than locally-made salad dressing, which is probably better for me, but we’ll just ignore that). The Chex Mix is the cereals aren’t easy to get here, so making it myself isn’t easy (it’s not bad, by the way).

But the special guest star this time is the German Chocolate cake mix, which I can’t buy in New Zealand (Betty Crocker cake mixes, along with Australasian brands, are on our shelves, but they’re pretty standard ones; I usually make cakes from scratch, but even there, the real ingredients aren't all that easy to find in NZ). This matters because that was may favourite cake when I was a kid, and it’s what I always got for my birthday cake—every single year. My birthday is Wednesday, so I decided I’ll make myself my favourite birthday cake that I couldn’t have otherwise. Maybe I’ll mention it again when I make it.

So, today was a day mostly about food: We had lunch with friends and had what is pretty much my favourite kind of non-European food. We had a snack at a mall I’ve never been to before, and I found that interesting. Then, for the first time in a couple years, I got some naughty American food products I can't otherwise get. But it was also about relaxed good times together for Nigel and me. What more could I ask?

Today was a good day.

History in the making

Today’s announcement that the US Supreme Court will hear appeals to the aberrant Sixth Circuit ruling upholding state bans of marriage equality is important. It may turn out to be historic, too, but the ruling certainly will be. It may be a landmark.

Obviously no one can say with certainty how the Court will rule, but people far smarter and more learned about these things than me can do a pretty good job of laying out the odds. Nevertheless, I want to say what I think will happen, and why, just so it’s “out there”.

If I had to bet, it would be that Court will issue a Loving v. Virginia-type ruling on marriage equality later this year, and that it will give the USA 50-state marriage equality. I personally don’t see any other viable option.

Thirty-six US states have marriage equality, and seventy percent of Americans live in those states. The present situation is untenable: People legally married in one state could lose all their legal rights and responsibilities simply by crossing state lines. If they have children, their parental rights could instantly change the minute they entered a “ban” state. All of which makes LGBT people second-class citizens who are not being treated equally under law as the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution requires.

If the Court upholds the decision of the Sixth Circuit, and agrees that states can ban same-gender marriage, then it will make the bad situation far worse. It would potentially throw the existing marriage laws in a couple dozen states up in the air—and creates the possibility that the currently-legal marriages of same-gender couples could be reversed (and we all know that many rightwingers in those states would try to do exactly that). So, we’d end up with a situation worse than now, but worse even than when there were fewer states because so many states with constitutional bans in place gained marriage equality through court rulings.

Historically, the Supreme Court has tended to favour the sameness of laws nationwide where rights of citizens are involved: They don’t like patchworks of differing rights from state to state. Moreover, the federal government recognises marriage equality for federal purposes, meaning that legally married same-gender couples in states without marriage equality are nevertheless seen as married for federal purposes (unless Republicans in Congress succeed in changing that, which looks pretty much impossible).

A lot has changed since the Court struck down Section 3 of the “Defense” of Marriage Act: Clear and overwhelming majorities of Americans support the freedom to marry, and that's in addition to the facts I mentioned earlier, that 36 states have marriage equality covering 70% of the American people.

Add all that up—we already have an untenable situation, one that would be made far worse if the Sixth Circuit ruling were upheld, the fact that marriage equality is already a fact for more than two-thirds of US states and the vast majority of the American people, and also that polls show the American people back marriage equality, and all that points to the Supreme Court striking down all the remaining bans on marriage equality—as it should do, of course.

Only the Supreme Court can bring this struggle to an end and ensure that all citizens—LGBT and heterosexual alike—are treated equally under law. I think they will, and what a wonderful day that will be!

The image of the US Supreme Court building at the top of this post a Creative Commons licensed photo by Wikiwopbop, published by Wikimedia Commons.

Word resurrection

Today I read an article about some academics trying to highlight “some of the English language's most expressive — yet regrettably neglected — words” so that they might be used more often. As is so often the case, more than a few people don’t quite get it.

The list of Wayne State University’s “Word Warriors' 2015 top 10” includes a few obscure words (such as, concinnity, opsimath, and others), along with a few that are in general use, like caterwaul, melange, and knavery. And that’s where the misunderstanding arose.

The Wayne State list is of words that “deserve to be used more often in conversation and prose,” not just ones that are “dead”. In the article, British author Mark Forsyth, a fan of reviving useful “dead” English words, pointed out, as I did, that some of the words are still in use, and then asked, “Are they really forgotten?”

Obviously not. Maybe he didn’t get a chance to read what the Wayne State academics actually said about the list, so he was instead reacting out of, let’s say, incomplete information, because at no point did the academics claim the words were “lost”.

Pop culture can revive words that are seldom used. For example, I’ve heard Monty Burns on The Simpsons use old words like flapdoodle (one of my personal favourites, by the way) and rapscallion, both of which are on the list. Repeated enough, such words can take off all over again.

But Forsyth is right about one thing: The “lost” words most worthy of revival are ones that have no modern equivalent. English is an incredibly expressive language, thanks to its mergers and acquisitions over the millennia. But having a few more precise words—neologisms or “lost” words—enter common use has got to be a good thing.

But who’s championing the case of the words we should lose?

The photo at top of this post is my own.