On the Media

A big push in the cbc news over this past year has been to get feedback on how to improve their layout to please people that want to watch cbc, and hopefully attract new viewers in the process. And they did change their layout; Peter Mansbridge got a new space age desk where he stands instead of sits, and logos continuously twist and turn behind him as if by some unseen news or tv wind. For the most part I had no complaints, and I actually liked when they split up major news components as standalone segments you can watch from their website, so I can catch At Issue when I want some perspective on current Canadian politics, or not watch Rex Murphy's masturbatory drone at all, ever, any of the time. But, like the webcasts of the Daily Show, there is now advertisements embedded between every segment.

The commercials are still not nearly as long as on tv, but I feel like I'm being weaned on the 7% rule. I heard from someone or read it or something that people will pretty much always adjust to about 7% overall change for a given period of time. So I think the end game of webcasts is that it will end up looking exactly like television, which has been honed as an advertising paradise over televisions 60 years of history.

One other thing, obviously when they were finding out people's comments, NOBODY mentioned that they wanted actual journalism, actually answering the 5 W's and all that. I watched a piece on the rebel upsurgance in Thailand with the red shirts, and all they did was talk with someone in Canada who is going to Thailand and showed how she watches cbc news....seriously? Not once did they say what the fighting was about, what the issues are and perspective from both sides. There was just some footage from embedded journalists with the Thai army showing how the army methodically moved in and shot some people.

Last point, they have taken to showing DEAD BODIES on the news. They announced 6 rebels were killed while footage was shown of a soldier covered 2 dead people in plain clothes. Is that what people asked for? More real footage of dead bodies? Really?

merging virtual and reality

The progress that is being made in games like WoW and Farmville tell us important information about progress that has been made in psychology and social engineering. Specifically rewarding types of behavior with virtual items like money, items, etc. The implications of where this is going is quite frightening, such as rewarding people for watching/remembering advertisements, or even for reporting friends and family for things they have done against the state.

If what I'm saying is too vague to be sensible, then watch this episode of TED Talks. There are lots of times modern society has been compared to 1984, and this is just one example of many. The implications about the direction society is headed, barring any natural disaster, can seem pretty overwhelming. But we need to remember that throughout human history people have always been stuck in shitty situations, and so there is no reason we can't be happy regardless of the situation we are in.

The Rot of Parliment

Imagine waking up next to this face every morning. I've been doing just that in an attempt to watch Question Period for our Canadian parliment. I've tried convincing politically interested friends to do it with me, but so far noone has been able to tolerate more than 20 minutes or so without walking away, becoming interested in anything else, or screaming and raging within inches of punching my monitor screen out. If you want to give it a try, just head to this website, but the odds are good you may have the stomach for it.

People are interested in politics, but their apparent disinterest indicates otherwise. After talking to them about it, the problem isn't the issues themselves, it's how they are dealt with. Question Period is supposed to be a way to get information from the Canadian government and get them to account for their actions. Unfortunately, there seems to be no obligation for the minister questioned to actually answer the question. Instead it is a lot of backtalk, accusations, subtle and not so subtle insults and honking about what a great job they are doing. The questions asked aren't always objective either and often try to trap the person answering the question, which is probably what started the behaviour in the first place. Either way, it has become a skeletal farce of angry shouting bureaucrats, where really very little gets accomplished. Ask anyone and they will tell you bureaucracy sucks for a wide variety of reasons, but sadly we have not created any better system that balances representation, due process, and thoughtful action.

I may keep watching it through the summer, or I might give myself a little vacation. I find myself mentally tuning out the droning Bairds and Prentices and Odas with their robotic reading and rereading of party rhetoric, but the ineffective hammering repetition of the opposition parties doesn't really encourage me either. Does the fundamental pillars of our parliment need to be redesigned from the ground up, or is there some way to wade through the bog currently in place and make something usable a few minor but well placed adjustments ?

malt liquor

I was doing some research on malt liquor for a writing piece, here are some of the interesting facts I found:

Pro-Drinking Messages and Message Environments for Young Adults: The Case of Alcohol Industry Advertising in African American, Latino, and Native American Communities


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-"Malt liquor" was first documented during Roman times, and was produced without preservatives, thus inducing people to consume it while still fresh. Malt liquor and other Germanic beverages, were scorned by the rich. They were considered the drink of the poorer classes in Gaul, the Barbarians and mountain people.

-A content analysis examined 1,000 of the most popular songs in 1996-97 across five genres of music popular with youth. This study found that 17 percent of all the lyrics contained references to alcohol and that alcohol was mentioned more frequently in rap music (47 percent) than in other genres such as country-western (13 percent), top 40 (12 percent), alternative rock (10 percent), and heavy metal (3 percent). Overall, 22 percent of songs with alcohol mentions referred to beer or malt liquor, 34 percent to wine or champagne, 36 percent to hard liquor or mixed drinks, and 31 percent to generic terms such as “booze.” A common theme was getting intoxicated or high (24 percent), although drinking was also associated with wealth and luxury (24 percent), sexual activity (34 percent), and crime or violence (13 percent).

-There is an energy drink called Four Loko Malt Liquor Energy Drink

-Malt liquor, in particular, is heavily advertised and promoted to African American young adults. Malt liquor brews typically contain between 4.5% and 6% alcohol compared to 3.4% to 4% for regular beers. While the beer industry has seen declines, the U.S. beer market share of malt liquor went from 5.7% in I980 to 9.5% in I995. Malt liquor sells best in African American and other ethnic minority markets.

-Gangsta rap performers such as RUN-DMC and N.W.A. have made the image of the 40 oz. malt liquor bottle a popular symbol of masculinity. A particularly explicit advertisement featured Ice Cube asserting that St. Ides "Gets your girl in the mood quicker" and "Gets your Jimmy thicker."

The following is a radio ad for St. Ides malt liquor:

Mmmmm,I need some refreshin'

when I finish manifessin'

Too cold to hold Bold like Smith and Wesson ...

Ice Cube's in the house don't you know me

Pour out on the curb for the homies.

-In March I992 Hornell Brewing Co. of Brooklyn, New York intro-duced "Crazy Horse" malt liquor as part of its celebration of the American West themes. Subsequently, the American Indian Movement (AIM) and Honor Our Neighbors Origins and Rights (HONOR), Inc., called for a nation-wide boycott of "Crazy Horse" malt liquor. The brewers have stated that they are honoring the memory of Crazy Horse with the product and that they are not targeting Native Americans.

Cubism

On the weekend my friend and I started watching this old documentary series on art, called The Shock of the New, where they cover a range of art history and brief but interesting descriptions of different art styles and interpretations. The most interesting of these, and something I want to read more about is cubism. I never understood surrealist art like Picasso, but the idea of cubism is that you are trying to show the viewer more than one side of something in a two dimensional painting. I never understood where they were getting the ideas to draw the way they did, but it makes so much sense now. Futurism is also pretty cool, how they are trying to express motion or the passage of time in a single picture as well.

It made me think, what phase in art history are we in right now? They have names for periods and categories for every progressive style, except i dont' think they have one for us yet, because we are still in the middle of it?

Beautiful danger

I used to really obsess about the weather. When I first moved to Victoria I found it so bizzarre that it was, more often than anything else, 11 degrees, summer, winter and in between. I started using the weather network maps and resources, following the jet stream and checking weather and temperature patterns. It is obvious probably to most people, like it is obvious to me now that being surrounded by the ocean ends up having a regulating effect on temperature and other weather anomolies. Living where we are on the tip of the island, we are in between a few different major weather patterns, and so end up having much nicer weather than the rest of the island a lot of the time. Of course it could also be related to the ley lines running through Victoria, but maybe I'll talk about that another time.

Anyhow, we were ejoying the weekend of sunshine being offered to us, but after only a short time in the sun someone remarked of my friend i was hanging out with "Wow your face is really sunburned." We were only outside about 15 minutes.

This prompted me to go back to my beloved weather website, this time checking out the UV report. The index, which is dynamically updated, was resting at 6. And while 6 doesn't sound like much, after studying the scale this was considered "high"...although the scale goes all the way to 11+, EXTREME, which I would assume would cook us all inside our houses whether we're wearing sunscreen or not. Yes thats right, summer hasn't even started and we are getting astronomical UV ratings.

Take another look at the pictures at the start of this post. On the left is ozone averages from 2000, and on the right is the most recent ozone map. Most of Canada is right now in the 425-450 Dobson Units (units for measuring ozone concentration), except for southern BC (including Victoria), Ontario, Quebec and some maritimes. The other interesting anomole is over iceland/greenland, which I can only assume is due to the volcanic activity. According to the 2000 map the area is usually in the range of 475-500 DU, but is currently in the 300-325 DU range. And according to this website volcanoes create holes in ozone and can destroy ozone.

The good news seems to be that the ozone layer seems to be in better shape than it was in 2000, unless ozone just becomes more concentrated in summer perhaps. At any rate, I may need to invest in some sunscreen instead of just ducking indoors when my skin starts to sizzle.