Golden Cock - Twat of the Year

I've been watching a lot of Top Gear lately, and they have a tradition at the end of the calendar year to award the presenter who's given a spectacular example of stupidity throughout the year with the prestigious Golden Cock award. Naturally, I think this is a fantastic idea for the rest of the world, even if I probably shouldn't use the same name.

So in an effort to get myself writing again (did anyone notice I wasn't aside from me?) I'm going to spend the next few days, and possibly well into January, picking LESTAQ Magazine's Twat of the Year (on that note, Mark Zuckerberg is disqualified, although sometime soon he ought to get a lifetime achievement award).

Obvious nominees include people I don't like, but I'll make every effort to include people whom I otherwise like but made a complete twat of themselves in the interest of fairness. This way, I won't spend the next several years awarding the thing to Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and The Collective Employee Base Of (Insert Telecom Company Here).

Tomorrow, the first nominees and why!

How to get a letter to the editor published

Seeing as today is the British general election, and we'll likely find out which arsehole is going to occupy 10 Downing St for the next five years, and it likely won't be the arsehole I support, I've decided to write about something else.

Out of a sense of habit or devotion, I'm not sure which, I continue reading my hometown newspaper, the Evansville Courier and Press, despite no longer living there. For a while it was because I was expected to keep abreast of Evansville news for a class, but in honesty I would've kept reading without that reason. My favourite section when I read the hard copy, and it continues to amuse me greatly, is the letters to the editor.

Now, in the United States, and especially in local papers, there is a formula for getting a letter to the editor published. First, you choose a recent topic. This seems obvious, so I'll not linger. The next step is to take an absurd position on it. If you cannot convincingly write on an absurd position, feel free to "express amazement" at the absurd position of another letter writer. If you are holding an absurd position, be sure to take that to its extreme. If you take it to its illogical extreme, so much the better.

Let's work with an example, shall we? Lately there have been a lot of letters about health care reform. First, we must establish the facts: Health care reform will require, in 2014, that all Americans purchase health insurance or be covered through their work plan. It also eliminates the preexisting condition's legality. This does not a good letter make.

If you want to write on the health care reform issue, you must use one or two of the following words: Socialism, government takeover, Obama, tyranny, unconstitutional, Obamacare, taxpayer, Big Brother. Don't use them all! Remember, you have a 250-word limit! If you use them all you'll go well over that. Next, be sure to use a slippery slope argument in addition to buzzwords. You can use other logical fallacies as well, but "slippery slope" is the easiest one.

DO NOT FACT CHECK YOUR WORK.

Once you feel you have sufficiently expressed your natural paranoia about whatever it is that Rush told you, add the information the newspaper requires of you and send in your letter. If you send it in early enough in the day, it may get included in next morning's edition. They love cranks.

Credit where it's due

It's finals week, and probably the last one I'll take part in for a few decades. Needless to say, I'm very happy about that. Or rather, I was, until I was walking out of my class last night and talking to one of my group members.

My group member, whom I shall call Em, and I were rejoicing in the fact that we got the damn thing done, did a pretty good job if we say it ourselves, and survived the whole thing without major medical trauma. This is something I've done every time I've had a group project, and I'm very sure others have as well. As we turned a corner on campus, Em said, "And thank God, I forgot to thank him!"

Now, personally, I'm annoyed by that one. I mean, I did a lot of work on this project. M did a massive amount of work on this project. Jay, our other group member, did some work. But dammit, God didn't do shit. God didn't show up for one meeting or contribute a single idea by email. God didn't get his blood drawn, didn't do camera work, photos, video editing, writing and editing, interviews, or legwork. God, as far as I can tell, sat around like a lazy bastard eating grapes and enjoying the weather.

Not only that, but I don't even remember the class where God was added as a member of our group. I was under the impression that our group had three people in it. I'm not bothered by a group of four, but I would've liked the fourth bugger to contribute something to the project, because it wasn't fucking easy.

Maybe I misunderstood, and God wasn't a group member. Maybe he's Em's copy editor. If that's the case, then okay. But I'll be really pissed off if that lazy sod gets full credit without doing any real work.

Author's Note: I realise this is a vast misinterpretation of Em's statement. Nevertheless, I maintain that God had nothing to do with getting this project done and done well. Nowhere did we require supernatural assistance, because all we got done was due to hard work, skill, and perseverance; in short, us.

Vote Liberal Democrat

Despite my strong feeling that nobody who reads this blog has voting rights in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and despite that the people who do read this blog are few and very far between, I spent my time at work thinking about why I support the Liberal Democrats in the upcoming British General Election.

Then I got home and saw the Guardian have beat me to it.

So read this. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/apr/30/the-liberal-moment-has-come

A love letter to early adopters

Dear early adopters: I love you dumb bastards.

You know who you are.

• If you paid $600 for an iPhone, and gladly, back in 2007;
• if you have a five-year-old Blu-Ray player
• (if you also have an HDDVD player come to that);
• if you jizzed in your pants over the iPad despite having multiple computers and a Kindle already (Yes, Adam, I'm sort of picking on you here)
• if you ever stood in line for the release of a console, game, or new piece of tech;
• if you bought Avatar on Blu-Ray or DVD yesterday (although probably Blu-Ray).

If you did any of those things, you absolutely fit the definition of "early-adopter." You're the kind of person who can't be without New Stuff. Now, don't get me wrong, this is a very good position in society. But god dammit do you guys haemorrhage money.

I don't know where I'd be without all the early adopters in the world. Early adopters are the ones who tell their friends (or in the case of tech journalists, their readers) whether this hunk of plastic and silicon is worth the, um, plastic and silicon used to make it. They are the ones who tell us all the cool stuff that New Stuff can do. You lot are the ones who drive the tech sector of the economy of the First World, not just by buying these things but also by making others want these things more.

But my favourite purpose of the early adopters is this: you buy up the first several batches. You drive the makers to make better ones. And absolutely most importantly, you drive the fucking price down.

I remember when I got my first iPod (it was called an iPod Video if that helps). Two weeks later, Steve Jobs announced the iPhone. My reaction was along the lines of "God DAMMIT." Then I learnt it was to be $600 with a 2-year contract with AT&T. My reaction was along the lines of "Holy FUCK that's a bad deal." But, as always, the early adopters bought the iPhones up. About a year later, halfway through that contract, Apple dropped the price to about $200 - still not a great price, but infinitely better than it was - and refunded the early adopters $100. More than one tech writer likened it to an angry john throwing a $100 note at a whore after he finished.

Now, the iPhone is down to $100 for the cheapest 3G model, or $50 for a refurbished one. The top-of-the-line model (3GS) is still $200. Meanwhile, the iPad came out and the cheapest version ... is $600. And the early adopters have jumped all over that shit.

Keep buying, early adopters! Your money spent makes that product more affordable for me.

Textbook Buyback Lotto

It's that time of year again on USI's campus. It's damp and dreary, everyone keeps their head down when walking to class, and they're all secretly panicking about that one final where the professor hates them and the subject matter is incomprehensible but it's required for their major so they're pretty much screwed. But soft! There is a bright side to these dark days, and it is called "Textbook buyback."

I've always enjoyed textbook buyback. I feel like I've won the lottery. You know, the kind of lottery where the cost of the tickets is six times your actual winnings. Oh wait, that kind of is like the real lottery, isn't it? And it's even more like the lottery because half the time, your god damned books aren't buy-backable because they're changing the text for next term (which they do just to aggravate you. Personally).

Having had a rather poor and constantly-driving semester, I was very happy to see a surprise $97 enter my hands on Tuesday. Technically I'm not finished with these courses, but damn it, I was hungry. I felt rather happy about that amount of money, because I've got it in my head after two straight terms of humanities a few years ago that I won't get more than half a dollar back for any given book, and that's if I'm lucky. If I'm not, the trash bin will be receiving a special gift for Christmas this year - it's that psychology text you've always wanted! What, you have three already? Well, you can never have too many, you ungrateful inanimate object! What? You got me a half-drunk, melted chocolate shake? Great. It's vouchers to Rural King for you next year.

I think the end of fall term is better for textbook buyback than end of spring term, partly because it's very rare to have a department completely change texts in the middle of the year. I have a theory that I just made up right now that while we're all getting drunk and flashing our bodies at some creepy thirtysomething who's made a living off of filming coeds flashing their bodies at him on spring break, the department heads stick around and decide just how many of their current texts they're going to say, "Screw it!" to. They may do this out of jealousy, or they may do this as a chemical reaction to red horns sprouting from their temples every spring, but I haven't established a control group or done the appropriate level of testing to say for certain, mainly because I suck at that.

I didn't bother selling back one of my texts because I had it in my head that first week, right after my professor said, "We aren't going to be using it, since you all used it in the prerequisite class to this," I would immediately ask for a refund. Naturally, I had better things to do like sleeping and playing Halo. That leaves me in the situation of having a perfectly shrink-wrapped textbook with the software code unactivated, and now I won't get the full price I paid for it, despite it being a) in mint condition, b) never removed from box, and c) the kind with the firing rocket that blinded a kid so they discontinued it the first week.

I suppose the bright side is we get money back at all. It won't be enough to buy gifts for all our friends, but after they spawn camped you last week, do they really deserve anything other than a dog turd? I didn't think so.

Use a real instrument, you twit

Can we officially call the contest in favour of Rock Band please?

I found out about Guitar Hero in 2005 when I worked at Best Buy and we had a demo set up. Be honest, I found out about it when one of my under-18 co-workers spent the better part of a day he had off playing the stupid thing. I never quite understood why you would want to fake-play a guitar, unless you didn't have access to a guitar at the moment. I mean, the equipment plus game was about as much as a low-grade electric guitar.

Then they made sequels, and along with the sequels came competition in the form of Rock Band. This was clearly distinct as it wasn't just fake guitar playing, it was fake drumming (although with the advent of synth drums in the 1980s I'm not sure it's THAT fake) and singing. I for one thought this was a bad idea, because I'm an awful singer, my wife is an excellent singer, and I have absolutely no idea if any of my friends can sing worth an arse, but just in case I don't want to find out - primarily because I know just HOW bad my singing is. It is fit for nought but death metal in the car, alone.

But okay, you know? I had friends who did play the game, and they enjoyed it, so what harm would it really do? So what if it was a Playstation version of karaoke plus air guitar plus ... synth drums? They even (both, I think) did actual-guitar-based controllers - Les Pauls, Gibson SGs, stuff like that. That's when they started spinning off. They had band-centric versions of the games. Guitar Hero had Metallica version (which was sort of obvious when one thinks about it). Rock Band managed to get the Beatles, which I think is immensely good for them. Guitar Hero had Aerosmith, and will have Van Halen.

Then Guitar Hero took a massive shit on what little semi-credibility they might have had and did "Band Hero", what is clearly "similar but legally distinct" even though plenty of people could easily confuse them. Not only that, but they brought in Taylor Swift, famous for being 18 and blonde and interrupted by Kanye West. Really, I would have been happy to die without hearing that fucking song. Sadly, having had it on the muzak at work, that wasn't going to happen anyway.

So what's next, Guitar Hero? Avant-garde Hero? I'd like to see that - let me rock out on some video game controller sleigh bells to an indie pop-rock song. I want to play the shit out of a Wii tambourine to some Polyphonic Spree. Where is our harp-shaped controller, Guitar Hero?! Give me a xylophone, cello, or tuba, except, you know, for the 360. Or maybe instruments is thinking about it the wrong way. Give me Jazz Hero! You blow into your controller and improv, and whoever does the best gets the most Live points.

I suppose as someone who spent actual time and effort learning to play an actual instrument, I find it stupid to spend all that time playing a fake version of the instrument. I could be partly jealous because every time I've tried to play guitar hero, I've played the actual notes instead of "what the computer tells me to play," thus greatly fucking up the song. But I don't think that's it, because I've only tried to play twice, and I really don't see the point. I mean, I don't have to play Guitar Hero! I can play these songs for real!

Even the Taylor Swift song - it consists of smearing fæces all over the guitar, amp, and nearest power plug.

Milk (or: goddammit I need to write more)

I saw Milk in class the other week. My immediate reaction was, “So that's Milk.”

Unfortunately, that sort of thing makes for terrible, droll reading, so I got to thinking about it more. My next thought was about some of the things the Christian Conservatives® said for why they were anti-gay and why gays shouldn't be allowed to do, well, anything. One of the most wonderful reasons in my view was given by a man who I don't remember much about, apart from what he said. What he said was this.

“You can argue with me, but you can't argue with God.”

That's got to be one of my favourite reasons for a political position. I hope someone uses that in my favour someday. But the thing is, it absolutely is true for me. Seeing as I don't believe in any gods, I couldn't argue with such a thing. I mean, I can't argue with something that I don't believe exists, the very idea of doing so falls over as soon as I try. He was right on that point at the very least: I cannot by any means argue with his god.

There's another bit with a woman who is actually featured a bit more heavily (read: not very heavily but she talks a lot on telly in what I think is stock footage), saying many of the same things, “Christian heritage”, “upstanding morals”, “gays are bad”, and other stupid crap. It's always based on her religion, and the funny thing is, never anyone else's. It's not like Christianity is the only religion in the world that has a problem with homosexuality. One might think these people could all get together and hate on gays as one. Perhaps luckily, they're too busy hating each other as well as gays. But that's another topic.

Anyway, The problem with these religious arguments is, they're Constitutionally untenable, or as I prefer to think of them, “complete and utter crap.” There is the whole “establishment clause” in the First Amendment that sort of prevents such reasoning behind laws. Or so I thought, then I met the Christian Conservatives® (it really is like a brand name, isn't it?).

The reason I hit on those particular moments, or rather they stuck so soundly in my brain, is that I've been hearing this sort of thing since I can remember. It doesn't help of course that I spent thirteen years at Catholic schools, which only meant I heard even more of it. I heard these asinine arguments so much that I could refute them in my sleep – not that it helped, being, I say again, a Catholic school. But what I learnt from Milk is that the Christian Conservatives® have made absolutely no new arguments in the past 30-40 years.

I learnt if I'm going to be opposing them on this issue (and I shall), I'm going to have to settle in for a lot of repetition.

A terrible case of burying the lede

I visited the US House yesterday. It was ... okay. I think I would've been more interested if they had been in session and it hadn't been the last day before a three-day weekend. Regardless, it had interesting moments.

I learnt that the crypt underneath the rotunda is empty because the Washingtons did not want the bodies of George and Martha to be dug up and reburied in the District, especially not 25 years after they died. I also learnt that the Supreme Court used to meet for many many years in the US Capitol. And I learnt that Congressman Robert B Aderholt (R-AL) is one of those people who never attended or paid attention to university-level American History courses.

He was the only one still present at Friday, 11 a.m., and was talking to what looked like a first-grade class of some sort. One of the teachers asked about "In God We Trust" on the money (it is carved above the Speaker's podium as well in the House). The Congressman went on this long, rambling talk about how it's on the money, no plans to take it off, there was one of the dollar coins with it on the rim, they moved it to the front (missing the fact that the valuable versions of those coins are MISSING the "In God We Trust" due to a minting error on the day), and then said something about how about 95 per cent of the founding fathers were devout Christians.

Anyone who's even HEARD of Thomas Jefferson knows he was nothing of the sort. I direct anyone who needs evidence to any of his writings on the subject, the fact that he has a version of The Bible without all the Super-Jesus parts, i.e., with all the instances of superpowers removed. John Adams was raised in Christianity but later in life had more of a neutral view of religion. He even rejected his father's request for him to become a minister because he thought being an attorney was more noble. James Madison wrote in 1792 that there was no specific religious sanction for American Government. Thomas Paine wrote (biased source notwithstanding)

The case, my friend is, that the world has been over-run with fable and creeds of human invention, with sectaries of whole nations against all other nations, and sectaries of those sectaries in each of them against each other. Every sectary, except the Quakers, has been a persecutor. Those who fled from persecution persecuted in their turn, and it is this confusion of creeds that has filled the world with persecution and deluged it with blood.

The amount of ignorance involved when people speak of the US founding fathers is staggering, albeit not necessarily exclusive to them. I have heard many times the quote of Albert Einstein, "God does not play dice with the universe," which is a paraphrase anyway, used as "evidence" (for instances of evidence consisting entirely of quote-mining) of Einstein's belief in a god, or as he was fond of saying, "The old one." In fact, upon being asked directly by Rabbi Herbert S Goldstein of New York, he replied, "I believe in Spinoza's God, Who reveals Himself in the lawful harmony of the world, not in a God Who concerns Himself with the fate and the doings of mankind." He also said, "To take those fools in clerical garb seriously is to show them too much honor." So while he may have believed in some sort of god (which I dispute on the grounds that "pantheism" is a sort of middle ground so as not to say "I'm an atheist" whilst still expressing wonder at the natural world), he certainly had no love for organised religion.

Maybe I'm rare in this, but I'm not terribly fond of misquoting, misinformation, or selective quotations. I am a fan of context, and if someone says something ambiguous, asking another question or doing more research is warranted. I really abhor when people ignore things that don't agree with their already-held beliefs or pet theories. Not to say I'm innocent of it myself (to say nothing of rationalisation) but I am aware of it and try to find reality. I certainly don't stand up in front of small children and tell them known lies.

An open letter to ESPN's editorial department

Dear ESPN: All I ask is a little perspective.

On the front page of your MLB website, you have a photo of the Yankees jumping onto each other with the caption, "Their long, long title drought will soon be over. Why the New York Yankees are about to win their first World Series in almost a decade." Long, long title drought, eh? So long that it requires italics? Well, okay. Being from the Midwest originally I'm certainly familiar with long title droughts for my sport teams, but for the Yankees? Perhaps we can take a look at the record, yes?

Okay, the last time they won a World Series was 2000 according to Wikipedia (yes, I know, but it's quick and easy). Before that, they won in 1999, 1998, and 1996. Before that of course, the last time they won a World Championship was in 1978. Now THAT is a long, long title drought. Actually, no ... no it isn't. I take it back. That's an extended title drought, but not even a single un-italicised "long" one. If we take a look at other teams, I'm sure we'll find horribly longer ones, worthy of the italics and repetition.

To start with, let's visit Chicago's North Side. The Chicago Cubs have not won a World Series since 1908 - that's 101 years. THAT, I daresay, is a long, long, long Series Drought. It's so long it's become infamous. The Cubs are still a very good baseball team, but they never seem to get past the playoffs. In fact, the last time they even PARTICIPATED in a World Series was 1945. Their losing streak is such a part of baseball that "Maybe Next Year" is the Cubs Fan's unofficial slogan.

Another team with a super-long Series Drought is the Boston Red Sox. Dubbed the "Curse of the Bambino," the Sox had not won a series since before the trad e of Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees in 1919 (the actual win was in 1918, throwing a bit of confusion onto the nomenclature, but anyway). The first time in 86 years they won a Series was in 2004 after they came from an 0-3 record in their playoff series against the Yankees to win, and then sweep the St Louis Cardinals.

Speaking of the Cardinals, before their most recent win in 2006 over the Detroit Tigers, they had not won a Series since 1982, a 24-year streak. Other teams with even longer failures to attain World Series trophies include the Cleveland Indians, San Francisco(New York) Giants, Pittsburgh Pirates, Baltimore Orioles, and Detroit Tigers.

Some other teams in Major League Baseball have never won a World Series in their entire existences. These include the San Diego Padres, Colorado Rockies, Houston Astros, Milwaukee Brewers, Tampa Bay (Devil) Rays, Texas Rangers, Washington Nationals/Montreal Expos, and Seattle Mariners. Of those, only the Rangers, Nationals/Expos and Mariners have never even participated in a World Series.

So, dearest ESPN, if you would kindly do those of us who hate or don't give a shit about the Yankees the courtesy of cutting back on the hyperbole, we would much appreciate it. We do, after all, make up most of your viewing audience outside of New York and New Jersey. I expect to see reports of the Red Sox breaking their one-year losing streak, or even the Florida Marlins breaking their five-year streak, any time now.

Well, except for the thing about the Marlins, since they're not playing post-season.

Signed,

One of the 250m people who doesn't live in the New York area and is therefore sick of hearing about New York sports teams.