Licensing and Me

This is about the practical side of copyright use in the US legal system.

One person can write a story, make music, record sound effects, make art, and produce it. It’s time-consuming and most people aren’t skilled in enough media to make a good product that way.

If you’re not rich, you need to collaborate with other poor people or combine your work with the Public Domain or appropriately non-restrictive licences. Sadly, too many people use the most restrictive Creative Commons license possible. If you use a No Derivatives license, your music can’t be background for a scene and your photo can’t be a cover for a story. If you use the Non-Commercial clause, your work can’t go in a video because video host sites have ads. I won’t be making money, but someone will, and likely not much of it.

Some people who license NC say “share it all you like, just don’t charge money for it.” In other words, if you aren’t charging you’re ok. That’s what NC should mean, but doesn’t.

For the last several weeks I’ve been licensing all my non-writing material on the following logic: is this something I want to turn into a larger business venture? If not, I release it public domain or CC-BY at the strictest. I chose PD or CC-BY depending on whether I want credit. In photography, I don’t care so it almost all goes public domain.

If it could be a larger business venture, I release it CC-BY-NC.

Writing is a bit more complicated and that’s why I haven’t set a specific license for my writing available here. I don’t like CC licenses for writing, but I’ve yet to find one I like better.

Most of the stuff I write here will be released under something like CC-BY. No Derivatives is tempting, but making a video or podcast from text is transformative and that’s forbidden by ND. Also, I’d rather not have my mistakes perpetuated for all time because I used an ND license.

Until I find something better, you can use any of my work (except Chrissmas Collins Universe stories) with only two restrictions. Make it clear I wrote the original work and don’t charge money.

The advantage, for those who are wondering, is that I maximize my audience and keep my fanbase interested. I don’t release all of my work on Troll Jammies. You probably shouldn’t release all of yours for free either. But make sure you get the maximum benefit out of what you do release.

The people using our work to make other things are people like us. If we make it easier on them, there’s more likelihood that we’ll get the publicity we want.

Note: As I’m sure someone will note if I don’t mention here, it is possible to negotiate with individual creators to get work licensed under less restrictive licenses. However, it’s easier and less time-consuming to simply find something else to use.

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Writing Profanity

Adapted from a Drabblecast forum post I made in April.

In writing, anything that counts as a crutch is a bad thing when used as a crutch. “F#%&ing angry” is just plain bad writing. It’s weak in all the ways that matter in written form. “Boiling mad” would be just as weak.

It passes up the opportunity to describe what that anger looks like, what it feels like, and what effect it has on the characters viewing it. It robs the real emotional impact of the statement for a shock factor which doesn’t play for people who don’t notice swearing.

So, eliminate all profanity, right? No.

Tightening prose is good, but in-dialogue swearing shouldn’t need justification in excess of what justifies weak salt words like “however,” “particularly,” and “that.”

Pulp Fiction is a great illustration. There’s quite a bit of swearing. It’s not excessive unless you eschew all swearing and the movie wouldn’t have been improved by removing swearing or by adding it. It’s a perfect balance.

The fine line is between what sounds realistic and what works from a story perspective. It takes me thirty-five to forty minutes drive home from work every day. If you wrote the a day in the life of Ignatius, you’d leave that out unless something drastic and interesting happened on that commute. It’s not realistic, but realism is like butter. You put the butter on the bread, not crumbs of bread on butter.

Sailors, vikings, and Ignatiuses may swear continuously, but I’ll have a hard time following a story that has that much swearing in it.

In summation: moderation.

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On Losing Friends (of the Paper Persuasion)

Timeless Books by Lin Pernille

What does a book mean to you?

I’ve been an avid reader long enough that I own a rather embarrassing pile of Star Trek and Earth 2 novels (yes, they had tie-in novels for Earth 2). In my life, I’ve spent countless hours reading and—with some select favorites—re-reading books.

The other day, I remembered that my copy of Brave New World was still missing. It’s been missing for six or seven years now. It’s like losing a friend when you realize you can’t find your copy of Smoke & Mirrors or the E. E. Cummings book with the poem that makes you tear up every time.

I buy lost books again sometimes. Even with a book that hasn’t been dog-eared or written in, there’s a feeling that something is missing. I replaced Smoke & Mirrors, but haven’t read it again. I didn’t re-purchase Brave New World.

... or the E. E. Cummings book with the poem that makes you tear up every time.

The other day, I thought I lost my copy of Demon-Haunted World. I was sad about it, but didn’t realize how sad I had been until I found it. As I finished reading it, I noticed it was gratuitously dog-earred. I nearly lost all of the quotes I wanted to remember. I would have lost part of what Carl Sagan meant to me.

When I contrast this to my favorite ebook purchase to date, I realize there’s not a whole lot of difference there. I bookmarked, highlighted, and scribbled like crazy in Cat’s Cradle. It’s possible the company I bought it from will go out of business and I’ll accidentally sync and lose everything I put into it.

A book is a book and whether it’s made out of bytes or ink. The emotional meaning is in the reader.

What’s your lost book story?

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Alienation

Anyone who doesn’t accept [Christianity] is just stupid. They don’t want to trust what anyone else knows.

Living in Raleigh is interesting at times. There are three or four churches in easy walking distance of my house. There are quite a few additional churches in very easy biking distance.

That’s typical of the Raleigh area. There are exceptions, but just about everyone is in easy distance of a church and usually several.

We’re saturated. If people weren’t attending and contributing to those churches, they would go out of business fairly quickly.

Evolution is based on circular reasoning. There’s no proof. Only idiots would believe in it.

This isn’t problematic by itself; it just serves to illustrate the severity of a problem. Here, people with common theological beliefs often assume everyone agrees with them and no intelligent person could see things differently.

In that environment, even an orthodox person who wants to examine claims critically will probably keep quiet. Only trolls and people who feel the need to win arguments will question the status quo.

They aren’t brave enough to consider that there might be something after they die.

The most unfortunate consequence is that Raleigh is a very lonely place for anyone who is less than orthodox. Also, the faithful never have their faith stretched. In my experience, the faithful would rather not be tested. It’s good for them, though.

I’m sick of being alienated. You can maintain your very strictly orthodox views without alienating people. Just be gracious and stop assuming.

If you want to chase people away, be a jerk.

The same problems and dynamics are equally true when an area’s culture is dominated by another belief. Where atheism is orthodox, agnostics and deists will be alienated if atheists assume intelligent people always agree with them.

In summary, don’t be a jerk because being a jerk is jerkish. Also, if you need an incentive, your incentive is not driving people away from your cause.

Note: The quotes in this article are as close to verbatim as I can get them without a time machine and secret recording equipment.

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5 Tips For Writing Tolerable Blogs

You shouldn’t read a book on writing best sellers by someone who never wrote one. By this rule, you should close this tab right now.

My qualification is knowing what irritates me about blogs and being more patient than most of your audience. If you manage to bore me, you bored most everyone else long before.

Word Count

When writing for your own amusement, you can write works as long as you like. When writing for others, you want to at least keep people’s attention. It’s better if you’re entertaining too.

You want them to come back. The first thing your audience will notice after the title is that you’re a wordy bastard.

• If a post primarily links to something, keep it under 100 words. Consider combining link posts.
• For updates about your life, use less than 500 words.
• To advocate or explain a position, aim for 500 words or fewer, max out at 1000 words. If your post needs more than 1000 words after merciless pruning, make it a series.

Keep Paragraphs Short

Long paragraphs are hard to read, especially on screen. Paragraphs should be one to five sentences long. Don’t abuse the extremes. They’re special occasions like ice cream, cake, and getting trashed.

Sentence Structure

Learn to write a damned sentence. You can start a sentence with But or And, but don’t abuse the privilege. Keep your sentences the right length. Punctuate appropriately.

There’s no magical appropriate sentence length, but it’s safe to say that most 27 word sentences exceed the escalator’s safe weight limit.

The easiest way to keep in-sentence word count acceptable is to avoid using lots of clauses. If it can be two sentences, consider splitting it.

Dump the Fancy (Prose)

It’s tempting to show off your verbal prowess with fancy words. Don’t. You want to keep people engaged, not show off.

Use conversational language, but follow grammar, spelling, and punctuation rules.

Embrace the Fancy (Visuals)

Most people don’t read books. You want to keep the attention of most people. Use headings, subheadings, bullets, numbered lists, quote blocks, and appropriate graphics.

But don’t have autoplay media. If opening your post starts a video or a song automatically, you’ve earned a Hate Point with each member of your audience. People won’t let you rack up many Hate Points before they stop visiting.

Conclusion

Shorter is better. Don’t be fluffy.

If I write a follow up to this, I’ll show a Before and After with some bad text made better. It’s challenging as hell for me to avoid editing-in-process, but I’ll come up with something.

Bonus: This post follows the rules I mentioned. That doesn’t guarantee that you enjoyed it, just that you were more likely to finish it. Bring the gravy.

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We Have Signs by Rubin 110

God Loves the DELICIOUS Taste

The gentleman in the photo above purports that God loves the delicious taste of a particular brand of macaroni and cheese. But does God? There are, thankfully, a limited number of possibilities.

In this week’s article, I’ll examine just that.

God Loves

As anyone who is sensible and aware of the Bible knows, the list of things God hates is rather short. Lying lips and Esau are the most obvious parts, but we’re pretty sure the part about Esau was facetious. Because we’re sensible.

If you don’t put beef in your ‘mac, even most of the stricter folks wouldn’t claim God even disliked this brand of ‘mac.

Furthermore, thousands of U.S. Protestants and Catholics eat this brand of ‘mac every week. What more evidence do you need?

God Is OK With

I won’t argue with those who say that God doesn’t hate this brand of ‘mac. They mean well, and I’m pretty sure God saves hate for things really deserving of it. Like hippies, Liberals, people who help the poor, health care, and Keith Olbermann.

But does God really love this brand?

Well, let’s think about it. There’s pretend cheese in this brand. A lot of recipes made by people raised on this brand of ‘mac call for “cheese product” with parenthetical explanations about what they mean. “Cheese product” is made by the same company. Fake cheese. Faaaake.

God doesn’t hate fakes. Jesus let his disciples use bread and wine in lieu of a cannibalistic Last Supper. But authenticity—where it won’t cause Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease—is clearly better. God is not a man that God should lie … or resort to fake cheese.

There’s a better way.

God Prefers

So, if God doesn’t actually love that brand of ‘mac, is there a brand of ‘mac that God loves?

On the same basis that most religious people interpret the will of God, God loves Grandma Sue’s macaroni and cheese. I’m still trying to find the recipe for that, but this one might not be too different.

Grandma Sue’s macaroni and cheese is the best ‘mac. Obviously, God would love the best the most. So, God loves Grandma Sue’s ‘mac the best.

Is It OK to Go for Second Best?

This is one of the interesting theological questions that haunt young Evangelical Protestants in a different contexts.

Is this person you like a lot the one God wants you to marry? Would it be horrible if you marry them anyway and then it turns out they aren’t the one?

Really scary stuff when you’re fourteen or fifteen.

Since this is my article, I’ll use the same privilege to interpret the mind of God that everyone else does: sometimes what you really want is that one chicken fast food restaurant that’s not open on Sunday but it’s Sunday. Just because you want that one place and can’t have it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t eat some at some other chicken place.

It won’t be what you’re craving, but it’s not like you’re only allowed to eat at one chicken place.

Don’t use that excuse to cheat on your spouse. You’re only allowed one spouse. Until the gays accidentally allow polyamorous marriage.

APOCALYPSE! Just kidding.

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We Have Signs by Rubin 110

Build Prisons on the Moon

I know what you’re thinking. “Prisons on the moon? Absurd!” It’s not as crazy as it sounds.

There are so many great reasons to build prisons there.

Proximity

The trouble with prisons is that they’re kind of like nuclear power plants and landfills. Everyone wants one, but no one wants one close by. It’s easy to understand why. Power plants are dangerous, landfills smell bad, and prisons have a disproportionately impoverished population.

We clearly need a place that is close but not so close that it’s in any of our backyards.

The moon is pretty close on a cosmic scale. It’s not as far away as Mars and it’s not as skin-roastingly hot as Venus. We could send our prisoners on prison ships hurtling through the cosmos, but that would be inhumane and give an odd first impression of humanity. How would you like humanity to be represented by Australians?

No, the moon is the perfect distance.

Escape Proof

Sure. You could escape from a prison on the moon. If you were a moron or suicidal. The moon has no oxygen of its own, and you can’t build a rocket or some sort of space raft to escape the moon either. It’s pretty much foolproof.

Tourism

Alcatraz prison has one million visitors a year. If we assume that each visitor generates $10 of revenue (an assumption we must make since someone stole Alcatraz’s actual revenue information from the internet), that’s 10 million dollars of revenue.

The problem with the revenue is that Alcatraz also has a lot of upkeep costs and it’s notorious for polluting the bay. It might still be profitable, I’m not sure. But it’s not as profitable as it would be if it wasn’t sitting on sea water and poisoning fish or whatever.

What if it was on the moon and instead of $10 profit per visitor, it was making $100 profit per person?

It’s clear we’re going to need some high visibility prisoners to warrant that sort of fee, but I have a few in mind. Who wouldn’t pay a thousand dollars to go on a space flight that ended in a visit to the cell that once held George W. Bush when he was serving a reduced sentence (time off for good behavior) for declaring war on everything? Who wouldn’t pay a thousand dollars plus liquor money to view the cell where Paris Hilton served time for being herself?

Exactly the kind of party pooper we’re not counting on, that’s who.

Minor Problems That Need Addressing

Since most of the people that go to prison are poor and their families are generally pretty poor too, we’re going to have a hard time drumming up revenue any time real soon. It would probably help to decriminalize being non-white, but I’m guessing that’s asking too much.

It costs a lot of money to put stuff on the moon. Like huuuge amounts of money. Like more money than movies on Blu-Ray. Upside, it’s way better than 1080P and doesn’t require quirky firmware updates that take hours and hours to install every time you need to buy a new movie.

Obviously, the prisoners should have to grow their own food and oxygen and what not. Our previous experiences with biospheres on Earth haven’t been too promising. We should probably leave them some backup air and food just in case.

The last problem is the hardest: How are we going to spend all that mad loot? I’m thinking hamburger shooters.

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Your New Mantra: Cooking!

On Sunday, I read through a blog post about five things you should eat for breakfast.

Even with its health food bent, the first commenter on the blog complained that the food wasn’t healthy enough and then spouted bull about how every meal should be 25% protein (WHAT?!), 50% vegetable, and I forget what the remaining 25% was. The original list was disgusting and tasteless enough as it was without following this bizarre advice.

I’m an overweight person. I didn’t get this way by eating delicious food. I got this way by letting stress rule my mind (and thus body) and eating processed food. Stress signals your body to store food, and it is a contributing factor in many cases of insomnia. Insomnia also prevents you from burning stored energy effectively.

America’s obsession with healthy eating is something I totally understand. I’ve lived with health nuts all my life. I’ve seen people seriously trying every diet fad short of the “one food only” (ie rice-only, grapefruit-only, whatever-only) diets.

I’m here to tell you as an internet know-it-all and lover of good food: I don’t care if your diet helps you live to be 200 years old. If you’re not eating awesome food every day, you didn’t live those 200 years, you tolerated them.

This is your new mantra: I deserve awesome food. I deserve a mouth-wateringly delicious meal at least once a week. And if the only way I can get it is to learn to cook, then—by all that is good in the universe—that’s exactly what I’ll do.

Here are my four hints for awesome food:

1. Vegetables are awesome. Don’t make corn or potatoes your primary veggie. Make sure you have lots of dark leafy greens. Veggies should be the bulk of your food. Use sauces (preferably ones you make yourself) and seasonings to bring out their best flavor. Don’t use the microwave for vegetables. I don’t care what anyone says, microwaves make veggies rubbery and 90% of good food is texture. Rubbery is for Calamari, not veggies.
2. Don’t overcook. Overcooking is a sin. If you don’t already know what I’m talking about, then I guarantee you that most of the food you eat is overcooked. Chicken is especially difficult to get right. It should be juicy without being oily. Use a heat thermometer, but remember that meat’s temperature keeps rising after it is taken out of the heat. Work with it until you figure out how to get it to the safe temperature without going over after the cooking stops. If your veggies are mush, you’ve overdone them.
3. Use simple recipes. I don’t mean ones that tell you to put in a can of Brand Name Nacho Cheese, but ones that don’t have a lot of complex ingredients. Brand Name Nacho Cheese is a complex ingredient. Good food is simple food that’s well-prepared. If the recipe you’re looking at has lots of ingredients, see if there’s one that involves fewer ingredients. For the oil painters out there, just like you shouldn’t combine more than three colors of oil paint, you should avoid combining too many ingredients. There are exceptions (like with cajun cooking), but mostly too many ingredients complicates without adding anything worthwhile.
4. I care about this a lot and could probably be pestered to give out more advice. That said, my friend Dino (Dino knows me better as Zeeb Ra, long story) is a phenomenal vegan chef and has a lot more experience than I do. Dino, like me, does not believe in substitutes. No Tofurkey, that sort of thing. Even though I’m not a vegan, Dino’s advice is really practical and informative (I just have to go elsewhere for meat advice). His podcast on oil is literally the most important thing you can listen to if you’re going to be using oil in cooking. If you’re going to be cooking, you’ll be using oil, so just go listen to it.

So, from time to time, I'll probably blog about some of my experiences with cooking. And I'll try to keep them more practical rather than emotional like this one.

Love you all. Eat awesome. -J

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Amazon vs. Macmillan

Amazon Pulls Macmillan Books Over E-Book Price Disagreement

Cory Doctorow’s thoughts

John Scalzi’s thoughts

Brief Summary: Macmillan wanted to raise the price of their ebooks on Amazon to $15 dollars. The impetus for this appears to be the release of the iPad and Apple’s decision to allow more publisher control over pricing than Amazon allows. Amazon de-listed all of Macmillan’s books.

My Thoughts

I’m not at all uniquely positioned to comment on this kerfluffle. I’m someone who aspires to writing success (three rejections so far this year!), and someone who reads a lot of books and short stories. I also read a lot of those books in ebook format, and that’s the one category where I’m probably an oddity compared to the rest of the population.

I agree that Amazon should let Macmillan charge whatever they want. I know that Amazon wants to continue to succeed in the ebook industry and that it’s afraid the iPad is going to put a serious dent in their business if cheap books aren’t a selling point anymore.

What Amazon did is very very bad business. Amazon is the biggest, yeah, but that doesn’t mean they can afford to start spitting in the face of publishers.

Now, that’s really all I have to say on Amazon’s actions.

The rest of what I have to say is for the publishers.

You are out of your ever flippin’ minds if you think I’m going to pay more for an ebook than for a paperback. Even if the DRM you love so much was gone from the picture, I wouldn’t pay paperback prices for something that has no paper and has a marginal cost-to-produce of zero. If marginal cost confuses you and you are a publisher or other content producer, plunk down some change and read Chris Anderson’s Free: The Future of a Radical Price. It’s literally the most important book published last year for people trying to make money in the era of the digital economy.

I saw a 1.5K word literature essay for sale recently that cost 52.95 USD to buy. Can you imagine paying that much? It doesn’t matter how much you charge if the price is so high no one is buying. Macmillan and other publishers have a duty to their authors and artists to price their offerings in such a way that people will actually purchase them.

Update: Matt Wallace has some really good points. As usual with Matt, there is a LOT of swearing involved. If you're opposed to swearing, you'll want to skip. But please don't skip if you are a writer who aspires in any serious way to be published.

Update 2: Charles Stross has weighed in on the subject with a lot of new info. Charles is an excellent SF writer, but also a phenomenal thinker and you should be reading his blog already.

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Grammar Warriors: The Meaning of Words

None of us speak the same language. Since you’re reading this, you probably call the language you speak English. I call the language I speak English too.

Chances are that we had a similar introduction to English if you’re a native speaker. Our parents and the people around us taught us the bulk of what we know without even realizing it.

On a relative scale, this works pretty well. We have the semblance of understanding what other people are saying in our language.

Unfortunately, spend any time around humans and you’ll quickly realize that we generally have huge issues with communication. The communication failure that isn’t related to lying, deceit, and fear can partly be attributed to the differences between our individual language.

The phrase “it is what it is” contains just three different words and the grammar is simple enough. It’s a meaningless statement akin to “those things which exist are in existence.”

However, if you were to say it to a certain group of my friends, you’d be saying something very profoundly insulting. “I have the power to fix this ridiculously bad situation I’ve put you in, but I’m not going to do anything at all.” That’s the gist for my friends.

Not only do words have different meaning for different people, words also change meaning. If you look at text from a hundred years ago, awesome, cool, terrible, awful, great, molest, and a number of other words have changed meaning substantially. If you go to Florida and see the “Don’t molest the alligator” signs and interpret that in a modern sense, you’ll get the wrong message.

Fortunately, the passage of time has the tendency to remove most of the annoying fads of phrase, excising the words or the meanings which are no longer needed in our culture, while preserving the ones that are more useful. “Oh snap!” will hopefully gasp its last breath very soon.

This flexibility in language is absolutely critical to its usefulness. Unfortunately, there are a lot of people who would rather be right than permit the language to change. You’ve all heard that you shouldn’t begin a sentence with But or And. Hopefully you’ve also heard that isn’t true anymore.

There are a lot of antiquated rules like this. These rules further stand in the way of our understanding of each other when using the written language. “I’m doing good” may not be officially proper English, but it’s the common usage and needs to be respected.

“I’m doing well” may convey the message in a grammatically correct sense, but it also conveys a lot of other messages and some of those are counterproductive. I’ll call this concept “meaning baggage” since I haven’t invented any phrases lately.

My friends’ issue with “it is what it is” qualifies as meaning baggage. The fact that you giggle anytime someone asks you if you want a pickle is probably also meaning baggage.

When we say that “ain’t” isn’t a word, we’re counteracting one of the mechanisms whereby language repairs itself. And, let’s be honest, English needs a lot of repair. My favorite examples are spellings from loanwords that weren’t naturalized. Try pronouncing bureau phonetically.

The artificially imposed rigidity applies in writing particularly. You’ll occasionally hear parents and grandparents correcting their children’s spoken grammar, but that sort of thing is generally rare outside of those guardian relationships.

In written word, the vanguards of the eternal preservation of proper English “as I interpret it in the only correct way” are much more active.

Words aren’t considered real words until they’ve been in at least one edition of Webster’s or Oxford. The hilarious thing about this is words only make it in after they’ve seen extensive use. Clearly, a word is a word a long time before Webster acknowledges it.

Let’s be sensible. A word is real when both you and I know what we’re talking about when one of us says it.

That does mean that in some cases a word won’t be a word for everyone, but I think it’s a sensible standard. And it has the upside of meaning we won’t have to continue accepting a fad word’s meaning until Webster’s gets around to removing it.

Chillax! Just kidding on that one, folks.

Tweet This * Facebook This

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Baggage Fees

Check-in baggage fees are ruining air travel in the U.S.

I travel for business 2-4 times a year, always by plane.

This is despite promising not to fly after September 11, 2001 (not because of terrorism, but because of tyranny). The tyranny isn’t so bad with the right spices and a bit of butter.

I’ve only been patted down once and puffed once in the 10-12 trips I’ve taken in the past 2.5 years. The TSA folks are excessively cranky and don’t know what they’re talking about*, but that’s generally not so bad.

I’ve had the dubious advantage of flying Southwest more often than not, so I didn’t realize the dynamic that baggage fees were causing.

I don’t mind paying the fees. Really, I don’t. In fact, as many complaints as I have with Delta after the last two weeks (eight flights total), I appreciate their relatively low price of $20 for the first piece of luggage.

Even though they don't charge much, it has still turned flying into the most miserable thing still allowable under the Geneva Convention.

Many people are trying to fit all of their travel needs into very large carry-ons.

It’s taking literally 30-45 minutes longer to load a six-seat wide plane. I saw several people on each flight that had carry-ons that were larger than my check-in and loaded to twice-capacity.

Even with a normal-sized check-in, I’m now frequently obligated to gate-check my carry-on because there isn’t enough room on the plane for the luggage that should have been checked.

Though Southwest makes me miserable, I’m probably going to be flying them for the foreseeable future. Flying is a substantial hassle even without the luggage fees.

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*Two weeks ago, a group of people at RDU were told that all electronics had to be removed from their carry-ons for x-ray magic. I’ve never heard that before, and none of the three trips I took since then made the same requirement.

Some TSA demand I take off my OCD-coping ticket pouch, and others don’t. Someone is wrong. Which ones, who can say.

Also, if any TSA folks can explain to me which of the following makes my check-in a target for your special harassment, I’d appreciate it: St. John’s Wort, two network cables, a multi-tool (like a leatherman, but not), wireless mouse and receiver, disposable pens, or my bright green (and currently missing) TSA-friendly lock.

And, while I have you, how can security possibly be helped in even the smallest way by demanding to see my ID when I leave the airport?

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Update 3/14/2010: I’ll be giving JetBlue and other airlines that don’t charge for luggage my business for the foreseeable future. I’ve debated whether or not to make this edit for about a month now and have finally decided that, yes, I will comment on it. SouthWest personnel insinuated that director Kevin Smith was too fat to fly and on his next flight humiliate a young lady in order to make it look like they hadn’t singled Kevin out for special treatment.

I’m not a Kevin Smith fanboy (though I do adore his work with Green Arrow). My disinterest in supporting SouthWest isn’t about being a fan. It’s about the general mistreatment of overweight folks in the U.S. It’s about the assumption that overweight folks are overweight because of laziness … even if those overweight people exercise hard two and a half hours a day and eat a diet that rabbits would starve on for months without seeing any change in their weight.

This attitude in U.S. culture prevents many overweight people from getting adequate health care and makes an already difficult life that much more difficult.

If you’re unaware of the problems overweight folks face in the U.S., please read First, Do No Harm and listen to the two podcasts I linked. They’re not comprehensive, but they’re a great place to start.

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Amazing Amazon: Surprise Me

Amazon is hilarious. In a bad way in this case.

I found this puzzle book that looked like it might make a good present for a geeky friend, but I wanted to make sure it wasn’t filled with “Train Alpha leaves Station Zed heading East at 35 miles an hour, Train Beta leaves Station Yankee heading 16 million miles a year. At what time do things become silly?” style puzzles.

I did the “preview this book” thing to make sure. It starts you out at the cover page and (so far as I know) you only get to see so many pages before they won’t show you any more.

I hit the “Surprise Me” button and thought, “Wouldn’t it be surprising if it sent me to the index in the back?”

And that’s exactly what it did. I thought, “Well, there’s 704 pages in this book. Statistically speaking the next one surely won’t be an index page.” I hit “Surprise Me” again.

Index page.

Now, at this point I thought, “It would be nearly the most surprising thing ever if they took me to an index page a third time!”

And lo, I was surprised. But not stupid. Nosiree.

No. this time, I hit the “First Page” button. I was only slightly surprised when it took me to the first page of content instead of the first page of the index.

The preceding was based on a true story. There were no innocents to protect.

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Goals

I should be writing at this very moment. Instead, I’m typing this up and thinking about Captain Picard and varying degrees of getting published.

A story I wrote for braindouche got podcasted recently. It’s not quite the same as being published, but it’s still pretty awesome (oh my god, oh my god, oh my god—have you heard it? I squealed with joy and then listened to it a few dozen times). I even got my first rejection this year!

I could call myself lucky, but on further examination, I know it isn’t true. The places I’ve gone so far I went not simply because I was in the right place at the right time. Lots of people were there at the right place and the right time. I was the one who saw the possibilities and then put the work in to transform those possibilities into a reality.

That’s not to say that I’m just so awesome, because I’m not. I missed a lot of opportunities because I didn’t put the work in … just like most everyone else.

You have to put your foot in the water if you’re going to go swimming.

Every year, I set goals for myself rather than do resolutions. A goal is something you move toward, a resolution is something you break.

I haven’t always finished my goals, but I have always grown from them. This year, the fact that I’m a pushover became a bit too obvious to ignore. I’m making standing up for myself one of my goals and I’ve gotten an early start.

I actually called a customer service line!

That’s precisely the sort of thing I’ve never been able to bring myself to do.

So, I just want to say how much of an inspiration Jennifer Hudock’s commitment reports have been to me. Seeing the inner workings of her progress have really spurred me on to start submitting my work.

I think I’m a little too boring to bother people with regular status updates, but I put a progress box on the right hand side of the page where you can see a basic overview. I won’t put every little project in there because a lot of what I write isn’t intended to be published … at least not by other people. So, if it’s something I’m going to podcast or post up here, you won’t be seeing it there.

But keep an eye out for it and pester me if everything stops moving, ok?

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Patrick Stewart

The other day, I was thinking about making a change to an ongoing project at work that I inherited from a former co-worker. It’s a big change in paradigm, though not necessarily big in any other respect.

I vaguely remembered being told that things would start to take on my own personal style and that there was nothing like it.

Good advice!

The more I thought about it, the more I realized that I had no idea who had told me that. I couldn’t think of anyone I work with who hands out such sage wisdom.

After pondering it for a bit, I realized that my subconscious had inserted a bit of advice that Capt. Picard had given to Cmdr. Riker (probably The Icarus Factor but I’m not certain).

In a sense, that tells you just how much Patrick Stewart has impacted me. I know the man isn’t his character on the television, but the beauty of acting is that it doesn’t matter. Capt. Picard is real enough to give me advice because Patrick Stewart is that great an actor.

Now, if the writing had been crappy, I probably wouldn’t have remembered the advice positively, but it was Patrick who took that good advice and made it real to me.

If this was just a personal reflection, I wouldn’t bother posting it up. However, there’s a rumor going around that Patrick Stewart may soon be knighted. I hope the rumor is true. I think he deserves it, and it seems the Queen is a fan of him too, so chances are good.

So, what other advice does the Captain have for me this year?

I’m ready for my own ship. Having authority has never been an interest of mine, though I certainly “step up to the plate” when necessary. But that’s ok because it’s my own ship. Not a ship that involves giving orders, but a family working toward common goals.

And, of course, the fearless exploration of the culture and universe we live in.

Because that’s how we do things on the U.S.S. Badass.

Speaking of that grand old ship, braindouche produced an audio story I wrote. It's called Good Will. Check it out!

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Triangle Transit for Complete Nubs

With a title like that, it’s only fair to explain that I am writing this article because when I was a Compete Nub in this area, I very much would have appreciated the opportunity to read this article or one like it. There’s a first time for everything, and if you can’t do adequate research because information just simply doesn’t exist, then being a nub isn’t your own fault.

This article is a supplement to the GoTriangle websites, not a substitute for reading what’s already there. Do your own research.

If you’ve already ridden on buses, this article will be pretty boring. If you spot any mistakes, let me know.

Park and Ride

Park and Ride is a pretty handy concept in an area like Raleigh. You literally drive your car to the Park and Ride you need and catch the next bus. Parking there is free.

I use the Sertoma Arts Center and unfortunately both the signs and the information available online is inaccurate for this site. The information on line will kind of get you to the right parking lot, but the signs themselves are horribly incorrect. You can’t take the Millbrook entrance to Shelley Lake to get to the Park and Ride. You have to go into the Sertoma Arts Center, take the first available left, drive to the second entrance, and drive all the way back. On your left hand side facing opposite the Sertoma entrance road, there’s a sign for the TTA 201 bus route. That’s the only route that picks up from that location.

Make sure you pay close attention to which bus routes serve what or you’ll likely end up stranded somewhere.

Stopping the Bus

Some buses (possibly all?) have certain stops where they only stop if it’s requested. Old buses have a nice cord to pull on. Raleigh’s newer buses have a different system that really isn’t that obvious. There are tiny little signs on either side of the front end of the bus to explain it, but if you don’t know what you’re looking for, you won’t find it.

It’s a black, rubbery strip that runs along the length of the bus on the side of the top consoles. Press the button far enough in advance that the driver can easily stop in time. If you can estimate 500 feet, I’d try that distance.

Regional Pass

The 30 day regional pass is pretty nice. You can use every bus system in the area (except the Express Buses) with one low fee. The problem comes into play if you’re like me and can really only use a particular TTA route. If I was only using Raleigh buses, I could get a month long pass for 33 USD (after electronic handling fee). However, there is no discount for only using TTA buses. It costs me 65 USD (after fees) for 30 days of regional pass.

One of the awesome things about transit in this area is that you can order the tickets online and they’ll be mailed in 1-2 business days. I’ve looked into public transportation in other regions, and this sort of turn around time seems to be a rare exception. Other places may make you wait as many as three weeks. I ordered mine Sunday, and I was out of town so I don’t know what day they came in. However, they were post marked for Monday, so they probably arrived Tuesday. Super shiny.

The 30 days on this regional pass starts on the first day you use it. You could order yours today and not use until two weeks from now and your 30 days would count from the date two weeks from now, not from now. When you put your card in for the first time, the machine will print the start date and end date on the back of it.

The website says to swipe your regional pass through the swipe thing. In my experience, the swipe thing doesn’t work for that and you can just put your card into the fare card slot.

Buying Tickets On The Bus

There’s decent information on GoTriangle about buying your tickets on the bus. The only thing I have to add is that the bus uses a vending machine cash reader. If the soda machine won’t take your cash, I doubt the bus will. Bring pretty paper or buy ahead of time.

Times

The Triangle Transit sites all say that you should arrive 10 minutes early. That’s probably a good idea in general. North Carolinians seem to count “five minutes late” as “just about on time.” There’s a time and a place for that, but the bus driver doesn’t know you’re just two minutes away. He or she only knows you’re not there, and he or she is going to drive off.

That said, once you understand how punctuality works in a world based on accurate clocks, you’ll probably notice your bus is 4-6 minutes late every time. I’ve never seen a bus in Raleigh arrive early. If you have actually seen the bus sign and you can arrive at a specific time, then five minutes early is probably good enough.

Other Stuff

Oddly, the best way to get answers about things that their sites don’t cover is to ask on their Facebook page. I got answers to my questions within 24 hours. I will warn you that the answers were somewhat incomplete, but you also get a chance to see what other people have been asking about. I used some of the information that other people had received in order to fill in the gaps of my own knowledge. A lot of that ended up here.

Previous Post in Series: Thoughts About Public Transit

P.S. Did you know that you can hire me to make lousy graphics like those above for a mere 60,000/yr USD? Well-written guides like this come free with the deal!

In all seriousness, though, sorry about the graphics. I tried.

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Markdown: Web Dingus

I used to do the curly quotes, em-dashes, paragraphs, bulleted lists, and really all the HTML on this blog completely manually because it offered a great deal of precision over using Blogger’s built-in editor. Unfortunately, maintaining pure HTML that way is error prone and leads to a lot of extra edits. A recent question asked by Cory Docotorow on Twitter led me to wondering if there was a better way.

As it turns out, there is. At least there is for me. One answer that was posed for Cory—which I doubt would satisfy his 300K request—is Daring Fireball: Markdown Web Dingus. If you set the Filter to Both and Results to Source & Preview, it’ll spit out the magic formatted code.

I’d heard of Markdown before. It’s a simplified markup language that I didn’t see much use for until I found out Dingus combined it with the conversion of regular quotes and double-dashes to HTML. That makes for a killer combination and highly useful.

There are a few snags for me though. There isn’t a way (so far as I can tell) to tell Dingus to assign a style to a given paragraph, so it’s a little Tag-centric instead of CSS-centric. Most experts seem to agree that formatting should all be Style-sheet oriented, and I’ve been doing it that way myself for a few years. So, that’s not entirely convenient. An interesting example of this is what happens when you want to double-space between lines in a list. It inserts paragraph tags inside the LI tags. Eww.

Markdown also dislikes putting text in the heading of any sort of list. I have the choice of not putting a heading there, or of adding it manually. Not the worst choice in the world, but I do this frequently and the added complexity isn’t a positive thing.

Minor complaints aside, I’m quite happy with it. It saves me a theoretical 30 minutes when posting a 1000 word story, and 10-15 minutes plus minor after-the-fact edits on 500 word essays. Because of the Tag-centricism, I still have to do some tinkering with Bedtime Stories for the ADD, but it’s nothing too bad.

If you want to use curly quotes, real em-dashes, and so on in your blog, this is the stuff for you. If you’re wondering why you would care about all that, I’m really sorry for boring you with this post. Basically, it makes everything look more like a proper book or magazine would. Many office suites will do the conversions automatically, but you can’t copy-paste direct into HTML and get consistent results. Even if you could, it wouldn't be appropriately standards-compliant and so it would likely break at some point in the future.

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Thoughts on Florida

I went on a business trip to Florida last week, and I'm a little concerned about the spate of churches I saw there. The problem isn't the number, but the type. Many looked like the sort of places that shouldn't be a 503c. This isn't a thinly-veiled political comment insinuating that churches that disagree with my political beliefs shouldn't get tax write-offs.

Every one of their signs pointed to a name-it-and-claim-it, send me money and God will bless you mindset and theology. If they only fed on those who could use a little less attachment to their money, they could be accused of philanthropy. Unfortunately, they don't go after those people because they aren't easy victims.

It's the people in desperate situations who fall for this sort of pseudo-spiritual shucksterism.

Because I don't hang out with the health-and-wealthers anymore, I've failed to notice that this shallow doctrine marches on. Americans want to believe. We want to believe that there's an easy solution just around the corner. We want to believe that God or some other divine element in the universe will give us loads of money if we just follow ten simple steps.

If there is a divine element in the universe and that element is benevolent, it will never make our lives that easy. It's not in our best interest.

So, what can you do? If you have elderly loved ones in your life, make sure they're not getting tangled up in this stuff. If you know people that are into this sort of theology, challenge them to seek a deeper doctrine. A doctrine which doesn't gloss over Jesus' actual teachings and the sufferings of Job. And if you meet the health-and-wealthers, remind them just how difficult it is for a wealthy man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.

Particularly if the wealthy man's pockets are filled with money taken from the poor.

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Thoughts About Public Transit

A Tale of Three Cities

I want to start using the bus system in Raleigh (more generically, the Triangle Area). I don't have an unhealthy obsession with buses, I just hate driving. Thanks to a month-long trip to Russia in 1999, I know there's a better way. St. Petersburg's Metrolink system is the best way to travel. If you happen to be in St. Petersburg. The other city I'll put in the mix is Baltimore.

St. Petersburg is an incredibly beautiful city, and they have subway entrances nearly everywhere. It's been awhile, so I can't say if it's still good. However, when I was there, you could buy a Metro card pretty much wherever you were at. I can't say anything about their website. I'm sure they have one, but I haven't been there. It really wasn't necessary to use their website to find out anything. It was intuitive, and I know about as much Russian as you're likely to hear in a James Bond movie.

The Triangle Area is so suburban that it's not practical to have closely arranged stops. That said, the simplicity of using public transportation in St. Petersburg is so phenomenally greater than using it in Raleigh or Baltimore that it's unlikely the city layout is to blame for the disparity in ease of use.

I'm sure Baltimore is a great place. I didn't spend much time there. It's way too close to DC for my taste, but it could be worse. There were lots of bus stops, and a light rail. The one complaint I had with Baltimore over Raleigh was that I couldn't get tickets mailed to me in a reasonable time frame.

Why I'm Annoyed Enough to Write This

Both of Raleigh and Baltimore have incredibly unusable websites. I would have given up already if I wasn't such a glutton for punishment.

Raleigh's situation is complicated in that there are six bus systems for people to deal with, not one. A central website covers all of them (owned by the TTA) but a lot of information is only available on the individual sites.

Even with Google's magic assistance, I have a lot of questions. The first one is where the bus stop is heading west on Lynn and Bent Creek? I can plainly see the one heading east, but I doubt the every bus on that route makes two U-turns there every morning. There are no pictures of it online and I drove past it twice and didn't see it.

The second trouble is the park-and-rides. The online information is spotty. Do they charge? Do I need a placard? And, most importantly, where the hell are they? I've been to Millbrook Exchange and drove past Shelley Lake Sertoma Arts Center and didn't see a sign telling you where to park or that there even was a park-and-ride there. (My spies say that they could only see three parking spaces at the Park-and-Ride at Sertoma)

They need detailed information and should be clearly marked and visible from the main road they're attached to. Fortunately, NC Division of Air Quality has a marginally useful description of some locations.

The next point of contention is route planners. Baltimore's has some Google Maps integration, but because of the way it was integrated, it's difficult to find good routes. Maybe I was doing it wrong, but it shouldn't be that hard.

The TTA route planner has the opposite problem. It has no Google integration. Their route planner seems to be a clunky home-grown solution. With how spread out Raleigh is, it should give advice about bus stop options near you. When I plug in my address, it never tells me anything about park-and-ride locations near me. Taking the routes at face value is incredibly disheartening.

Last point: There's a bus stop that is too far away for me to walk to. I could bike to it but they only allow two bikes per bus. Foldable bikes are allowed on the bus, but with the caveat that they must fit in a carrying bag. I've never seen one that fits in a carrying bag, so cyclists roll the dice every time they take a bike to a bus stop. Totally unacceptable if you're commuting. I have to get to work on time every day, not just on the days my bus-riding compatriots didn't bring a bike.

What?!

They're trying to boost use of public transportation in the Triangle Area so they can justify a light rail. There are tons of reasons to use public transportation in the Triangle Area, but with the difficulties involved, can they seriously expect people to give up their cars?

Please, Raleigh, get your act together.

Addendum: Strengths

Each place has its strengths. I don't want it to seem like theres nothing good about Baltimore or Raleigh.

St. Petersburg's public transport is intuitive, places to purchase fares are everywhere and simple, and the routes are frequent and easy to understand.

Baltimore's strengths are that they have a light rail system, and lots of buses.

Raleigh's strength is that you can receive the tickets in the mail in 1-2 business days. In Raleigh, there are also lots of places to buy tickets.

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Toilet Seat Communism

I wrote this on July 7, 2007. I've made a few formatting changes and added a postscript, but haven't made any other changes. Enjoy!

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Of all the philosophical debates that the great minds contemplate, the one that has the most immediate impact on our society is the Toilet Seat Position debate. I have a new solution which may finally end the debate once and for all. A refresher: should the toilet seat go up or down after use?

Usually, the argument is divided along gender lines with women taking the position that the toilet seat should always be in the down position when leaving the bathroom. Men generally argue that the toilet seat should remain up, or in the position most useful to the person who last used it.

To this day, the men have been losing this argument.

Today, I trump both positions with a new position in which toilet seat inconvenience will be shared evenly amongst all affected parties.

My solution is this: since residential toilets have a lid, the lid should be put down on the toilet after each use. Men will have to lift the seat while using the toilet, and then put it down after they are finished. Women will have to lift the lid and put it back down after they are finished.

I call this position “Toilet Seat Communism.”

I have been subtlety practicing this doctrine for a few weeks in my own house, and no one seems to have noticed the difference. I should add that the “seat down” position had been the previous victor in the Toilet Seat Position debate in this house prior to my campaign. Now, everyone has to lift something in order to use the toilet, and no one has to look at the ugly innards of the toilet.

To further bolster my position, I suggest that the lid and seat combination be made air-tight to cut down on the amount of toilet water lost to evaporation. Toilet Seat Communism is not only the most equitable solution to the issue, it is also the environmentally friendly position.

Despite my tongue-in-cheek manner, I am totally serious.

P.S. Sort of.

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Heroes

Here's a serious essay, as opposed to my normal satire. It's a little long if you're not used to reading articles, but I did drastic cutting when I was editing it.

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Today I'm writing about heroes. Not the ones in comic books, not the Greek or Roman legends like Hercules or Achilles, nor the practical but vague heroes like "all firefighters" or "school teachers." They are fascinating subjects, but the ones I want to talk about are moral heroes.

Some are super pastors (pastors of mega churches, a television audience, leaders in a movement, or very popular local pastors). Others are practical moral heroes like Gandhi or Mother Teresa, scientific geniuses like Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking, or historical political leaders like Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy, and Martin Luther King Jr.

They didn't set out to become heroes. They set out to change the world. Few set out to become a figurehead for a movement or a moral maxim and there are plenty of people who set out to change the world for the good who didn't become heroes.

Our society creates these heroes out of subconscious nostalgia. When we were young, our parents seemed infinitely wise, moral, and powerful but we were disappointed by their finite nature. We long for the lost image of perfection. We want to know someone has the answers and strength to protect us and lead us to a promised land.

So we put people on pedestals and hold them to standards that mirror our lost faith. However, even with the best heroes, each is human and destined for the failure.

The failure of Jim Bakker led to the disillusionment of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of Evangelical Christians. The stream of Catholic priests who have been implicated in the molestation of children have caused many Catholic Christians to turn away from the church. Some of those affected in both camps lost their faith in God altogether.

Even in the all-too-brief honeymoon period where the hero seems perfect, few people use the inspiration to accomplish anything. Mother Teresa was an inspiration to millions, but few of those millions did anything to help Calcutta or even their own neighbors.

Even the thought of giving more than a few dollars to a cause is beyond our imagination. We create heroes so they will give us hope and make us feel better about our world, not to spur us on.

The tenor of Gandhi's life was such that Albert Einstein said, "Generations to come, it may be, will scarcely believe that such a one, as this, ever in flesh and blood walked upon this earth." Einstein wasn't attributing divinity to Gandhi. The was speaking of the strength and compelling nature of Gandhi's teaching.

But even the few people in the west who admire Gandhi's teaching do nothing to right the wrongs in their own society.

As many Christians are fond of saying, "You have to do something with Jesus. You can't learn about him without choosing to believe or choosing to disbelieve." We have photos and video of Gandhi and Mother Teresa, and recordings of what they said in their own voices. We know with scientific certainty that they existed. Our heroes' lives often demand a reaction. Either they are wrong, or nearly every level of our culture is wrong. If they are right, the changes required in our lives is devastating.

But we don't want heroes that makes us question our lives. We don't want to question whether it is right to participate in a war or tolerate an immoral government. We don't want to concede that the people who went to Iraq to act as human shields weren't loonies. We want to believe that they were misguided and unpatriotic so that we don't feel the guilt of doing nothing to prevent a grievous evil. We don't want to question whether our sixteenth hour of television this week might have been better spent helping people in a homeless shelter or mentoring children in broken families.

So, we latch onto the rumors we hear about them.

It wasn't really Gandhi's non-violence that won India its freedom. He was mean to his wife, abusive to his children, and inconsistent in his approach to lower-caste people. Therefore, he is wrong and those who admire him and his teachings should shut up and learn to appreciate the necessity of violence.

Donations to Mother Teresa weren't properly accounted for. She was more concerned about making converts than she was about helping the sick and dying. She had lost her faith in God and no longer felt his presence from shortly after she left for Calcutta until the day she died.

It doesn't matter how incredible a hero is, the hero is still human. They have some failing and if we haven't found one yet, we'll criticize something unimportant so we can dismiss their message. Perhaps Mr. Gandhi-of-Today drinks Lipton tea, or shops at Wal*Mart. Maybe the Mother-Teresa-of-Today doesn't agree with our doctrine, is harsh in her speech, or doesn't follow the popular reality television programs.

We go through mental gymnastics so we don't have to re-evaluate our lives.

If we are unwilling to be changed by our heroes, we might be happier if we weened from them and avoid the emotional whiplash.

But I don't believe we should ween ourselves from heroes.

Instead, we should accept that they are human and that they will fail. We will never find heroes who are perfect who will never fail us. We should take the example of their lives and use it to give us the strength we need to change our world.

The courage to act (along with the correct action) is what being a hero is about, not about perfection.

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As a special note, the knowledge of Mother Teresa's struggle with faith has been a bittersweet comfort to me. While some latched onto the idea that Mother Teresa's struggle was a sign of her unfaithfulness, it reminded me of my own doubts and pains. That someone of her level of faith and accomplishment would wrestle so deeply with the substance of faith for so long gives me strength and inspiration.

Ammon Hennacy is my hero, but it's kind of hard to write this essay about a man so few are even aware of. If many were aware of him, he would be much more controversial than any other hero I mentioned here.

"You may never know what results come of your action, but if you do nothing there will be no result."
-Gandhi

"Love has a hem to her garment that reaches to the very dust. It sweeps the stains from the streets and lanes, and because it can, it must."
-Mother Teresa

"Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that."
-Martin Luther King Jr.

"We really can't change the world. We really can't change other people! The best we can do is to start a few thinking here and there. The best way to do this, if we are sincere, is to change ourselves!"
-Ammon Hennacy

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