feature i wish netflix had

This is very much a first world problems post, but they happen.

A little under a year ago we cut the cord on cable.  Between Netflix, YouTube, and an over-the-air recorder (Tablo), Golden and I get most of what we want to watch..  However, I am sure the kids might prefer to have more ready access to the Disney and Nick channels.  One thing that gets on my nerves more now that we rely on it, though, is Netflix's impossible-to-navigate interface.

At first blush, the Netflix interface looks great.  It's clean and attractive.  It does a decent job of recommending things we'll probably want to see.  However, it is a major source of frustration for the way I want to use it.

The way I want to use Netflix is that I want to be able to go out searching for things I might like to see when I have spare time to investigate.  Then, I want to tag a movie or a show as "Something only I will like" or "Something to watch with Golden and I" or "Kid's shows" or "Good for watching with the family over the holidays."  What Netflix offers me instead is the ability to add the show or movie to a single list.  We have decided at times not to try to find something to watch on Netflix because we couldn't easily find something that fell into one of those categories on the spot.

This idea could be expanded upon as well.  As a parent it would be great if I could tag shows as "Only play once I enter a code" or take the opposite approach of disallowing everything unless I have tagged it as allowed.  It would also be nice to be able to tag movies in this way that are not yet on streaming, but might be some day.

A year ago I looked into whether I could write something like this myself using the public APIs Netflix allows developers to use.  I found that this may have been possible in the past, but they recently locked down what is truly accessible through their APIs to block what they viewed as competing services from using their data/system.

I also looked into submitting this request directly to Netflix because I imagine a lot of people would like a system like what I describe, and it honestly would not be very difficult to build.  It turns out that Netflix does not have a support email address to send these requests to, and only has an online chat function which is never active when I have time to submit my request.

So, I post my request here.  Maybe at some point someone in Netflix Product Management will be doing a Google search for desired features, run across this post, and decide that it isn't such a bad idea.  That's my only real hope for getting this incredibly useful feature added to the product that I subscribe to and use with some regularity.

the agreeable idiot

This is a short post as I do not intend to call anyone out and this is not really about a specific person or incident.  It's just something that gives a hint to what's important to me.

Possibly the thing that annoys me more than anything else is when I find that I agree with someone and that someone is either obnoxious or an idiot.  When it happens in matters like politics or philosophy it makes me feel equally unpleasant or stupid.  When it happens in matters of faith my core is rocked in a way that few things can affect me.  I typically feel a bit betrayed in that moment.

I know I am being hypocritical because I have been obnoxious and I have been stupid many times throughout my life.  I am sure I have made many, many people cringe and feel intellectually betrayed throughout my life.  Even so, these situations bother me deeply when they happen to me.

So, if everyone could decide to disagree with me when they are feeling particularly unpleasant or unwise, that would be great.  I'll do my best to disagree with you when I sense I'm coming across as belligerent and unintelligent, and we'll call things even.

out of place

A lot of the time corners must be cut in television shows, movies, and other forms of entertainment due to budget.  To an extent I understand that, as I believe that most people do.  Some of the cost savers bother me more than others, though.  The biggest may be having someone who is very obviously not from a certain area of the world portray a character from that area of the world.  In this case I am talking about when this is blatant.

An example of what I am not talking about is having Apu in The Simpsons voiced by Hank Azaria or Kahn  Sr. in King of the Hill voiced by Toby Huss.  In both of these cases the characters are presented as a bit tongue-in-cheek, and there's at least a hint of what seems like it should be the right accent in their voices.  I am also not talking about the fact that ancient Roman, Greek, and Hebrew individuals are frequently presented with a British accent.  I don't know how people are supposed to have sounded like in those regions a few centuries back, so it isn't as offputting as it might otherwise be.

Three examples of what I am thinking about spring to mind.

The first example is more significant to me than it would be to others since I had some childhood experience living on and around reservations.  Native Americans have historically been portrayed by non-Native actors who do not talk a bit like any Native Americans I have met and whose facial features were very Caucasian.

This has gotten better in more recent decades than it used to be. I remember talk about relatives of a Native family I knew actually holding a short part in Dances with Wolves when it was filming in the area so some Natives have found roles. My bar for acceptability here is pretty low.  All I am really ask for is someone with a believable accent and who looks Native American to play Native American characters.

As an aside, Dances with Wolves was a pretentious and poorly paced movie if ever there was one. 

The second example is from a movie I rewatched several months back: Around the World in Eighty Days.  One of the main characters is Princess Aouda who is presented as an Indian (from India) princess who the protagonist rescues from a cult that is trying to sacrifice her.  She is played by Shirley MacLaine in this movie.  In case you are wondering how not Indian Shirley MacLaine looked in 1956, the below image from the movie should give a hint.

Shirley MacLaine playing an "Indian" princess

She made no attempt to adopt even a mild accent during the movie, so the entire time that character was on the screen I was thinking, "Had anyone associated with this film ever met someone from India?" Now I know that I am asking a lot for a movie released fifty-eight years ago, but I also know a lot of people from India.  No film holding a Best Picture Oscar should have been allowed to pass off Shirley MacLaine as Indian.

Finally, I spent some time last month playing a game on the Wii called Secret Files: Tunguska.  It's largely a puzzle game where you are supposed to pick items up around a playing area and figure out how to combine them to work toward a specific end goal.  The storyline for the game has German characters traveling on a Russian train, in an Irish pub, and through a Cuban psych ward.  At no time did any speaking character in the game come close to having even a fake German, Russian, Irish, or Cuban accent.  Ultimately, since this was a puzzle game the storyline did not matter so much, but it was jarring hearing "German" and "Russian" characters who sounded like they were from the American Midwest interact.

All of this being said, throw the flimsiest of Sci-Fi plots my direction and I will eat it up.  Perhaps I am not as discerning as I am portraying myself here.

in a handbasket

"Do not say, 'Why were the old days better than these?' For it is not wise to ask such questions." — Ecclesiastes 7:10

One pet peeve I have is to listen to people go off about how society is going downhill, especially when it is presented in a church setting.  This is not an annoyance because I think society is in great shape, but rather because it presents an idealized view of where society has come from. A person talking like this is frequently encouraging his or her audience to adopt the social rules of a bygone era rather than encouraging the audience to truly look to Christ.  Prayer is encouraged and the speaker may state that our society's only hope is to turn to Christ, but my experience is that what the speaker interprets as turning to Christ and what the Bible indicates as becoming a slave to Christ as two different things.

I have mentioned the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector (Luke 18:9-14) when I discussed a similar topic before, but this is a very instructive story here as well.  In that parable a person who everyone of the time would have viewed as a saint prays thanks to God that he was not put in the circumstances of the obviously sinful tax collector.  I can imagine sermons at the local synagogue rightfully decrying the sins of people who call themselves Jews who aggressively take from their own people while working in conjunction with a pagan empire.

"Our modern world is becoming more and more sinful," someone might point out, "because we cannot even trust those trained by our own rabbis in the Law of the one true God to treat their own brothers fairly.  Can you believe how horrible the world has become?  Can you believe how wretched tax collectors are who dare to number themselves among Abraham's children?"  Such a statement would be true on its face, and I can imagine the audience getting worked into a fervor.  The speech would endear the speaker to most of the audience, because it would build solidarity and would make the audience feel a bit righteous for not being one of those sinners benefiting from his selfish actions.

The key to this parable that Jesus taught, though, was that the person who focused on his own righteousness and others' sins was not justified, but the tax collector who was painfully aware of his sin and approached God with humility was justified.  The sins of Pharisee in the story were not forgiven, but the sins of the tax collector were.  Isn't focusing today on the evils of the times rather than the evils of my own nature doing the same thing that the Pharisee did in the parable?  Does not that sort of speech or sermon sound more dangerous than beneficial when viewed from this perspective?

On a related note, most of the people who talk about how bad things have gotten get their facts wrong, and that is a big part of what bothers me.  Some forms of crime have increased in recent years, but most violent crimes, property crimes, and many other various types of crime have been on a steady downswing in the United States since the early 90s.  A chart on the FBI website indicates that this trend, in violent crime at least, has continued through recent years.  All this does is validate my primary point that, while people are sinners in need of a Savior today, people have always been sinners in need of a Savior.  The times are evil, but the times have always been evil.

griping about winter drivers

Since Draco passed just north of us, this counted as our first winter storm of the year.  Since it was a glancing blow, it only amounted to an inch or two of snow and maybe a bit of ice.  Nevertheless, traffic offered the opportunity for nearly everyone I know, including myself, to make the same complaint.  Everyone forgets how to drive in winter weather over the summer!

I realized something this week, however.  This is one situation where people complain about other people to those peoples' faces without anyone being the wiser.  Some people, when they complain about other people forgetting how to drive, are thinking that the bad drivers are the ones who drive too fast in the ice and snow.  Some, alternately, think that the bad drivers are the ones who drive dramatically slower in bad weather.

Slow drivers complain about fast drivers and fast drivers complain about slow drivers, and they do it to each others' face.  It's a statistical certainty that some of these gripes are between the opposing types of drivers.  On top of all of this, everyone assumes that their audience agrees with the right way to drive.  The thought is just hilarious.

I typically drive a little faster than the average, so my gripes are usually about the people who drive ten or fifteen miles slower than I think is necessary.  There are people who blow by me at speeds I consider ridiculous as well, so that probably goes both ways.

Anyway, It's fun to have something to gripe about once a year.

manic pixie dream girl

Cracked has several times in the last few months referenced a specific story character type that has been grating at me for the last few years, but didn't know had a name.  The character type is called the "Manic pixie dream girl." I will refer to this character as MPDG from here on.

I would encourage you to follow the link and click on the example movies to get an idea of what I am talking about. However, Nathan Rubin, who is the coiner of the term, describes the MPDG thusly:

"The Manic Pixie Dream Girl exists solely in the fevered imaginations of sensitive writer-directors to teach broodingly soulful young men to embrace life and its infinite mysteries and adventures. The Manic Pixie Dream Girl is an all-or-nothing-proposition. Audiences either want to marry her instantly (despite The Manic Pixie Dream Girl being, you know, a fictional character) or they want to commit grievous bodily harm against them and their immediate family."

The MPDG is absolute proof that Hollywood is less concerned with realistic relationships than with idealistic fantasies that ultimately result in a painful break-up or divorce. What usually happens is a straight-laced and highly-structured male character is introduced and we find out that he is not happy with life because being structured means he obviously is broken. He meets the MPDG and decides to change his approach to life, though it varies how related and in what order these events are. Hilarity ensues. There is relationship conflict, and the conflict is resolved by the highly-structured male accepting the MPDG's approach to life and progressing in a serious relationship with her. Movies where I have noticed this are Elizabethtown, Stranger than Fiction, and (most egregiously) Yes Man.

Apart from the fact that the MPDG as portrayed in the movies would not likely exist in real life, movies do real harm in romanticizing a personality type to people with clashing personality types. I can see where in real life an MPDG would be intriguing just long enough to get into a serious relationship with that person and realize the horrible mistake that has been made. True free spirits should not typically be merged with structured people. The movies kind of get around this by implying that this is a journey for the structured male character, and he will change for his beloved MPDG, but the whole idea is ridiculous. The tendency toward being structured or free-spirited, on the whole, is not a choice. A structured or free-spirited person might force themselves to live their opposite for a time, but after a while that would be a miserable existence.

Early in our relationship Golden heard someone describe similarities between partners in a relationship as money in the bank and differences as loans that will have to be paid back with interest. I can appreciate that far more now that we have been married more than a decade. We are very similar in a lot of areas, and those similarities have limited the issues we have had from our differences. In the course of our relationship most of the differences between us have resulted in or will result in some sort of compromise. Those compromises are sometimes easy and sometimes hard, but they always require care and effort and some pain.

My theory as to why the MPDG is so frequently worked into movie plots is that the character is something of a fantasy to freelance workers like writers or directors.  This free-spirited non-existent girlfriend never pressures them to get a real job or asks whether they paid the water bill.  She doesn't get upset when he gets distracted in his work or hobbies for days or weeks at a time, and doesn't care if he spends his money frivolously because she only exists for the moment.  In truth, all the MPDG character does is romanticize irresponsibility.

There are certainly other grating character types that show up in movies a lot, but I think the MPDG has to rank among the most annoying for me.  I say that as a structured man who doesn't believe he needs fixing.

cute

I mentioned not long ago that a lot of words have different meanings to men and women. I don't have a good way of judging how well this applies to all men and women, but one word that has stuck out to me, especially when I was growing up, is "cute." It is completely possible that I am alone on this, but that word has devalued a lot of compliments in my life. The following example uses my grandmother as an example, and I have chosen to use this since she has passed and so will not read this some day in the future with embarrassment.

I like to share things that I think are funny with others. So, if I come across something I think is genuinely funny I like to share it. More than once when I was at my grandparents' house I read some joke I liked out of a Reader's Digest to my grandmother, to which her response was to say it was cute. It wasn't a huge deal because I knew it was supposed to be a compliment, but that was never the response I wanted.

I think "cute" is a go-to generic compliment for a lot of women because the word implies the sort of thing a lot of women want to be or that they want to own. In my life I've heard a lot of women say things in the vein of, "You look cute in those earrings," or "Those shoes are so cute," or "You have a cute baby," or "You two look cute together." In most contexts; though, the word is feminine. I haven't heard many men use the same sort of compliments, and it sticks out like a sore thumb when a man actually does say something like that.

The real problem is that a compliment is only effective if it makes the recipient feel how he or she wants to feel about himself or herself. Giving a man who would prefer to be masculine feminine compliments or a woman who would prefer to be feminine masculine compliments drains the value from those compliments.

In thinking through this I realized that I do not know which compliments men give that aren't really compliments to women. Is there a reverse version of "cute" that I am not aware of? I should probably learn before I start giving Golden or CD compliments that mean less than I think they do.

how not to review

I spent a couple of hours this weekend doing something I truly enjoy—reorganizing and cleaning up my Netflix queue. When I do that I typically glance through user reviews of some of the movies that I am on the fence about to see if I can get an indication if I would like the movie. Very frequently there is a review that provides very good details about why I personally would or would not like a movie. There are a few things that show up quite a bit that are less than helpful to me, though.

No Reasoning

Why do people think a review that basically says, "This is the greatest film ever," or, "They should have shot everyone involved in this film," but says little more is worth publishing? Tell me why you loved or hated the movie so I know if I am likely to agree or disagree.

Arrogance with Vagueness

A few reviews are kind of preachy regarding the type of movie the reviewer seems to think I should want to watch. The following is not copied from any specific review, but it could be.

"This is an intelligent film that takes its time to develop the plot and the characters, unlike a lot of the more popular mass market films that are nothing more than special effects. If you need an explosion every five minutes, then this movie is not for you."

Aside from the reviewer sounding arrogant, all I get from the review is that the pacing is slow and it may or may not be due to something that I care about. I want characters to be developed, but I don't want two hours of poorly-paced back story for a 135-minute movie. The following would be a better review.

"This movie is not for everyone because it is paced a bit more slowly than the average. While most of the slow pacing was necessary, there were two or three scenes that were unnecessary to the storyline. This did not bother me because I appreciated that they erred on providing too much detail about the main character rather than not enough. It was the right decision because the story is character-driven rather than effects-driven."

The above review is better because it tells me what I need to know. If the movie description sounds interesting I can get through the three pointless scenes without irritation. If it doesn't, I will probably be put off by having to watch meaningless scenes.

Not Scary

I like a lot of movies in the horror genre, but it splits about 50/50. I am interested in movies that have twisting or intelligent plot lines, and about half of horror movies fit into this mold. I do not really care one way or the other whether a movie is scary or gory, so when people use that as their only criteria it is not useful for me. I know I shouldn't complain about this for horror movies, but people do this for other genres such as thrillers as well.

Political, Religious, or Philosophical Reasoning

This does not happen too much, but sometimes people review a movie based on whether they agree with the message or not. This is not typically helpful, except in very narrow genres like Christian documentary.

Have not Watched the Movie

This is the most surprising. I hate when I see a review that says something to the effect of, "I am so excited that I am going to see this movie next week." No one cares about that.

Attractiveness of Actors/Actresses

That I can recall, I have never watched a movie because I thought someone in the movie was attractive. I would rather watch a movie with a plot I liked but with ugly stars than with a lousy plot and attractive stars.

Disc Was Damaged

I understand why someone would be irritated that they got a cracked or scratched disc and want to take it out on someone. It really only hurts other users who are looking for valid reviews to post a review that simply whines about getting a bad copy of the movie, though.

I am sure there are more, but those are the pet peeves I have had tonight.

idea man

I thought for certain that I had posted about this some time in the past, but my searches through the archives have turned up nothing, so here it goes again.

One of my pet peeves is when someone divides people into the groups of the idea people and the implementers with the assumption that the idea people don't need to know how the work is done and the implementers don't need to have good ideas. I have actually heard it stated both ways where either the idea person is superior because of greater creative brains or the implementer is superior because he or she actually does the work and has perfected that work to an art. I never have felt comfortable with either position, and I think I finally have an answer as to why.

In the test that I took that reiterated my tendency to get uptight a few other scores stuck out to me as well. Specifically, I scored slightly higher than average in "Imagination" (implementing plans versus making plans), in the upper third in "Complexity" (drawn to simplicity versus complexity), and in the bottom third in "Scope" (detail oriented versus big picture oriented). The first two appear to show me with a bias to making the plans, but the last one appears to indicate that I have a bias for dealing with the implementation details. This means that it would be hard for me to be happy only focusing on one or the other, and this explains why I don't like what I see as the false dichotomy between generating ideas and generating actual output.

When I got a better understanding of how the scores work I did have a better appreciation for how some people really are born to create ideas and plans and some are born to implement those ideas and plans. There actually are people who are not meant to be creative or are not meant to implement a structured plan. I would prefer that the extremes would not be mistaken for the norms, though. Some people are born to do both.

ending sentences with prepositions

A while back I claimed that I thought the rule about not ending sentences with prepositions was stupid. It has always gotten under my skin because the process of working around this "rule" requires using ridiculously awkward sentences. While I obviously still agree with my earlier assessment, I am a bit wiser on the topic now.

A year or two ago I composed my rationale for why having prepositions at the end of a sentence is not a big deal and I sent it to a few coworkers who care about grammar. While I have since found that my below rationalization is not technically accurate, the following are the arguments I put forth.

From my perspective, the acceptable sentence-ending preposition can come in three forms.

Adverb

In this case the purpose of the preposition is to modify a verb, adjective, or noun. For example, in the sentence below "about" modifies "wrote."

"I am interested in the topic you wrote about."

Rewording the sentence could make it more "correct," but it adds no value to the communication of the idea other than forcing the sentence structure to fit better into the Latin mold. It actually makes the sentence quite awkward. The rewrite would probably look like the following.

"I am interest in the topic about which you wrote."

Broken Prepositional Phrase

In this case the prepositional phrase exists, but the preposition comes after the noun. This probably overlaps the other two forms. In the example below "where" is actually part of the prepositional phrase.

"Where do you come from?"

The fix below is just to move the preposition to the beginning of the prepositional phrase. Do you really believe that the following is an improvement?

"From where do you come?"

Implied Prepositional Phase

In this case the purpose can be described as laziness, but that is still an acceptable rationale in English. The following sentence is an example I found online.

"Get in!"

In this case, this is short for "Get in the car!" Something worth noting is that the grammar gods appear to care about the missing (and implied) prepositional phrase a lot more than the missing (and implied) subject. If you are anal about the missing prepositional phrase, why not require that people utter the sentence as follows?

"You, get in the car!"

It is my opinion that the prepositional phrase rule only exists because this is the way we have always done it. This is how Latin is structured, so this is the mold into which we are going to force English. If those who enforce "right" and "wrong" grammar cared more about usability and communication than fitting within the Latin mold, then this rule would not exist.

I recently listened to an old Grammar Girl podcast episode that addressed the issue in much simpler terms. Most of the time that a preposition is placed at the end of a sentence it is part of a verbal phrase and acts as part of the verb in the sentence rather than as a preposition. So, technically the verb is at the end of the sentence in these cases rather than the preposition.

After all of the effort I put into rationalizing why a preposition at the end of a sentence is acceptable, it is a bit deflating to know that I was right for the wrong reasons. I will claim that I was at least close with my noting that the prepositions often function as adverbs, but I still did not get the explanation correct. At least I am assured now that I have it figured out.

cancer awareness

October is breast cancer awareness month. Most people know this already and most people probably also know someone who has had breast cancer. I have at least one close relative who has battled through this form of cancer over the last few years, and had to endure multiple operations as a result. I think we can all agree that breast cancer is life-threatening, devastating to its victims, and absolutely a bad thing. What has bothered me a little in the past, though, is that many of the other cancers do not get the same level of attention and funding that breast cancer gets.

As an example, prostate cancer kills roughly 80% the number of people in the United States every year that breast cancer kills yet it does not receive anywhere near 80% the attention or funding for research that breast cancer receives (prostate cancer incidences, breast cancer incidences). Products all over the grocery store aren't sold in blue packages during prostate awareness month (September, by the way) with proceeds going to research prostate cancer. According to a New York Times article from last year regarding government funding for cancer research, prostate cancer is actually the most common of the cancers, but lung and breast cancers do account for more deaths. Funding is very skewed toward breast cancer when compared to other cancers by almost every measure, however.

A cynical part of me wants to believe that part of the reason that other cancers do not get the attention that breast cancer gets is that our society is obsessed with breasts. In reality, though, I think the modern focus on breasts more of an impact in how difficult the cancer is for the victim to deal with rather than on the attention that is given to it. It would be absurd to suggest that even a significant minority of people who participate in the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure, for example, do so because they care about one part of the human anatomy more than another. However, there are almost certainly people who participate because of fear or self-image issues a loved one had to deal with due to a mastectomy.

One reason that someone could probably give for all of the focus on breast cancer relative to the other cancers is that it is one type of cancer that can be caught and treated early. I believe that prostate cancer* is probably more important in this regard, though, because men are statistically much less likely to go to their doctors about medical problems they are having than women are. I also suspect that women are statistically much more likely to worry about getting cancer, so they are less likely to need to be made aware that they should be checking for abnormalities that could indicate cancer. If awareness is the goal, it would seem to me that an awareness campaign focused on getting men who weren't going to do so to have their prostates examined would be more effective than one to get women who weren't going to do so to check their breasts for abnormalities.

While I do not know this to be true, I suspect that the focus that breast cancer gets is because it is something unpredictable and scary that affects a large percentage of people's mothers and sisters. If my dad got cancer it would be a very big deal, but he would not talk to the rest of my family about it much simply because most men do not cope by talking things out. Whatever he goes through he does it in silence. By contrast, if my mom got cancer she would cope by talking about it, even though she is not normally much of a talker. I think the constant conversations within families impacted by breast cancer motivates people to take steps to do something about such a devastating disease. Families of men with prostate cancer probably do not talk about it as much, and so they are probably motivated to become active in finding a cure for or raising awareness about this form of cancer. I suspect that this accounts for much of the attention and research funding disparity between the cancers.

In the end I am not trying to say that giving attention to breast cancer and encouraging people to take steps to catch early is a bad thing. I just believe that we should be careful not to focus only on the one type of cancer and neglect awareness and research efforts for the others.

* Update (10/21/2009): I found out this past week that the official guidelines on at least one of the prostate cancer tests recommend not getting the test because the level of cancer found is rarely significant, and the treatments are often worse than the cure. This kind of damages part of my argument, so I felt obliged to add a note about it.

magnetism and stupidity

This summer I have been watching Warehouse 13 and old episodes of Sliders. Of the two Warehouse 13 is easily the more well-written but both have some serious plot-development and believability issues, even for science fiction. The problem is that I know that without some of those plot issues there really wouldn't be good storyline to follow. So, do I gripe about it or accept it for what it is? I am still working out what standard to use for what is sloppy storytelling and what is just me nitpicking.

As one example that I have seen repeated many times in TV and the movies, including the usually very well-written Lost last season, the last episode of Warehouse 13 had a scene where a character was wearing a magnetic coat and metallic objects slowly inched their way toward her before flying at her. Anyone who has played around with magnets for more than five minutes knows, though, that the region of space between where an object will not move toward a magnet and where it will move very quickly is small. Metallic objects do not visibly inch toward magnets. They either stay still or they move very quickly.

The magnet thing is just something that irritates my geeky side. I know that most people would not care. Something that is a bit less geeky that gets at me, though, is when characters behave in unrealistically stupid ways just to move the plot along. In Sliders the concept is that the main characters move from dimension to dimension seeing alternate worlds. No matter how many times they run into situations that are far different than they appear on the surface throughout the series at least one character will make serious assumptions based on the face value of a situation and do something stupid as a result in each episode. Somehow the characters have forgotten everything they learned in their experiences in the previous umpteen dimensions that they visited.

Since I generally life science fiction I should probably just buck it up to some extent. If I can accept the premise of a show that is about jumping dimensions or about collecting artifacts that have almost magical behavior, then I probably should not get too bothered if the magnets in that story don't behave like I expect them to.

pop-ups

Something that has perplexed me is what the point of pop-up advertisements are. I know that I am at least more put off by them than anything else, so I cannot imagine that many legitimate companies would be successful in using pop-ups. Also, most browsers block a large percentage of pop-ups, so even if they would have been successful many of those advertisements are not seen by most users. My assessments about this must somehow be wrong because pop-ups still exist in large quantities.

I can understand that some websites that do not have to maintain a highly professional reputation might be able to use pop-ups because they do not have an image to tarnish with the type of advertising that they accept. Websites that bank on professionalism of some sort or on reputation have too much to lose, in my opinion, to play that game.

One website that confounds me in its use of pop-up advertising is Snopes. Psychologically, if I get a pop-up when I go to a website, my trust of what I find on that website takes a hit. Since Snopes is founded on its audience's trust and since it probably has a more technically experienced audience that is less likely to click on a pop-up, I don't know for the life of me why the website has so many pop-ups. Do they really get more advertising dollars by popping up a couple of windows every time someone visits the site than they would by avoiding the practice? If it were not for the fact that the website has very compelling content that I cannot reliably get elsewhere I probably would have decided to stop going to the site long ago. I know at least one person who has sworn off the site for the same reason.

So, if you happen to be reading this and you are considering building a website and making money on advertising, please consider forgoing the pop-ups and pop-under ads.

the case for television

I was asked recently what Golden and I do together, or what we have done together, as a couple. I hesitated before answering because some people appear to look down on this, but we have always watched TV and gone to movies together. We do other things as well, but our "us" time has always been largely comprised of TV and movies. My question is why should we feel bad about our television habits? I have heard a few arguments which I will detail below.

It's unhealthy

While I agree that excessive TV watching can be unhealthy because it is associated with a lack of activity, so can excessive book reading. I don't feel that the health argument applies to me because if I watched less television I would not be replacing that time with exercise. I would be replacing it with Internet, gaming, and reading time, none of which is active.

It rots the brain

There are shows that I believe have to decrease the intelligence of the audience, but I think those very rare. Actually, if we are to believe that books, theater, and music make people more intelligent, it seems counter-intuitive to believe that entertainment built from these things (even the mass-market kind) would do the opposite. Someone I used to work with once compared Shakespeare's writings to soap operas in a less than positive way, and I wonder if more people wouldn't agree if the Bard were to write today.

It thwarts creativity

One of the arguments go that, while with books you have to visualize everything that is happening yourself, with television your experience is more passive. This could be true, but my experience tells me that my experience is only passive for slowly-paced shows, and this mimics my experience with slowly-paced books as well. As an example, when I read Captain's Courageous in high school I really had to fight to stay engaged in the story. My brain was not becoming more creative for the experience.

I think that watching shows and movies that pose scenarios that cause us to ask what we would do in a specific situation or perhaps speculate some unknowns about a story (Lost comes to mind) can actually make people more creative because the creative parts of their brains are forced to become engaged.

It negatively impacts culture

The negative influences of television probably outweigh the positives, but I hold to the belief that this is because many of the people who could make a positive impact through television have directed their efforts to other things. One possible solution to this would be to support shows that positively impact culture and to encourage others to do the same.

There are other arguments against television as well, and some are probably valid. My main point is, though, that television is not any more a vast cultural wasteland than a lot of things that are seen as culturally redeeming. Is going to the play Legally Blonde (or Grease, or Chitty, Chitty, Bang, Bang, et al) really culturally superior to catching it as a weekend TV movie special?

Now that I have staked out one position, perhaps someone reading this has some thoughts to counter mine. If you do, you know how to air them.

put a cap on it

I understand most common etiquette. Generally, it's a good thing, because it allows for interaction between people who might not be able to do so otherwise. It also is a means of shielding your true feelings about a situation, which I have heard lauded and denounced. I think etiquette is generally motr og a good thing a bad thing. There are some individual manners issues that I simply don't understand, though.

Two issues I have already discussed are holding the door open for others and tipping. In both of these cases the issue is that the standards for how to deal with those situations are not standard enough. Today's issue is wearing hats indoors, which is more an issue of me not knowing why it matters.

My hair has a very peculiar nature. If I get within a few feet of a hat it spontaneously gets hat head. It could take the form of a yamaka shaped ring on my head or it could take the form of an Alfalfa-type tuft of hair sticking up for the world to see. In some cases what about my hear has changed is not immediately obvious, to me at least, except that something in general just doesn't look right.

There is actually video of me at my college graduation that perfectly illustrates what I am describing. When I put my mortarboard on I knew something was not quite right, but I did not figure that it mattered. However, at some point during the ceremony there was a prayer where the men were expected to remove their mortarboards. At that moment my mom focused the camcorder on my head. There was one tuft of hair that was pointing the wrong direction and it seriously looks like I had a bald spot there in the video.

Because I am so prone to hat head, I have long avoided wearing any kind of hat. There is no use putting one on if I am going to have to take it off indoors and have everyone find out what my hair decided to look like today. Really, in the last fifteen years I have only worn hats with any frequency in two specific situations. The first was to minimize sunburn when I worked for a general contractor in high school and the second has been to keep from freezing when scraping off my car on frosty or snowy mornings.

If hats were not considered a faux pas for men to wear indoors, I might sport one more often. For example, in the winter I could wear a functional hat outside, like a tuque, and I could wear a less sweltering and more stylish hat indoors to hide the hat head, like a fedora. I know that I would be more likely to wear a cap in the summer months as well if I didn't think I was violating some social rule by wearing it indoors. As it is, I don't own any baseball caps that I am aware of because I wouldn't wear them.

I should look at the positive side of things, though. This rule in etiquette is saving me all of the money that I would otherwise be spending on caps and fedoras. Some day I really should calculate how much I would have saved by not buying hats and invest it in a company that makes head gear. If nothing else, it's would be something mildly interesting to talk about.

scrooge

Every year, much of the holiday entertainment I see focuses on the need to not be too busy over the holidays. Don't focus on being busy, but focus on what really matters. I try to do this, but I always feel that if I pushed that point too much myself that I would come across as the Scrooge. The following are examples.

Christmas Decorations: We don't really decorate much more than putting up a tree. Part of the reason for this is that the time spent setting up lights and other decorations could better be spent elsewhere. Yes, that is another way of saying that I am lazy, but I have to ask why someone would spend hours of effort (and added expense on the electric bill) on a display that will be taken down in a month.

Christmas Cards: I should preface this with the comment that do appreciate the opportunity to read what is going on in people's lives. The problem I always have is that the year-in-review letters that often come with Christmas cards are so sanitized and often focus on the things that I find less relevant. I know this is the nature of the beast, but that is why I don't care as much for this particular beast.

We actually got at least one form letter this year that violated some of the rules about what should be in a year-in-review letter. I loved it.

I don't think that we have ever done a year-in-review note, though Golden did want to at one point. I think she determined that it was too time consuming. She didn't really get any help from me on it, though, because I would prefer to leave well enough alone.

One other thing is the constant balancing of who we should and should not be sending cards to. Every year there is at least one family who sends us a card that we didn't send a card to. I know that I have heard other people also mention that they underestimated the number of cards they needed to send out. I presume this is because they realized that they needed to send cards to specific people who they did not initially think would be on their list.

Christmas Gifts: My love language is not gift giving. Gifts violate my natural sense of efficiency because the person to whom they are given knows best what they want, but what is the purpose of the gift if the recipient picks out the gift. I think that gift cards are the about the greatest thing in the world, but I get the feeling that a lot of people think that gift cards are cheating.

On an unrelated note, a relative last year gave me a gift card prominently la labeled, "Happy Kwanzaa!" I wish I had thought of that.

Seeing Family: I wish that the holiday tradition was not focused on a specific date but instead on a range of days, because that would remove a lot of the stress of the holidays. No matter what I do, we aren't seeing everyone on the day of Christmas or Thanksgiving. No one really expects that we will, I don't think, but the strain of trying to give different sides of the family holiday time can take away my holiday spirit.

I really am not the Scrooge that I sound like. I am just not as drawn to tradition as much as most people are and I happen to prefer some of holidays that come with less baggage and more entertaining movies—like Independence Day.

700

This is my 700th post. Since the number 700 has been so closely associated with the financial system bailout in the last few weeks, I figured that I would talk about that. There are two real dangers in such a topic. The first is that it gets too academic and boring. The second is that it gets too political. I will try to avoid both.

It's been an interesting ride watching different perspectives on how the country got to its current point. If you know anything about economic history, though, this issue followed the normal pattern, which I will lay out below. I am sure that a lot of other intelligent people picked up on this pattern as well.

1. A financial opportunity presents itself. In this case, real estate was made more attractive through cheap money (low interest rates).
2. Large numbers of people start noticing that the first people to the party have already made a lot of money. In this case, people started noticing that home prices were going up fast. Rather than thinking that this indicated that real estate's best days were behind it, a lot of people decided to stretch to buy a house even though it was financially wiser for them to rent.
3. Since all the people joining the party in step #2 inflate prices over a period of time, caution is thrown to the wind. Since prices have gone up for this long people assume that they will continue to do so indefinitely. This is where everyone gets stupid. No one in their right mind should ever conclude that five years of price run-ups indicate a long-term indefinite trend, but usually it becomes accepted as gospel truth. It helps that the people preaching it have already made a ton of money. In this case, a lot of people who didn't otherwise know much about real estate started thinking that flipping houses would be a good idea because house prices only go up, and because they watched too much TLC and HGTV. On the investment bank side, derivatives that were essentially outsized insurance policies against bad mortgages were created and traded in droves under the bad assumption that prices would continue to go up. Hedge funds also magnified things by making the same bad investments as everyone else, but largely with borrowed money.
4. Reality sets in. In this case, foreclosures started increasing as peoples' ARM interest rates increased. This created a vicious cycle of house devaluations and increasing foreclosure rates that we are still trying to work our way out of. Almost regardless as to the cause of the cycle (dot-coms, bad mortgages, etc), the key phrase you are going to hear a lot is "excess inventory." The cycle will not be complete until excess inventory is removed, and that can cause a large percentage of the pain in the next two steps.
5. People overreact during the aftermath. A bad situation is made worse because fear grips those who just had their dream world ripped away from them. There is mass selling. Companies layoff or refuse to hire due to a similar fear of the unknown. In this case banks, who are gripped with fear, have decided to sit on the money that they do have, thus presenting a very real threat to short-term economic progress.
6. The government implements a fix. The fix may or may not be effective. The title of this post is obviously in reference to the current $700 billion fix (no one really knows how much the fix will ultimately cost, but that is beyond the scope of this post). In the Great Depression the fix was the New Deal, which created such things as Social Security and (believe it or not) Fannie Mae. The low interest rates that spawned the current crisis were part of the government fix for the recession created by the dot-com bust.
7. Repeat. How long it will take until the cycle is repeated, I don't exactly know. The Great Depression required over a decade, serious deficit spending, and a world war to end. Most recessions, however, are less than two years long. I do know that we will see all of these steps again, regardless of whether the Republicans or the Democrats are running the show.

Now, I have just a few thoughts about the proposed solution. I don't like it, but I agree with the analysis that to do nothing is to invite another depression. The Great Depression was caused by a failure of the banking system, so the banking system as a whole absolutely cannot be allowed to fail. As someone who believes in free markets, it hurts a little to take that position.

I have noticed that Democrats tend to blame a lack of regulation and Republicans tend to blame the push in the late 1990s to make loans much more available to higher risk recipients as a root cause of the problem. They are probably both right to some extent. I don't really know who is more right. At the moment neither is a pertinent problem, though, because we are still working through the overreaction stage of the crisis. Addressing either of those five to ten years ago would have helped, but now they don't do too much.

If I had to guess what the focus of the next cycle will be, I'd bet on alternative energy. That has a ton of potential to produce an irrational bubble, because the very few alternative energy winners will make a ton of money. People usually forget that there usually are many more losers than winners. We are actually already in the middle of a small ethanol production bubble burst, so it would make sense that we would repeat this whole process on a larger scale.

I hope what people get out of the whole situation, though, is an understanding that these stages are completely propagated by human stupidity. Irrational exuberance and overwhelming fear drive overreactions in both directions. To me my house is worth the exact same as it was worth a couple of years ago, when taking into account the changes I have made to it in that time. It is only the market's opinion that has changed. The sun will come out tomorrow. The only real question is whether tomorrow is next year or a decade from now.

sunday school

I have been filling in as the teacher in our young adult Sunday School class over the last few weeks. We are going through the book Celebration of Discipline, which is certainly not a bad book, but it is a challenging one to use as a lesson guide. The book can be a very valuable guide to growing your spiritual life and getting closer to God. For someone with limited free time, though, it reads like a series of things that you should do to be more spiritual, but that you can't do because you have other things that take up your time. It is also difficult to turn topics such as fasting or solitude into things that hold people's interest for an entire lesson period.

I was discussing this with Golden and got the idea to look around and see what other materials are available so that, once we complete this series, we can do another that might be easier to teach. So far, I am feeling that I must be a bit overly picky. I don't want people to wonder why they bothered getting up and going to class, so any series I teach has to have meat. I don't want to torture the people in class, either, so I need something that is somewhat entertaining as well. I can't be spending my entire weekend creating lessons, either, so I can't just write my own lessons as I have in the past.

The drawback in doing a search for Sunday School lessons is that I have to filter through a ton of children's series to find even a few adult programs. That is deeply disturbing. Do people really think that Biblical learning ends at age thirteen? Another drawback is that experience tells me that a large percentage of the adult materials will be lacking as well. As an example, I don't like that most series' lesson questions simply fish for predetermined answers.

Why aren't there more Sunday School lessons that present actual theologically useful teaching in a way that isn't ridiculously dry? I know I would use them if they existed. For all of the Christian literature that exists, you would think that someone somewhere would have noticed the need for a Sunday School material overhaul. That would be far more useful than most of the books that litter most Christian book stores.

Also, am I the only one who wishes that the phrase "Sunday School" was changed to something less nerdy? I think the term has too many negative connotations. I absolutely hate continually typing that phrase on my blog. Maybe I could come up with a code word for it that doesn't annoy me as much. How about, "Pre-Service Coffee Time"? That's the best I can come up with right now.

men and church

A couple of weeks ago I finished reading the book Why Men Hate Going to Church by David Murrow. I have wanted to post some thoughts on it for a while, but I have not taken the time until now to type them out. Some of this is a rehash of an earlier post, but I think it is worth the rehash.

I have made it no secret that, throughout my life, church has often felt like it wasn't really designed for me. I definitely see great value in church and I am not looking for a reason to skip. I just want to better understand why I feel this way. My rationale goes that if I can gain this understanding I will be able to figure out how to make the experience more enjoyable and worthwhile for myself and others who may be experiencing the same thing.

One thing that I should note is that I really like my church. A lot of the masculinity problems that plague a lot of churches do not exist in my church. I think this can be credited to my pastor.

Probably the most discussed point in the book is that church appeals to older folks and women more than younger folks and men because it offers security rather than challenge. Someone who values security values stability, predictability, nurturing, and support, all of which one can find at a typical church. Someone who values challenge values risk, variety, competition, and independence. These are not adjectives that describe most churches. Women and the elderly are statistically more likely to desire security, and men and the young are statistically more likely to desire challenge. This pattern is evidenced in the typical church pews, where there are many more female and elderly parishioners than male and younger ones.

Some of the other sticking points that the book mentions are as follows. (This is a bit long, so don't feel bad for skipping it.)

• Men have short attention spans during lecture formats. This makes Sunday School and sermon lectures especially ineffective. The author recommends limiting the number of points in the lesson or sermon (unlike this post), taking breaks, and going heavy on the visual aids. I know that I operate better in a conversational environment than in a lecture so that is how I teach. I am sure there are people for whom this does not work, though.
• Most men are not comfortable with passive-aggressive conflict. Almost all church conflict is passive-aggressive. The author's recommendation is to encourage being more direct in conflict in the church so long as the point is to clear the air and move on.
• Women are generally better readers than men. Since a lot of what happens in a church service or Sunday School class relies on reading, this is uncomfortable for a lot of men. This is actually one which isn't really a big deal to me as should be evidenced by this wordy post.
• When women are stressed they are more likely to want to get support and talk about their problems with friends at a setting like church. Men are more likely to want to work out the problems for themselves, which leads to fewer men than women in church during rough times.
• Churches are full of programs and not projects. Programs do not tend to provide the goals that men usually need to work toward. Most men work much better in projects where there is a beginning, an end, and success is clearly defined. The book encourages structuring ministries around individual projects to encourage more men to participate.
• Many men view church as less than masculine. The book makes a major generalization here that I agree with, and I am usually pretty careful around generalizations. Masculinity is far more important to almost all straight men than femininity is to almost all straight women. It is far more challenging for a man to take a woman's role than vice versa. I can elaborate in as much detail as needed for anyone who has questions about this, but it can be illustrated with the following question. How willing are you to wear clothes obviously designed for the opposite sex in public?
• Men hate feeling incompetent, and there are a lot of opportunities for that in a church service. Most men do not excel at a lot of the things that they may be expected to do at church, so some avoid it altogether.
• There is absolutely nothing appealing to a man about becoming Ned Flanders.
• One point that is important to me is that many men, myself included, often feel that they cannot openly challenge things they may disagree with at church. This goes back to the contrast between security and challenge. People who strongly value security view expressions of disagreement negatively. I frankly stink at toeing the line. There are many times that Golden has to hear me explain why I disagreed with something someone said on the drive home from church because I am kicking myself for not devising a way of making my opinions known in an acceptable way.
• Themes and word choices in church tend to be feminine, stressing weakness, relationships, support, and feelings. The loaded phrases of "relationship" and "intimacy" with God are also used a lot. Most straight men are a little uncomfortable with the idea of seeking an intimate relationship with another man, even if he is named "Jesus." An example that the author mentions of a particularly unwise Christian book title can be found here.
• Music in church tends to focus on a relationship with Jesus that can be frankly read as mildly erotic. Since Jesus was a man, that makes the music seem homoerotic to some men.
• Men's ministry is essentially women's ministry for men because the focus is generally on socialization and lecture. I have spent a lot of time trying to figure how that can be changed, because it needs to be. I would not be averse to doing more things with the men's ministry at my church if it were fun and/or purposeful.
• Femininity defines holiness in church. I have discussed this before. Basically, I believe that the Godliness that is pushed by most conservative churches is designed to make the congregation into proper ladies. There really is not much room for masculinity in most church definitions of holiness.

If there was something that I wish all ministry leaders read in this book it is the following list. The author details a top ten list of spiritual questions that men ask. Note that the majority are rarely addressed and I have never heard the top two adequately addressed. If a church said that they were going to meaningfully address and discuss the ten questions below in a series of men's meetings, I would bet on a packed house.

1. What is true manliness?
2. What is true success?
3. How do I deal with guilt feelings?
4. Is purity possible for men?
5. How can we nurture family life?
6. What is Christian leadership?
7. What are the basic disciplines of a Christian man?
8. What ministry skills need to be developed?
9. What is biblical business conduct?
10. What is integrity?

I actually only listed stuff that I thought was very important and that resonated with me, so there is a lot in the book. It tries to propose some solutions for the issues that are raised, too, so it isn't without practical purpose.

I do believe that Murrow's book is a must read for anyone who is struggling to get a man into church as well as anyone who is in leadership within a church. It is especially important for women in leadership positions or seeking leadership positions in church, because the book notes that the disparity between men and women is the greatest in churches where women hold high positions. As unfair and sexist as it may seem, this implies that female ministry leaders have to compensate a little to have a healthy and balanced church.

How well the church is able to reach men will absolutely define the strength of the church in the next generation. The stakes could not be higher.

cause and effect

I don't know how many times I have come across the advice that a person can improve his or her disposition through exercise. People who exercise are happier, statistically speaking, so the best step toward beating the blues is to actually take several steps. It turns out that this may not be completely true, and that the reason people thought this was true due to a common mistake—the opinion that statistical correlation equals cause and effect.

Not long ago I came across an article describing a study that challenges the idea that exercising makes people happier. Just because people who exercise are more happy does not mean that one causes the other. Each may be caused by a common third factor, such as genetics. People who are genetically wired to be more happy may also be genetically wired to enjoy jogging.

This mistake is one that I come across all of the time when I hear or read about scientific studies. Certain research is done, a correlation is found between two sets of data (like hours of exercise and levels of happiness), and an unchallenged statement is made in the media that research shows that one of these measured factors must cause the other.

At first glance, this should not be a big deal. Most people don't care too much what studies say, and they really only bring up the topics for small talk anyway. It is bothersome, though, because important decisions are often made based on the the implications of such research. Governments pass and enforce policies and laws because studies indicate something specific. People are prescribed medications based on the implications of research. A murder case can hinge on what research studies imply about the workings of a mentally unstable person's mind.

With all of this said, I know this is why most published research must go through peer review. Mistakes in data collection, computation, and interpretation can get filtered out there. But what happens if everyone in the peer review process makes the same assumptions in interpreting the data? From what I can see, that story ends with a bunch of depressed people in jogging shorts.