On shaming and second chances and the paucity of first chances

I've been following the internet discussions centered around Jon Ronson's So You've Been Publicly Shamed.  And I've thought, and thought, and thought some more, and I've finally been able to put my finger on exactly what it is that bothers me about the cases Ronson describes.  On the one hand, look at the job titles of the people Ronson describes:  acclaimed author, CFO of a major corporation, PR executive.  All pretty desirable positions.  On the other hand, look at the things these people did to screw up their lives:  falsifying a nonfiction book, yelling at a fast food clerk and posting it on the internet, publicly posting an offensive racist joke.  All pretty stupid things that anyone who's made it through middle school should know better than to do.  And after this, these people think they should get a second chance.  And they'll probably get it.  But the fact of the matter is that good positions like the ones these people screwed themselves out of are far rarer than people who want those positions and are capable of doing them.  So when the mass of people who are struggling to get by from day to day see these people, who've screwed up so egregiously, saying "I should have my position at the top of the heap back," we're inclined to say, "No.  Hell no.  You've already demonstrated that you're a jerk.  Let someone else - someone who hasn't acted out so stupidly - have a shot now.  You had your shot and you blew it.  Why should you get a second chance when so many of us never get a first one?"

To give another example, one closer to my life:  I was a student in the history department at University of New Orleans when the Stephen Ambrose plagiarism scandal broke.  I never had Dr. Ambrose for a professor - by the time I came along, he was at a point in his career where he was able to devote almost all his time to writing and research - but I remember following the news and being horrified.  Horrified not so much because of what he had done - I knew that in every field there were going to be some bad apples - as because of the general lack of consequences.  I knew that if I, as a graduate student, had committed similar acts of plagiarism, that would be it - my hopes of a history career would be over.  But when Ambrose did these things, the university stood behind him, his colleagues rallied around him, and after a brief period of finger-wagging, it was as if this had never happened.

And I think that's why people piled on the people profiled in Ronson's book - because we've seen how people at the top of the heap are allowed to fail, then offered a second chance and enabled to stay at the top of the heap, while those of us at the bottom of the heap know that should we fail in anything even approaching the same degree, that will be the end of what little social and financial stability we've managed to carve out for ourselves.  Public internet shaming is an attempt to equalize things - since we can't do it by bringing the people at the bottom up, we're left to do it by bringing the people at the top down.

REVIEW: Bone Walker, by Crime and the Forces of Evil

"Bone Walker wasn't supposed to be a major project."  So begins the liner notes for this new album from Crime and the Forces of Evil.  What it was supposed to be was a Kickstarter bonus to go along with Angela Korra'ti's Free Court of Seattle series.  Of course, as you read on in the liner notes, you see that it turned into a major project:  Extra musicians coming into the project, enriching (and complicating) the arrangements, health problems and software problems delaying the production, and no doubt countless other more minor problems that by comparison weren't worth mentioning.

But then you listen to the album and you know that - for you the listener, at any rate - it was all worth it.  Ten songs and 4 readings (with background music) transport you into the world of the Free Court of Seattle.  The songs are a mixture of traditional and original material (often within the same song), in a range of moods and tones.  If you like SJ Tucker or Blackmore's Night (to name couple a few of the musicians mining this same mythic vein), I feel confident in recommending Bone Walker to you.  You can get it at Amazon, Bandcamp, iTunes, or the band's own website.  Do your ears a favor and go check it out.

DISCLOSURE:  I'm friends with the leader of the band, and she provided me with an advanced listening copy of the album in exchange for a review.  Not necessarily a positive review, mind:  A free album can't buy that, and neither can friendship.  (If needed, friendship can buy some awkward feelings and an email saying "I really didn't like it - are you sure you want me to write about it?"  Fortunately that wasn't necessary in this case.)

Stupid rules of the workplace: Dressing for a job interview

One of the most pointless causes of stress in the workplace is "what to wear to a job interview."  You know you're going to be judged based on what you wear, yet you're forbidden access to the simplest and most accurate method of determining what the correct thing to wear is.

Once upon a time, or so I've been told, it was simple:  A job applicant going for an interview was to wear a suit and tie.  (I'm going to restrict my discussion here to male clothing options, to keep the phrasing from getting ponderous, but rest assured that everything I say here applies to women, with the multiplying factor of sexualization of women's clothing, which I'm not even going to begin to address here.)

Anyway, suit and tie.  Because that's what you'd be wearing once you got the job.  Then organizations started changing their dress codes.  Some clung to the old suit and tie.  Some loosened up as far as khakis and a nice shirt, but jeans were still off the table.  Others adopted an "anything goes" approach.  Sartorial choices for job interviews were thrown into turmoil.  And how did the job-hunting gurus adapt to this turmoil?  By offering conflicting advice.  Some said to stick with the suit and tie.  Others said to look at what people in the office you'd be interviewing at are wearing, then match that.  Still others said to look at what the people in the office are wearing, then dress one step more formal that that.

Of course, none of the gurus stated the actual proper thing to wear, because it would only serve to point out the method of information-gathering that job-hunters are pointlessly forbidden access to (that I mentioned in the first paragraph).  The proper thing to wear to a job interview is, of course, whatever the person interviewing you wants you to wear.  And the forbidden information-gathering technique?  Asking them.

Seriously.  Imagine how much simpler it would make all of our lives.
HIRING MANAGER:  So, our interview's for Tuesday at 9.  Do you have any further questions before then?
APPLICANT:  Yes.  How would you like me to dress?
HIRING MANAGER:  Well, we typically dress business casual here, but I'd like to see you in a suit and tie.

Just like that.  Under a minute, pointless source of workplace stress eliminated.  I'd love to see this become the norm.

Of roads and redistribution

The major political issue in my town right now is streets.  Specifically, the city council wants to get the town off the treadmill of continual street resurfacing by investing in higher quality streets that will last a generation or more.  Naturally, this will require spending money, and consequently the local conservatives are losing their minds.

One of them wrote a letter to the editor of the local community weekly.  "What if I sell my house after 10 years, when we've just paid to put down 30-year streets?  What if I sell my house after 5 years, before they even put the new streets in front of it?  I'll have paid for something that I didn't benefit from!"

I just wanted to grab this guy by the lapels and get all Samuel L. Jackson on him:  "WAS THERE A STREET IN FRONT OF YOUR HOUSE WHEN YOU BOUGHT IT, MOTHERF**KER?"  Yes, there was.  The previous owner paid for that street, and they didn't take it with them when they left.  That's what it means to be an adult in a civilized society.  You benefit from things that other people paid for and, at the same time, you pay for things that other people benefit from.  Over time, it pretty much balances out, even if the way it does so isn't obvious at first glance.  For example, even if you don't have kids, you still benefit from paying for schools because it decreases the average ignorance of the people around you.  (Which I think we all agree is a Good Thing.)

With apologies to the people of New Hampshire, I sometimes wish the Free State Project would succeed, so that the rest of us wouldn't have to deal with these "rugged individualists," we could just send them to Coventry if they haven't gone already.

You don't like it? Are you sure?

For a long time, I thought I didn't like Neil Young.  Not Neil Young's music, mind you - Neil Young himself.

To find out how this happened, we have to make a mental trip to the early 1980s in southern Mississippi, back to my tweenage years.  It was a time and place where it was possible to not know things in a way that just isn't possible today.  There was no Wikipedia - no internet at all for that matter - and so it was possible to not know something and then to continue not to know it because the answers weren't available in the data accessible to you.  This aspect of the informational environment I grew up became relevant when my dad let me have an old stereo that he wasn't using anymore, along with a bunch of 8-track tapes that he didn't listen to anymore.  This was my introduction to Paul Simon, Black Sabbath, Jimmy Buffet, Steppenwolf, and a lot of other music from the late 60s and early 70s.

Which is how we get to Neil Young.  My music collection now included tapes from Crosby, Stills, and Nash, and from Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young.  What I didn't have was context.  I didn't know who Neil Young was.  I didn't know about his history of being in Buffalo Springfield with Stephen Stills, nor about his friendship with Stills that predated Buffalo Springfield.  Instead, I had an information vacuum.  This was simply unacceptable.  So I created a story to fill that vacuum.  In my version of things, Crosby, Stills, and Nash had been a successful band, doing perfectly fine on their own, when Neil Young came out of nowhere and somehow (I was rather vague on this point) jumped on their coattails and became part of the band.  And I hated him for it.

My story was consistent with the (very limited) information I had, but it was obviously far from the truth.  Once I had the actual information, my opinion of Neil Young drastically changed - I'm currently reading his memoir, Waging Heavy Peace, and loving it.  But all too often it seems that people don't revise - they make their mental stories based on the facts they have available, then defend the story even in the face of contradictory facts.  Remember, folks, your mental stories about the world are just models, and in cases where the model is in conflict with reality, it's the model that's got to change.

Fantasy & Science Fiction, July/August 2014, part 4

This is the final installment of my blogging through the July/August 2014 issue of Fantasy & Science Fiction, guest-edited by C.C. Finlay.  The earlier parts are here, here, and here.

I enjoyed "The Aerophone" by Dinesh Rao, but not as much as I would have liked to have.  I love the mixture of different wordls:  An Indian scholar, working in Mexico, interacting with indigenous Mexicans, coming in contact with a world beyond ours entirely.  But the architecture of the story just didn't work for me.  It felt like the beginning of a novel that had just been truncated and an attempt made to pass off as a novelet.  In a way a hope that's what it is:  All things that I think make it a flawed novelet would make it an excellent chapter 1 of a full-length novel.

I was eventually able to forgive Ian Tregillis for not actually including diagrams in "Testimony of Samuel Frobisher Regarding Events Upon His Majesty's Ship Confidence, 14-22 June 1818, With Diagrams" because it's just such an excellent blend of the weird and the nautical (two of my favorite genres).  But, considering that the diagrams are mentioned both in the title and the story itself, I'd really love to see a chapbook edition of this that actually included diagrams.

I'm still not entirely sure what to make of "Five Tales of the Aqueduct" by Spencer Ellsworth.  It's a cluster of smaller stories that go together to make a larger whole, but I'm afraid I'm still not at all clear on exactly how they fit together.  Still, the quality of the individual pieces is such that I don't begrudge it a second reading to try to figure it out.

This issues movie column, "Girl Power in Dystopia" by Kathi Maio, examines the Twilight movies, the Hunger Games movies, Divergent, and other recent cinematic examples of YA heroine's tales - a very nice synthesis of a topic that's certainly worth a bit of thought.

I was looking forward to "Belly" by Haddayr Copley-Woods, as I've been friends with the author for years and she knew I was reading this issue and refusing to skip ahead to her story.  For starters, be sure to heed the warning in the biographical blurb at the beginning of this story:  Do not read this story while you're eating.  That being said, I don't want to give the wrong impression of this story - the disgusting elements aren't added for "mere" shock value.  This is a viscerally powerful story (pun intended) and one that I won't be forgetting anytime soon.  I challenge anyone to read this story and not have their feelings about fairy tale witches changed.

"The Only Known Law" by William Alexander reminds of Arthur C. Clarke's Childhood's End.  Leaving your home planet is definitely going to change a species, and Alexander here shows one possible outcome of that change.

Based on the title, I never expected Alaya Dawn Johnson's "A Guide to the Fruits of Hawai'i" to be a vampire story.  But don't let that description mislead you and if you're the sort of person who doesn't like vampires, don't let that that keep you away from this story:  This is not like any other vampire story I've ever read.  For that matter, Johnson's vampires are like no other vampires I've ever encountered - she manages to capture the psychological distance between humans and vampires in a way that I've never experienced before (and in a way that, paradoxically, also highlights their psychological closeness).  Highly recommended.

So to sum up:  Would I recommend July/August 2014 issue of Fantasy & Science Fiction?  Definitely.  Would I recommend Fantasy & Science Fiction in general?  Probably.  Keep in mind that this is the first issue of F&SF that I've read in over a decade, and that Finlay is a guest editor here.  Still, he wouldn't have been invited to guest edit without the approval of the regular editor, so I'm inclined to look positively on the regular editor so long as they don't give me a reason not to.  That being said, in the event that the F&SF ever needs a new editor, they could certainly do worse than offer the job to Finlay.

Fantasy & Science Fiction, July/August 2014, part 3

I've been blogging my way through the July/August 2014 issues of Fantasy & Science Fiction, guest edited by C.C. Finlay.  You can read parts 1 and 2 of this series here and here.

I didn't expect to enjoy Chris Moriarty's "Books" column this time around.  My first reaction was "Another tribute to Iain (M.) Banks?"  But I suppose it's a tribute both to Banks and Moriarty that I did enjoy it.  I daresay people will be writing about Banks for quite some time to come.

Next up was "The Traveling Salesman Solution" by David Erik Nelson.  This story impressed the hell out of me, not only for the strength of the ideas in the story because also for the protagonist.  The protagonist of "The Traveling Salesman Solution" (whose name I don't remember at the moment and can't find on flipping through the story just now) is in a wheelchair, but the story isn't about him being in a wheelchair.  There are details of the story that play out a certain way because he's in a wheelchair, but that isn't the focus of the story.  Very well done.

Cat Hellisen's "The Girls Who Go Below" is a fairy tale retelling, but so much more than that.  I didn't even recognize it as a fairy tale retelling - despite being very familiar with and fond of the fairy tale in question - until very near the end of the story.  And no, I won't tell you what story it is:  You'll have to read it and find out for yourself.

And this installment comes to a close with "The Day of the Nuptial Flight"by Sarina Dorie.  This one was just amazing - a classic science fiction story like they supposedly don't write anymore, told from the point of view of an alien.  When humans come to a new planet, maybe terraforming isn't the way to go.  Maybe there's another option.

Make your own kind of music, rap your own kind of rap

In the wake of the recent Forbes article on Iggy Azalea, there's been a lot of discussion about Iggy Azalea's "right" to be a rapper and the (to some people disproportionate) amount of attention she's been given by the media.  A lot of discussion.  (I'm not even going to try to sum it up for you - it's huge.)  But the point that kept popping up in my mind is that despite the fact that I have major philosophical issues with Iggy's appropriation of African-American culture, I keep going back and relistening to "Fancy."  The song is catchy.  But my mind keeps being tripped up by the fact that I know Iggy doesn't really talk that way.  But even more troubling is the fact that the experiences she's rapping about don't seem to be hers either.  Why would I want to hear Iggy rap about faux urban American experiences when I can hear so many other equally talented rappers rap about their genuine urban American experiences?  (AKA the Vanilla Ice problem.)

I think this is one of the factors behind the success of Lorde's "Royals" - the experiences related are genuinely hers, but presented in a way that's universal enough that almost anyone can relate.  And even though Lorde has an accent when she speaks that's not present when she sings, it's not really noticeable (and certainly not objectionable) because (A) she's singing in a neutral accent rather than trying to adopt a particular accent and (B) the experiences she's relating are still hers - she's not putting on a persona.

This was all thrown into sharp relief for me yesterday when I head "Fighting Fish," a new (to me) song by Dessa, one of my favorite rappers.  Listen to the song, and watch the video, and you'll see that Dessa presents a totally different way of being a white* female rapper.  She raps in her own voice, not only in the sense of her own accent, but also in the sense of speaking from her own experiences.  She has a degree in philosophy, and rather than hide that fact, she goes out and writes a rap where the chorus is centered around Zeno's Paradox of the Arrow.  But not, as my daughter expected when I first told her about it, in a geeky, Weird Al kind of way, but in a deliberate, conscious way, that recognizes this as part of her experience and then goes from there.

And I wonder what kind of music Iggy Azalea would produce if she adopted this sort of honest musical philosophy, where the performer is the person.  I'd certainly like to hear it.

*  Dessa is actually half Puerto Rican, but she recognizes that she's fair-skinned and appears white and has privilege because of that.

If voting on the floor of the House could change anything, they'd make it illegal

One of the local candidates for my state legislature has as his platform a pledge to poll his constituents before any major vote and vote the way they instruct him to.

Go back and read that first sentence again.  I'd like to call your attention to my very deliberate choice of "as his platform," and not "as part of his platform."  I've talked to this candidate, I've been to his website, I've been to his Facebook group, and the entirety of his platform is his pledge to poll his constituents and vote the way they instruct him to.

I was ranting about this ("What kind of fools does he take us for? . . . But so many people will fall for this! . . . etc."), when my daughter asked "What's so wrong with that?"  After discussing the matter with her, I thought I'd share my thoughts with all of you, in case a candidate in your area tries to pull this kind of thing on you.

What's wrong with having a representative (let's call him "Bob") whose only function is to vote however his constituents direct him to?  Well, f you look at the process of how a bill becomes a law, you can see that there are a lot of steps that a bill has to go through before you get to the main floor vote and Bob polls his constituents.  First the bill has to be written - which nowadays often comes in the form of special interest groups presenting representatives with prewritten legislation.  Then it has to go to committee - during which process it's usually extensively rewritten and amended.  Then it comes out for debate on the floor - during which process it's usually extensively rewritten and amended.  Then is goes for a final vote - if and only if the party with a majority wants the bill to pass and thinks that they have enough vote to do so.  So you see that even if Bob's constituents instruct him to vote against what his party wants on the final vote, he's still had plenty of opportunities to shape the legislation the way his party wants.

"But," I hear you say, "his party still needs his vote on the final floor vote to pass the bill."  Not necessarily.  They'd like to have his vote, I'm sure.  But since he's running against a long-time incumbent from the other party, it's not like they'd be losing anything if his constituents instruct him to vote against his party, and in the meantime, he's had plenty of opportunities to do damage work for his party in the legislature.  They're willing to sacrifice this one floor vote which they weren't getting anyway to unseat an incumbent and get one of their own in to work behind the scenes, and are probably counting on voter apathy and the power of incumbency to hold onto the seat and eventually let Bob start voting however he pleases (or, more to the point, however the party leadership pleases).

Also, go back and read the first sentence of this post again.  Look particularly for the word between "any" and "vote."  Guess who gets to decide if a vote is "major" enough for the constituents to be polled.  If you guessed "Bob," give yourself a gold star.  Any sucker want to take the bet that as the term goes on, the number of "major" votes goes way down?  No, I didn't think so.

So that's why I won't be voting for Bob, and why I hope that if there's a Bob running in your district, you'll vote against them.

Fantasy & Science Fiction, July/August 2014, part 2

I've read some more of this issue, so here are some further impressions: (part 1 of this series is located here.)

When I started Paul M. Berger's "Subduction," my initial reaction was "Great, another protagonist with amnesia."  But the amnesia turned out to be an integral part of the story, not just authorial laziness, and the mystery is such a big part of the story that I really can't say any more about it without giving something away.  Just go read the story - trust me on this one.

Next up was Annalee Flower Horne's "Seven Things Cadet Blanchard Learned From the Trade Summit Incident."  I enjoyed this one while I was reading it - the light, comedic style that Horne used for this story perfectly suited it - but afterward I kept thinking about it and becoming more and more dissatisfied with it.  The story begins with a cadet on a spaceship being wrongly accused of a practical joke that released stink bombs into the ship's ventilation system.  In an effort to clear her name, she discovers bigger, darker things afoot.  And that's where everything fell apart for me.  The villains weren't over-the-top evil and incompetent in a humorous way (think Dr. Doofenshmirtz from Phineas and Ferb), which would have been great for this story.  They were just evil in a bland, corporate way, as well as being incompetent.  I started out really liking this story, but at some point it zigged where it should have zagged.

At one point in this issue's installment of Charles De Lint's "Books to Look For" column, he makes a point about how so much of the urban fantasy being published now is just kind of more of the same.  Case in point:  This issue he reviewed four novels that fall in or near the label of "urban fantasy," but after setting the magazine aside for two days I had to reread the reviews to see which was which.  I mean, they all sounded like perfectly charming books but none of them really jumped out at me in a way that made me want to read them right away.  He also reviewed a new "writers on writing" type book which, while not really my cup of tea, he seemed to really like.

Still to come:  Four more novelets (I still don't think I like that spelling), 5 short stories, the other book review column, and the movie review column.  Looking over the table of contents for the rest of the issue, I must confess I'm kind of skeptical about Ian Tregillis's contribution:  When the title of your story promises "With Diagrams" but there are no diagrams, you've just made your work that much harder.

Fantasy & Science Fiction, July/August 2014, part 1

It's been years since I read any of the SF digests regularly - occasionally I'd pick up an odd issue here and there, but I hadn't really read them regularly since the late 1980s. So when C.C. Finlay, the guest editor for the July/August 2014 issue of Fantasy & Science Fiction came on Twitter saying he had 8 copies of the issue to send to people who were willing to blog about them, preferably people who generally didn't read the digests, I figured I'd give it a shot. I was thrilled to be chosen, and about a week later I was pulling the issue out of my P.O. box. First impressions: The first thing I noticed when pulling the magazine out of the envelope was that it was huge. I've bought novels smaller than this! (Back in the days before page inflation.) The second thing I noticed, as I happened to be pulling it out of the envelope upside down, was that someone other than the Science Fiction Book Club had purchased the ad on the back cover! Back when I was reading the digests regularly, SFBC pretty much had a lock on the back cover and inside back cover of any SF magazines, so this was a huge shock for me. Finally, I turned it over and looked at the front. The front cover art (by Mauricio Manzieri) is pretty awesome. It's got kind of a retro feel - not a steampunk sort of retro, but a 1970s-80s sort of retro. If I had seen this artwork on a book at any point in my life, I would have immediately known the book was SF, and I probably would have bought it. Late last night, I started to actually read it. Normally, I'm someone who reads magazines strictly in order, from front to back. I generally even skip the table of contents, so that I'm surprised by whatever comes up next. But when I was flipping through the issue, my eye was caught by "End of the World Community College" by Sandra McDonald and I started reading that, out of order. After about a page, I was so caught up by the humor it that I convinced my wife to let me read it aloud to her. While I continued to find the story amusing, she found it depressing and sad. So apparently I've got a much darker sense of humor than her - either that or story's not funny at all and I'm just a horrible person. At any rate, I still recommend the story. After that, I checked out the classifieds (there's usually something interesting in there; this issue it's an Easter egg for "End of the World Community College") and Paul Di Filippo's "Curiosities" column. This morning I got up, made a pot of coffee, and started in to read the rest of the magazine. The first story in this issue was "Palm Strike's Last Case" by Charlie Jane Anders. I admit I was kind of hesitant about starting this one. Not because of anything in particular about the story, but because I'm used to starting a magazine with an editor's column, or at least a short story. To start out with a novelette (or "novelet" as this issue's of contents spells it) seems to be demanding I pay a bit much attention to one particularly story right from the start. But I dove in, and I don't regret it. The story moves so quickly that I didn't really notice its length. I don't want to say too much about the story itself, as there's a large mystery component to it, but I think I can say without giving too much away that fans of SF or superheroes will love this one. And that's all I've read so far. More posts to come once I've read more. DISCLOSURE: I was given a copy of this issue by C.C. Finlay, the guest editor, in exchange for agreeing to blog about it.

Earth to Cadillac: You're out of touch!

I'm glad to see I'm not the only one annoyed by the new Cadillac commercial. First, they make fun of the idea that we might prefer quality of life over quantity of stuff - not a good start toward winning my heart.

Then, they reference the moon landing as an example of American accomplishment. Earth to Cadillac: I am 40 years old. We haven't been to the moon in my lifetime, and we don't have the technology to go back now. Try to find a more relevant example.

And, of course, the whole thing is slathered with a thick coating of "buy our car because it's built in America." Earth to Cadillac, part 2: BMW builds cars in America. Mercedes. Nissan. Hyundai. Toyota. Subaru. Do I really need to go on?

Of course, I'm not their target market. Their target market is people who buy cars that cost almost as much as my house. And maybe this commercial is killing it with their target market - but I sincerely hope not.

I have a dream . . . of garlic bread?

I received an email this morning from a local pizzeria offering a free medium garlic bread with any order today in recognition of Martin Luther King Day.  While I'm quite sure the intent here is "to sell more pizzas," I can't help wondering if there might be more to it.  Did Dr. King have any Italian ancestry that I've been previously unaware of?  Was there any Italian-American involvement in the civil rights movement?  Did Dr. King even like Italian food?

How to produce an upgraded version of your software

This past weekend I updated to the latest version of iTunes, despite all past experience telling me that this was a big mistake.  I figured "They've done enough major version upgrades, and it's been long enough since the last major version upgrade, that they should have all the kinks worked out."  Obviously I was mistaken, or else I'd be enjoying my new iTunes instead of writing this blog post.  (I don't think having to accept the EULA and then reset all my preferences each time I open the program counts as "enjoying."  If you do, you're welcome to it, but I think you're kind of weird.)

Mr B's Guide to Upgrading Software

1.  If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

So your program now handles file type X, so long as users input values for foo and bar, which they never had to do before.  This is all well and good, but be sure to add some sort of a check so users are only prompted for foo and bar when they're using a file of type X.  Adding new features shouldn't make it more difficult to use old features.

2.  If it ain't broke, don't break it.

This should go without saying, but apparently a lot of developers need to hear it, so here it is:  All features that worked properly in version X of your software should continue to work properly in all versions subsequent to X.  Anything else is the opposite of improvement.

3.  New user interface:  Ain't nobody got time for that

I don't care how clever, ground-breaking, or intuitive you think your new UI design is, I don't want to learn it.  If you've added new, useful features that necessitate a new UI, I may grudgingly admit the usefulness of it once I've gone through the learning curve, but I still didn't want to learn a new UI.

So what do users want in a new version of your software?  Well, I can't speak for all users, just because some of them want really odd things, but in general, our desires are very simple.  If you must upgrade your software (and we really wish you wouldn't), we want a new version that looks like the old version and does all the things the old version did, but crashes less often, takes up less space on our hard drives, and uses less memory when running.  If there are other specific features we want from your particular program, we'll ask you for them - please don't just sit there and try to make up new features you think we'll like.

Thank you.

Falling in love with history again

The other night I started reading 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think by Laura Vanderkam.  I only made it through the first couple of chapters, but it really changed my perspective in several areas.

First of all was just impact of reframing the amount of time you have available.  Thinking of just the 24 hours in a day makes time feel cramped, like you have to try to squeeze everything in.  But when you multiply by 7 and spread your activities out over the course of a week, you find (or I do, at any rate) that your schedule feels more open.  If you do something a couple of times a week for an hour of two each time, you can do more (and, perhaps more importantly, feel like you're doing more) than if you try to cram everything into every day and only do each thing for a few minutes.

The second thing that jumped out at me was when she talked about core competencies.  Reading this chapter made me think about my stillborn career as a history professor[1].  And I realized that a lot of the things I would need to do as a history professor don't really fit into my core competency as a historian.  For one thing, I have no gift for academic politics.  I don't have the knack of the sort of quid pro quo and mutual backscratching that yields plum committee assignments, a desirable office space, and a manageable courseload.  I'd end up being the poor slob with a tiny office in the basement who's stuck teaching seven sections of Western Civ every semester.  I also don't have the knack of producing the sort of theory-heavy, technical papers that lead to journal publication (and hence to tenure).  I am good at research - I'm like a terrier:  I can find the scent of my quarry and stick with it until I find what I'd looking for.  I think I'd do well in lecturing, but can't be completely certain as I've never really had a chance to test it.

But where I really shine as a historian is in a place that's not really valued in academia:  As a storyteller.  I seem to have a natural talent for finding the narrative around a person, event, or concept, and then of telling that story in a way that grabs and holds people's attention.  I was able to make my wife - who has a limited interest in history - not only understand the causes of World War I, but also care about them.  I'm a popularizer[2].

And so, having found my core competency as a historian, now I've got to take the next step:  Embracing my core competency.  Reveling in it.  Loving it.  Owning it.  Possibly even getting some money and some recognition for it.  After all, I've got time.

[1]  Long story short, I stopped after getting my master's degree because I realized that the nomadic lifestyle and high debt load of a newly-minted PhD didn't really fit into the kind of life I wanted to lead.  I was kind of stunned when a professor I approached for advice about getting my PhD said "If at all possible, don't do it," but on further reflection and research, I began to see the truth in his words.
[2]  I really don't like the word "popularizer."  Not because of the word itself, but because of the way so many academic historians use it, with a condescending sneer and a connotation of, if not incompetence, at least a lack of rigor.

X-Men #1: It's a milestone, but it's much more than that

If you're at all plugged into the comic book world - and likely even if you're not - you've seen the news that X-Men #1, released yesterday, has an all-female team.  When I was out picking up my comics yesterday, I also grabbed a copy of X-Men #1 because I'm a historian and it's historically significant.  But what I discovered when I sat down to read it last night is that - in addition to being historically significant - it's also a cracking good story.  This is exceedingly important because while the "all-female team" aspect might provide a bump in first issue sales, it's not going to sustain the title over the long term, and even more so because if the series fails, there will be people who say it failed not because of shortcomings in art or story, or because it just didn't "click" with readers, or because the market is saturated with X-men titles, but because it had an all-female team.  Like it or not, X-Men is standing for women in comics everywhere.

But if #1 is any indication, I don't think X-Men is likely to fail.  The art was quite good - outstanding in places - and the story managed to hit all the right notes without making any of the common issue 1 blunders.  The origin of the threat is set up efficiently, in only 2 pages.  The characters are introduced as they need to be, in the amount of detail they need to be.  The story starts out in media res rather than getting bogged down by telling the origin of each character, and bits of the history and surrounding world - including other characters - are mentioned without feeling the need to explain everything.  I can't be 100% certain, but I'm pretty confident that someone with no exposure to the X-Men - or whose exposure  comes only from the movies - could pick this up as their entry point to the X-Men comics and, even though they wouldn't understand everything, wouldn't be so bewildered as to stop them from coming back for issue #2.

So if you don't have it already, head out to your local comics shop (you do have a local comics shop, don't you?) and pick up X-Men #1.  You'll be glad you did.

80% of life is showing up - but not JUST showing up

People know the quote "80% of life is showing up," or at least think they do.  Even if they know the source (it's Woody Allen), they probably don't know the full context.  He explains it this interview, and there's more to the idea than it appears at first glance:

I made the statement years ago which is often quoted that 80 percent of life is showing up. People used to always say to me that they wanted to write a play, they wanted to write a movie, they wanted to write a novel, and the couple of people that did it were 80 percent of the way to having something happen. All the other people struck out without ever getting that pack. They couldn’t do it, that’s why they don’t accomplish a thing, they don’t do the thing, so once you do it, if you actually write your film script, or write your novel, you are more than half way towards something good happening. So that I was say my biggest life lesson that has worked. All others have failed me.

So it's not just showing up.  It's showing up and doing the work.  If you want to write a book, you have to put in your "butt in seat time," as my writer friends refer to it.  If you want to be a blogger, you have to blog, day in and day out, for as long as it takes.  Market research, networking, search engine optimization - none of that matters unless you've actually done the work.

TL;DR:  You can't sell a product you haven't made.

Won't get fooled again - my thoughts on comic book crossover mega-events

When I picked up last week's comics, I discovered that they'd accidentally put a copy of Justice League #20 into my pull file. I didn't discover this until after I got home, so I decided that I'd just read it and see what I thought of Justice League. And I really liked it – so much so that I was considering adding it to my pull list. Until I saw that they were about to go into a mega-event that would also entail buying Justice League of America and Justice League Dark. I just went down that road with the Rotworld saga (Animal Man, Frankenstein Agent of S.H.A.D.E., and Swamp Thing) and I'm in no hurry to do it again. I imagine that the creators enjoy these sorts of mega-events, because it lets them paint on a bigger canvas. But so often (especially in DC) they either result in massive universe changes that (from my POV) ruin stuff as often as not, or else they have to find a way of undoing everything that happens, returning more or less to the status quo ante. Rotworld took the latter path – it was obvious from the first issue that it was going to end with everything getting undone, it was just a matter of how they were going to undo it.

I think crossovers work better in more “street-level” titles, where you can have a bigger story without it automatically becoming so big that the very structure of the universe is in danger. For example, I'd be very surprised to learn that no one at DC is working on – or at least has pitched – a crossover event involving Green Arrow, The Movement, and Team Green. I'd probably even buy that. But if they are working on it, I hope they don't do it for at least a year: The Movement and Team Green are brand new and just finding their legs, and Green Arrow is still in the process of being brought back from the brink of death by a new creative team. But eventually I'd enjoy seeing those cross over – and if no one in DC is working on it, I'd be happy to have a go at writing it.

Why the Producteev outage has me so upset

As far as I'm concerned, the to-do list is one of the greatest pieces of technology ever invented. The caveman who scribbled the first to-do list on a cave wall ("Kill mammoth. Domesticate dog. Drag home mate.") was an inventing genius  Or maybe it was a cavewoman, and the list looked more like "Scrape hides.  Gather herbs.  Avoid getting dragged home by Thog."  Either way, they were a genius, and they've made my life immeasurably better.

The next big advance in to-do list technology that has made my life better is the ability to keep one's to-do list on a computer and have the computer automatically update recurring tasks.  It saves one from having to remember to list items that have to be done over and over again.  Anyone who has any familiarity with Getting Things Done recognizes the importance of this:  Not having to hold something in your head frees up mental space from remembering to do things, which can then be used for actually doing things.

From the outside, my life doesn't necessarily look like one where a to-do list or other productivity technology would be necessary.  I work from home and my routine is largely the same, week-in and week-out.  But look again:  The inherent sameness of my days means I need to-do lists and calendars more because I don't have the mental cues (Monday was the big meeting about the Smithers account; Tuesday was when Charlie smashed the copying machine with a hammer) that help to separate one day from another.  On top of this, I have a wife and 2 kids with major medical problems.  This means I have all the usual responsibilities of running a household, cubed.  I've got hundreds of things to keep track of over the course of a month, with consequences ranging from minor (garage full of recycling because I forgot to take the bin down to the curb) to potentially catastrophic (ran out of medication on the Saturday of a long weekend).  On top of that, I have Asperger syndrome and an anxiety disorder.  If I don't know for certain that I've got everything I need to do plugged into a system so that I can be sure nothing's going to slip my mind, it's disastrous for my mental state.  I can't focus.  I snap at people.  I feel completely untethered from my routine and thus totally out of sorts.

For a long time I kept my to-do list in an app on my iPod Touch.  I had tried close to a dozen different apps before I found one that suited my needs:  To me, a task management app that doesn't handle recurring tasks is useless, one that only allows recurrences daily, weekly, or monthly is only slightly less so.  Everything was fine until I dropped my iPod in the toilet and it stopped working.  Since getting a new iPod wasn't in the cards right away, I started looking for an app that would let me keep my to-do list on my computer.  I once again had to go through an extensive search before I could find one that met my standards.  I finally found one:  Producteev.  I got all my tasks entered, repeating at their proper intervals, and everything was fine.

Then this Monday, Producteev had to migrate their software to a new system, and I haven't been able to log in since.  I know there are things I need to do, but I can't get to my data to see them.  I'll probably stick with Producteev once they get things up and running again, because checking out the competition during this outage has confirmed that Producteev still meets my needs the best.  But I doubt entirely trust them again - there'll probably always be some level of underlying anxiety that this could happen again.  I'm even entertaining thoughts of writing my own to-do list app just so that I won't be dependent on someone else's system.  But I know that - as much as I might wish otherwise - it's not practical to build everything I need myself.  It's just a hazard of living in an interconnected society, I suppose.

Dubious pleasures of the digital age

Earlier this year, I applied for a position as content manager at a local publishing house.  I didn't get the job:  Over 300 applicants were rejected, and I was one of them.  Still, I have other applications in with this company and haven't given up hope of eventually working for them, so I follow their Twitter and blogs to keep up with what's going on.  This morning I noticed that the company website had been updated to announce their new content manager.  Immediately I googled her, to see what kind of a mistake they'd made.

The words "dubious pleasures" in the title to this post should give you a clue as to what I found there:  They hadn't made a mistake.  No, they'd hit the jackpot.  They found some kind of journalistic wunderkind.  In a blind comparison of qualifications, I never stood a chance.  (I still think I would make a great communications director for the company, but that's neither here nor there.)

But here's the weird part:  I wanted to dislike this woman.  Really wanted to.  I wanted to hate her guts - after all, she got the job that I had wanted.  But I just couldn't do it.  She seems like a really neat person.  She does improv comedy.  She belongs to a humorous bluegrass-style band that is going to be playing at one of our local SF cons this summer.  She and her boyfriend have a blog where they put plastic dinosaurs in interesting places and then post the pictures they take.  How could I possibly hate someone like this?  (For more than a second or two, at any rate.)

Hopefully one of my other applications will come through - I think she'd make a great coworker.