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You buy a new computer.  You turn it on.  A screen pops up:

Installing Windows 98

You may have told the computer vendor that you didn’t want Windows 98: that’s just tough.  Microsoft essentially taxes every computer purchased at mainstream outlets by forcing the vendors to buy a copy of Windows for every computer they sell regardless of whether or not the purchaser wants it.

Anyway, suppose you are going to install Linux instead.   Suppose that when the copyright notice pops up asking you to click “OK” to agree to the terms, you just click “NO”.  Will you get your money back, like they promise?  Not if you buy your computer from Dell.

More importantly, if you do click “OK”, have you made a contract with Microsoft in which you agree to their copyright terms?

Maybe.  Maybe not.

You see, it is well established in law (under Article 2 of the Uniform Commercial Code, which governs interstate commerce in the U.S.) that whenever you buy a product from any vendor, there is an implied contract, a “warrant of merchantability” that states that the product is fit for ordinary use.  Now, I don’t think anybody in their right mind would say that Windows 98 is fit for “ordinary use”.  One of the most profound miracles of modern consumerism is the way everyone just accepts that Windows is the best we can do, because, after all, it comes with the computer, and the computer people must know about these things…     Just today, for example, on my computer, it messed up the graphics in a computer game, and disabled all the hotlinks in my web browser.  This is only about the 744th problem I’ve had with Windows.  This month.

So, can you get your money back?  No.  Because Microsoft, in their software agreement, disclaims all “implied warrants of merchantability”.  Well, wait a minute…  maybe you can.  You see, such disclaimers are not valid unless they are agreed to before purchase, by the vendor and the customer.  So maybe you can.  But you won’t.  Microsoft will simply refuse to give you your money back.

Now I imagine that if you got your lawyer after them and made a lot of noise about it, you probably would get your money back.  But how is that possible?  Don’t these big corporations know what the law is?  And how can Microsoft get away with making it a condition of purchase of Microsoft Agent that none of the little animations may be used to “disparage” Microsoft Corporation?

* * *

If you listen long enough to people like Jack Valenti (the Motion Picture Association of America) you might get the impression that Copyright has existed forever, and, indeed, was passed down to us by God himself on Mount Sinai.   Jack Valenti is the guy who had incredible fits about the fact that the Canadian government tried to encourage a home-grown film industry when Hollywood was quite capable of providing culturally enriching products like “Earnest Saves Christmas” without any help from Canadians, thank you.

Something like copyright was first invented in 1557 by the Guild of Printers in London, England, and made into law by Queen Mary.    What she did was give complete control over all printed text to The Stationer’s Company.  It was more in the nature of a monopoly than legal protection.  These printers even had exclusive rights to print the works of dead authors like Plato and Aristotle and Gore Vidal.  In exchange for this monopoly– get this– the printers were to assist the Crown in preventing the distribution of seditious and heretical works.  That includes works that question the application of copyright law.   Sounds like the FCC’s philosophy of television licensing.

They were addressing a real problem.  According to Adrian Johns, of the University of California, there were 80 pirated copies of Martin Luther’s work for every legitimate one.

In 1710, after the pleadings of noted writers like John Locke and Daniel Defoe, Queen Anne revised the law to give more rights to the authors.  The monopolies didn’t give up without a fight: they took their case to court.  They won a few concessions.  The important thing is that such a thing as “copyright” now existed.

Here is where a very interesting debate took place, and a signal ruling was made by the British courts.  The monopolies argued that intellectual property belongs absolutely to whoever “owns” it.  They argued that intellectual property is essentially similar to physical property.  If I own a table or a chair, I can keep it, or I can sell it to someone else, or I can burn it so no one else can ever use it.  And the same goes with my words and ideas.  If I choose to, I can stop anyone else from ever using them.  On the other side, Samuel Johnson argued that society rightly benefits from the free distribution of ideas, therefore, it is in the public interest to limit the scope of copyright.  The products of the human mind belong to humanity.  Samuel Johnson didn’t argue, but should have, that ideas are by nature a communal activity, and therefore, cannot be imprisoned by one individual under the name of “copyright”.

In 1774, the House of Lords agreed with Johnson and declared that, for the general good of society, intellectual property belongs to the general public.   However, to promote the creation and improvement of these works, some temporary rights over distribution of these works can be granted to the author.

The Founding Fathers of America didn’t like copyright as a matter of principle, because, again, they believed that ideas belong to everyone, but agreed that a short-term monopoly over distribution served the greater public interest of increasing the store of knowledge, so they also agreed, in 1790, to a 14-year copyright period with the option to renew for one more 14-year period.

Those wild and crazy revolutionaries in France had the cool idea– 200 years before Wired Magazine– of abolishing copyright altogether.  But this had the peculiar effect of reducing the number of published works.  Since a publisher couldn’t prevent others from copying his works, he couldn’t make money, so he simply wouldn’t publish.  So many important works fell out of print.  Eventually, Robespierre and his gang restored the old copyright law– probably just as they were about to pen their own memoirs.  It’s too bad they gave up so soon.  It would have been interesting to see who things would have worked out over a period of fifty or one hundred years.  Chaos theory, you know.

Well, publishers and authors didn’t just sit back and accept the current state of affairs.  Over the years since 1790, they have been wheedling away at Congress seeking greater and greater copyright protection, and they’ve succeeded to a large extent.  Copyright now extends to the life of the author plus 50 years, and has been extended to everything from music to computer chip diagrams.  The descendants of the great writers of the early 20th century are especially keen on extending this period: they get to collect royalties from Grandpa’s work as long as the copyright is in effect.  The copyright on “Gone With the Wind”, for example, would have and should have expired in 1993.  Congress has generously extended it to 2032.  Generously to somebody (the author, Margaret Mitchell, is long dead.).  And don’t assume they’ll stop there– the trend is clear.  By the time 2032 rolls around, they’ll have extended it again, because they are not listening to consumers or the average citizen or those really smart people who insisted all copyrights should be temporary.  They’re out on some yacht owned by Houghton Mifflin.

Richard Stallman at MIT founded the first anti-copyright organization, since the Reign of Terror, in 1984, the Free Software Foundation.   John Perry Barlow founded the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which is an advocacy group for electronic civil liberties.  Barlow used to write for the Grateful Dead.  The Grateful Dead defied the more anal-retentive music establishment by encouraging their fans to record their concerts and copy their tapes for personal use. The interesting result was that they increased their audience, sold more concert tickets and albums, and did quite well, thank you.

Facts cannot be copyrighted.  DNA, according to the U.S. patent office, can be copyrighted.  Data bases could not be copyrighted until recently, because they were believed to be collections of facts.  So if you published a list of phone numbers of people on your block, anybody could copy it.  What an outrage!   Then everyone would know who lived on your block!  Well, Congress is in the process of fixing that one up: they will allow publishers to copyright their “collections” of facts.

What does this mean exactly?   The publishers argue that it means that instead of just copying someone else’s list of your neighbors and their phone numbers, you will have to go door-to-door yourself and collect the information over again.   Why do I have a feeling that pretty soon, that won’t be legal either.  The copyright police will be out there beating up Jehovah’s Witnesses.

Some companies in the U.S. have won the right to publish court verdicts exclusively.  So, in essence, they are copyrighting the law.  This could have some advantages.  The next time someone charges you with infringing on their copyright, tell them that that law is copyrighted and they can’t use it. If that fails, tell them that you have copyrighted the story of how you stole their copyrights and they can’t use this information without your permission.

The trouble is that Congress chooses to accept loads of input from owners of various copyrights, like Disney and Time Warner, but almost no input from consumers or consumer groups.  Or, more accurately perhaps, they ignore the input from consumers.   Consumers, you see, don’t put out the big bucks for election campaigns.  The new laws being passed all favour copyright owners.

What really irritates me is way these “improvements” are presented as if they will help the poor, struggling “artists” to be paid fairly.   That’s the pr campaign.  This is completely untrue.  These new laws will help big corporations, who have been ripping artists off for years, rip off the consumer as well.  The artist, you see, only gets about $1.00 or so per CD, if they are really lucky and established and they had a good lawyer when they signed their first contract.  The record company gets a much bigger chunk, so they will gain the most.   Some of the most successful recording artists are, in fact, up to their ears in hock to their record companies.  How can that be?  They are selling millions of recordings?  Well, it’s those clever little contracts.  You’re a young artist.  Your fondest dream is to be a “recording star”.  A record company says, “we’ll make your dream come true.  All you have to do is… sign… here.”

In Canada, they are about to impose a .50 per cassette “tax” on blank tapes in order to compensate copyright owners for the money they are supposedly losing through home taping.  This stinks for several reasons.

  1. nobody has proven that they have lost a penny through home taping.   If the experience of the Grateful Dead is any indication, they have, in fact, made more money through home taping, through the “free advertising and trial product” effect.  Check out your own collection: don’t you own a lot of CD’s by artists you first heard on tape?  Now, maybe people who listen to Celine Dion and Walter Ostanek are not as honest as people who listen to the Grateful Dead.  That’s their problem.

  2. a lot of these tapes are used to make copies of CD’s so the user can play the music in the car, or make “compilation” tapes, of selections from various CD’s.  This is perfectly within the rights of the consumer under established copyright law.  And remember– it is the publishing industry that wants to insist that copyright applies to the intellectual material, not the physical disk (so they could argue against piracy in the first place).  If that is true, than anyone certainly has the right to make as many copies as he or she wants to for personal use.

  3. what if I happen to like taping my own original songs?  Not only do I have to pay extra for my blank tapes even though I’m not stealing anybody’s music, but I don’t get a share of the booty.  You might argue that I don’t have any recordings out there that people won’t buy because they can tape my music off the radio instead.   But the truth is, they don’t know if anybody would have bought a Celine Dion record either.  They really don’t.

So what we have is a bunch of big powerful businessmen making a money grab, and the government goes along with it because the average consumer doesn’t have a high-priced lobbyist in Ottawa to argue our case.

[more later…]

For a terrific discussion of software licensing, click HERE.

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Roadblocks

I’m not sure where I’m going to go with this yet, so bear with me.

I just read a brochure for something called “Landmark Forum: An exceptional Opportunity”. The Landmark Forum says that it is “a breakthrough in living. The Landmark Forum is a means of gaining insight into fundamental premises that shape and govern our lives– the very structures that determine our thinking, our actions, our values, the kind of people we can be.” Elsewhere it promises to “bring(s) a new dimension and cast(s) a new light on the situations and events that make up our lives.” You can “step beyond the limits of your identity”. Landmark claims to be based on “original theories and models of thinking”. It will give you “enhanced sense of vitality and spirit along with a greater experience of your worth”. Of course they used the word “enhanced”. Well, thank God, they at least didn’t use the word “paradigm”.

The Landmark Forum takes place over four days. You meet for three hours, break, meet, have lunch, break, go home, do it again for three more days, then go on to your “new worlds of opportunity”.

Landmark Forum, for all it’s claims of originality, is actually rooted in Werner Erhard’s EST movement of the 1970’s. It’s also related to “Large Group Awareness Training”.

I tend to puke when I read language like the stuff in the Landmark brochure, especially when I see words like “enhance”, “potential”, “effectiveness”, “results”. This is a self-improvement course. You are you. Why? Nobody knows. But we can help you be better. When we are done, you will be new and improved. You’ll be more valuable, happier, more productive. People will love you. You will have more power. You will rule the world.

I don’t know if you can make people better. Most scientists think that you are pretty well the result of your genes or your upbringing and that’s about it. Nobody has added a third category: shaped by self-improvement courses.

What happens at these seminars? You hear somebody say something like, “your life is full of people who waste your time by trying to draw you into their own petty little battles and dissatisfactions. Can you help them? No. Can they help you? No. They’re wasting your time. You need to tell this person, ‘Look, you are wonderful person and I really value you, but I can’t help you with this problem and you can’t help me, and I really have some fulfilling things to do so I can’t waste my time listening to you any more.'” And the people at the forum go, “Wow! That’s great. Why didn’t I think of that!”

I once saw a tape of the magnificent Barbara Colorosso speaking on child discipline. She draws up a scenario: your teenager wants to die her hair orange and wear baggy trousers. Everyone in the audience groans. They know about this problem. How do you get your teenager to dress the way you want them to? Barbara says, “Is it physically harmful for them to wear baggy pants? No. Is it morally harmful for them to wear baggy pants? No. Let it go. Forget about it. Why waste your authority capital on issues that don’t really matter?”

The audience goes “Wow! Why didn’t I think of that!” That’s a good question. My question is, if the audience is so smart as to know that this is good advice, why do they have to pay someone else to give it to them? Were these people so dumb that they never thought of this solution?

Part of the problem is that the problems Colorosso uses to illustrate her fool-proof methods of child-rearing are very simple and unambiguous. She is a good communicator and she gives her little mini-drama’s a remarkable sheen of elegance and simplicity that may not exist in real life. If you could talk the way Barbara Colorosso can talk, I don’t think you’d have very many problems with your kids. And I think people love her not because she solves problems for them but because she is such a good talker. She’s funny and entertaining and seems to have everything solved. She would be a good movie.

My bottom line. My main point. My theme is… no number of workshops or seminars are going to take dumb people and make them smart.

And anyway, doesn’t this sound a lot to you like religion? Take bad people and make them good. Give people a sense of meaning and purpose. Make people feel good about themselves. You would think that church people would walk right out of these seminars thinking to themselves, “No thanks, I already have some.”

Whenever I read through these materials, I always feel a bit like an alien. I’m not sure what the real point of it is.

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Pope in a Box

Some people, like the late Frank Sinatra, like to travel “heavy”. They take lots of suitcases and equipment and ride around in expensive armoured limousines or private jets. That makes sense for these people, in a way. Frank Sinatra was a vain, pompous, crass, self-important Las Vegas entertainer. He used to make large sums of money singing to old, over-weight women in ugly pant suits, God bless ’em. If you had asked Frank what it was he relied on to see himself safely through another day, he would have pointed to Turk and Otto, his steroid-enhanced Austrian body guards.

The Pope never performs in Las Vegas, and hardly ever sings in public at all. If you asked him who he trusts to see himself safely through another day, he would answer “God”. Furthermore, he likes to tell the 700 million Catholics around the world not to use birth control. “But we are poor,” the people reply. “How can we afford to support large families?” Trust in God, says the pope.

Does the Pope follow his own advice? Not really. He has body guards too. And when he wants to be seen by the public, he travels around in a bullet-proof “Pope-mobile”, just like Frankie used to. Doesn’t the Pope think God will protect him from assassins? I guess not. That is too bad. One in six people on this planet are Roman Catholic. If there is anything our age needs, it is someone like Frank Sinatra or the Pope to come right out and say, “I don’t need any body guards or bullet-proof limos… I trust in God to keep me safe.”

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Gordon Lightfoot’s Greatest Bestest All-time Hits of All Time

I buy a lot of CDs and I used to buy a lot of LP’s. I normally avoid “Greatest Hits” type albums, because you are not often getting a collection of the best songs by an artist; merely his most popular songs.

Gordon Lightfoot made a career by not issuing any albums whatsoever except for Greatest Hits Collections. It’s true. His first album, released in 1966, was called “Gord’s Greatest Hits”. Nobody knew who Gord was. He had no previous recordings of original material. But since he had a greatest hits album, and went by his first name, we all figured he must be important and we added him to the collection.

His next album was “Best of Gordon Lightfoot”, which was a collection of songs that were well-known for being on his “Greatest Hits” album. You had to have it. All of the songs sounded familiar, but then, after all, it was the same artist. Almost nobody noticed that it was exactly the same collection as the first album, because, after more than 30 seconds of any Gordon Lightfoot song, most listeners fall fast asleep.

Lightfoot’s third album was, “Solid Gold: Volume I”. These were songs that had become pretty popular because they were on his first Greatest Hits Album, but also included a few songs from the “Best of” album, for variety.

“Best Golden Treasures – Gordon Lightfoot’s All-time Greatest Hits” was released three weeks later. By this time, the scam was going so well, that there wasn’t even a vinyl album inside the cover– just a slip of paper saying that most of the songs would be available on the boxed set due to be released at Christmas, right after “Solid Gold: Volume II”. Gord’s career was going so well that nobody actually bought the album for the music; just for the cool picture of Gord holding his 12-string and gazing lustfully at Sylvia Tyson on the album cover displayed next to his on the record rack.

One year later, Gord issued “All Time Greatest and Bestest Most Treasured Hits Played Live With Previously Unheard Studio Cuts From His Early Albums”. That took a little nerve: I mean, how did Gord know that nobody was actually listening to any of his earlier albums and that, therefore, many of those records were previously “unheard”? But at least, this release contained some new material, consisting mostly of fake applause and assorted funky voices shouting “huh”, “get down”, “go for it, Gord”, and “hey, isn’t that Buffy Ste. Marie?”. Anyway, to make a long story short, with the assistance of my nubile intern/assistant Ms. Fricker, I was able to uncover the following facts:

1. Gordon Lightfoot issued 37 Greatest Hits Collections between the years 1966 and 1973.

2. During this period, he actually recorded 3 different songs.

3. Most of Lightfoot’s Greatest Hits albums consist of these same 3 songs arranged in different order and dubbed at different speeds, or, sometimes, backwards, or with fake audience sounds. In at least one case, a John Denver recording, “Leaving on a Jet Plane”, was inserted by mistake. Denver sued, but a jury awarded Lightfoot $6.3 after his attorney convinced them that some people in the future might see John Denver perform the song in public and think they were watching Gordon Lightfoot.

4. A careful study of archival video tapes and films reveals that Gord’s live performances also featured the same three songs performed over and over again, in different order, and, sometimes backwards, or a capella. At no time does the audience appear to have noticed the deception. Lightfoot is occasionally seen leaving the stage for a smoke as the music continues to the accompaniment of a metronome.

5. Desperate for a hit in the late 1970’s, after having exhausted all possible titles, including “Greatest”, “Treasures”, “Live”, “Best of”, “Classic”, “Golden”, “Big Hits”, “Big Big Hits”, “Classic Gold”, “Classic Treasures”, etc., and every other possible permutation, Lightfoot wrote a new song about a ship that sank, called “The Wreck of the Titanic”. However, after he discovered that James Cameron had copyrighted the word “Titanic”, and also that he was two syllables short, so he located a ship with a long name and paid members of Greenpeace to sink it during a storm in Lake Superior.

I would be ever so grateful if anybody reading this has a copy of the Ian and Sylvia album from the 1960’s in which Sylvia shows the best cleavage of any folk singer in the history of tragic Mary Hamiltons. Please let me know, and, if you could, send me a scan of the cover.

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Pity the Republicans

Let’s see. There was an election for President in 1992. George Bush ran against Bill Clinton and lost. Then there was another election in 1996. The Republicans trotted out Bob Dole and once again, Clinton was victorious. The Republican’s had a majority in Congress though, so they tried to thwart Mr. Clinton at every opportunity. Still, the nation, in poll after poll, told everyone that they liked Clinton, they thought he was doing a great job, and Newt Gingrich should go suck a lemon.

Kenneth Starr, you might not remember, was appointed to investigate Whitewater. He spared no effort or expense, but found nothing. He asked for permission, from a judge, to investigate other things, while he was at it. Again sparing no effort or expense, he could find nothing. Clinton may well, to that point, have been the cleanest President the U.S. has had in 90 years. As friends and acquaintances of the Clintons have been saying, consistently, for years, the Clinton’s really don’t care much about money.

Finally, Kenneth Starr stumbled into Monica Lewinsky, through the good offices of the despicable Linda Tripp.

Monica Lewinsky was a young, naïve, White House intern. Starr had the FBI seize her, without necessarily following correct legal procedure, and threatened to lock her and her mother up if they didn’t come clean. Lewinsky was terrified. Finally, she agreed to testify in exchange for immunity. It is now obvious that Starr asked her incredibly intrusive and mostly legally irrelevant questions about the details of the sexual encounters. And now he has made them public for everyone to drool over.

Let’s keep this straight so that no one has an excuse for not knowing this:  Kenneth Starr arrested and bullied the victim (allegedly) of a politicians sexual “abuse”.  Because otherwise, he knew that she would not play the role he needed her to play to justify the Republican Inquisition into Bill Clinton’s sex life.

I don’t know if Starr really thinks what Monica and Bill did is an impeachable offense. They had consensual sex and lied to prevent people from finding out about it. If he does, he is a fool. More likely, he, like the rest of the Republicans, despises Bill Clinton for political and cultural reasons, and finally found something he thought could make a lot of trouble for him. Unlike the members of Congress, Starr is virtually answerable to no one. With impunity, he is able to dig up the most intimate details about this sexual relationship and make them public. When Clinton attacked Starr’s tactics, the Republicans rose up as one, an enormous repressed Greek Chorus, and screamed bloody murder. They have the advantage of not being personally accountable for the disclosures, while hoping to cash in the on the political fall-out. The general public is not fooled: given a choice between impeaching Starr or Clinton, there is no doubt, at this point, that they’d rather impeach Starr.

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Blue Jays in 1998

Well, Cal Ripken finally sat down. He notified his manager 30 minutes before game time that, in his infinite grace and wisdom, he would sit out one game. Half of baseball was frantic. I even heard some sadly misguided fans talk about what a great, unselfish player Cal has been.

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Unselfish! What’s wrong with this picture: Cal Ripken tells his coach when he will and when he won’t play! For the record, aside from Ed Sprague and some no-name, Cal Ripken has the worst offensive stats of any third baseman in the league. I wonder if his manager thanked him for sitting out a game.

Anyway, we saw the “great” Cal Ripken live, in person, at the Skydome on Monday. There was some announcement on the PA and then everybody was supposed to stand up and cheer him. I stayed in my seat.

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We had decent seats, 15 rows back along the first base line, just beyond the infield. For four of us, that came to $117.00, including tax. Unlike most major league teams in the U.S., the Blue Jays pay their share of property taxes, $7 million for 1998.

We bought hot dogs and coke on the way, knowing we weren’t allowed to take cans of pop into the stadium. When I popped in one of the entrances to ask where we pick up our tickets, a nice man, a Jays official, offered to get us a cup for the coke. Very decent of him. You sometimes think professional sports organizations are rather tactless and ruthless about getting your money. They are, but at least the Blue Jays have the good sense to show a little decency here and there.

Most people spent the first twenty minutes in the dome looking at the jumbotron to see if the camera is zooming in on them. Fans in the nose-bleed sections will put on a show, take off the shirts, and dance. They have their reward. As soon as the game started, a steady stream of people began leaving their seats for the bathrooms or concessions. I estimate that I saw half of the first 30 pitches. A little boy to the right of us left his seat for the aisle, requiring us to stand up, 13 times. If I was his father, I’d tell him he could leave twice during the game, whenever he chose.

Shawn Green has an amazing ball-player’s body. If Norman Rockwell drew us a ball-player, and wasn’t joking about it, he’d come up with someone who looked like Shawn Green: tall, lanky, angular, with a whip for an arm and an easy, efficient gait. His cap sits low on his forehead just like a ball cap should. I love watching him.

Roberto Alomar, on the other hand, looks like a ballet dancer. Nothing wrong with that– he moves like a ballet dancer too. He’s probably the best all-round player in the game, when he’s not spitting at umpires. The home-plate umpire in this game, by the way, was the very same John Hirschbeck, and his strike zone is still pretty wide. Roger Clemens had 15 strike-outs on the night, not a few of them due to Hirschbeck’s generous zone. At one point, after a called strike that looked pretty low, Alomar turned to him and glared, but didn’t spit.

The Blue Jays are probably not going to make the wild card. At this stage, they would have to win all their remaining games and Boston lose all of theirs. Still, they have made a terrific race out of it after being more than 12 games behind at the end of July. The Jays have the major’s best record since July 31st, right after they dumped Randy Myers, Ed Sprague, Mike Stanley, and Juan Guzman. They were, supposedly, throwing in the towel, but something wonderful happened. Their “fall-back” outfielders, Stewart, Cruz, and Green did what many of us thought they would do two years ago: they ran down balls in the gap, hit the cut-off man, and brought some excitement into the field. They also began to hit up a storm, steal bases, and run up the pitch counts. Tony Fernandez, moved to third base where his defensive lapses don’t hurt as much, batted over .400 in September. Carlos Delgado is establishing himself as reliable RBI man. And Blue Jays pitching, including the young and untested Escobar and Carpenter, as well as the best pitcher in the League in Roger Clemens, began to smother opposition bats.

Everyone thinks the Blue Jays will do it next year. Well, hope springs eternal, but it is a known phenomenon that teams that improve dramatically one season often fall back the next. They would need to re-sign Canseco, but I doubt he will produce another 44 home runs, or survive the full season without injuries. Toronto’s pitching is solid, but I’m not sure that Person is going to be a great closer, and I wonder if Plesac and Quantrill can continue to work miracles out of the bullpen. Roberto Alomar has made it known he would love to play for Toronto next season. Alomar’s a cypher. What does he care about, other than baseball? Who knows? But he is, without a doubt, the best second baseman in baseball. If the Blue Jays were to sign him (he is a free agent at the end of the season), I would bet they will do very well in ’99. Alex Gonzalez is solid defensively, perhaps one of the two or three best shortstops, but he needs to cut down on his strikeouts. Behind the plate, the Jays are solid, if unspectacular. Santiago could have a great season. Then again, he could bat .240.

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Jays in ’99? Possibly. Jays in ’00? Given the same line-up with two more years of maturity– almost certainly.

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Passion and Disorder

In the movie, Titanic, by James Cameron, lovely Rose De Wit, played by Kate Winslet, is forced to choose between her effete, elitist, rich, snobbish, dweeb fiancé Cal, or the all natural, refreshing, spontaneous, passionate, all-American, artiste Jack Dawson.    Combined with the fact that we know that the ship does sink at the end, there is not a lot of suspense in this film.

This dilemma is so familiar you’d think we’d be bored with it by now.   When Cal takes out a pistol and tries to remove his rival by force, we’re not surprised.  He’s fighting a rigid Hollywood code: simple fisticuffs would never have sufficed.

How close to reality is this?  All you women out there: did you choose your man because he was so spirited, imaginative, and “different”? Or because it looked like he could hold a job?

There is some reality to the idea.  The phrase “Stockholm Syndrome” comes from a real life case of a Swedish kidnap victim falling in love with her captor.  Wonder how that ended.  But, other than that, in real life, does it happen very often?  Let’s see.  I’ll make a list of women I have known over the years.  How many married for “passion” and how many married for logical, rational reasons that might include material benefits?  I’m going to have to use numbers instead of names, to protect the guilty.  I don’t know the answer myself– I’m just going off the top of my head here.  Let’s define “passion” as a case in which the woman chooses someone of whom her family would disapprove for the usual reasons.  “Rational” is when a woman chooses someone with a promising future, whom her family perceives as stable and mature and responsible.

Woman #1 rational
Woman #2 rational
Woman #3 rational
Woman #4 rational
Woman #5 rational
Woman #6 rational
Woman #7 passion (didn’t work out)
Woman #8 passion (didn’t work out)
Woman #9 rational
Woman #10 rational
Woman #11 rational
Woman #12 passion (didn’t work out)
Woman #13 rational
Woman #14 rational
Woman #15 rational

Hmm.  Do I see a trend?  Maybe I think the ones whose marriages didn’t work out must have been passionate because everything else about those relationships now seems so illogical.  Maybe those whose marriages seem rational now were married in the throes of a stormy passion they didn’t display to others.

There is another factor people who watch the Titanic and get all teary-eyed should consider:  some women marry for passion, but immediately set out to make the relationship rational by pushing their husbands into new jobs, education, promotions, investments, mini-vans, quality time with the kids, and so on.  So poor Jack Dawson, had he survived the sinking, probably would have taken a job as a commercial illustrator, or, more likely, a salesman, shortly after marrying lovely Rose and getting her pregnant.  Picture Rose in 1955, wearing an ugly pant suit to a Dean Martin concert in Las Vegas, while Jack wanders off in an ugly loud shirt and pastel slacks to waste a few quarters on a slot machine.  He bumps into a Marilyn Monroe look alike who gets friendly… and considers a moment of passion.

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Lies and More Lies

Everyone seems very upset because Bill Clinton hasn’t apologized for ….

Well, what? For his affair with Monica Lewinsky? He owes her an apology, not me. For breaking his marital vows? He owes that one to Hillary. For lying under oath in the Paula Jones case? A judge decided that his testimony on Lewinsky was immaterial, so that offence doesn’t legally exist. But if it did exist, he did try to conceal a sexual relationship from a grand jury investigating a frivolous lawsuit brought about by a disgruntled employee and funded by a right-wing hate tank. So, maybe he should apologize to the right wing hate-tank for helping them waste their money.

Well, he shouldn’t apologize to the public. His relationship with Monica Lewinsky, so long as they were both consenting adults, is not now nor ever was the nation’s business. Kenneth Starr is a Republican flunkey out to destroy the Democratic Administration. When people say stupid things like “Clinton should have admitted it months ago and spared the nation this long ordeal…” they don’t seem to realize that it is Kenneth Starr and his Republican Henchmen in Congress who have decided that all the affairs of state and the general interest of the public is secondary to their own devious political agenda.

I wish Clinton had admitted it sooner. Are we a nation of adults? He could have said, “Yes, I’ve had affairs. And I might have other affairs, if I meet someone I like. But it’s none of your business, so buzz off.” Then the Republicans could have gone around making grim faces and talking about the moral decline of American presidents and all that bs and we could have been spared, at least, Kenneth Starr.

For the record, what is moral decline? America abides by this paradox: sexual sins represent moral decline, even though the people affected are consenting adults. On the other hand, actions that cause death and destruction and misery to millions of people as a side effect of ruthless materialism and greed are representative of moral progress. We get all lathered and upset and teary-eyed because the President had consenting sex with a 21-year-old gold-digger, but we all yawn when we hear about thousands of children and young women slaving away in sub-human sweat-shops to produce running shoes or sports wear for fat American arm-chair athletes to wear while they cheer millionaire athletes on television playing baseball or basketball in some far away city.

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The Anacam

Privacy and Personality

If you check out this website–

http://www.anacam.com/anaframesg.html

[Or maybe not.  More information on Ana Voog.]

you will see real live pictures of Ana Voog, an artist in Minnesota, living her life. This is the Anacam. A camera takes pictures every 240 seconds or so and then feeds it to the Internet.

When I grew up, you would sometimes see a documentary on tv that claimed to show you someone’s real life. They followed him or her around at home, showed them eating, drinking, chatting with friends… and it was all completely phony. Even a child knew that this was all staged. For one thing, you couldn’t pick up these images with a television camera without a huge bank of lights taking up most of the living room. Everybody in the room certainly knew they were on tv. For another thing, you never saw anybody get undressed or go to the bathroom or pick his nose. Of course, that’s what you really wanted to see. More importantly, the program was never live. It was always taped or filmed first and then edited.

Last year, “The Truman Show” claimed to be about a man whose entire life is broadcast on tv, without his knowledge. But this movie didn’t show any of those real, personal activities that you think about when you think about the idea of watching a person live his life without him knowing about it.

The Anacam does. Well, it’s still selective, because you only see what Ana wants to show you, but Ana is far more willing to let you see everything than Truman was. And the Anacam exists in real time: no editing, no condensation, no cheating. I haven’t seen it myself, but I know that she has even taken her webcam into the shower. Is this pornography? I don’t think so. I’m not sure. I don’t think she’s out to titillate the viewer, but, on the other hand, she probably wants to attract as much attention as possible. Ana is an “artist”.

This is something to think about. How valuable is your privacy? We used to think that privacy was extremely valuable. But that was largely because privacy was so hard to violate. People you hardly knew wouldn’t let you come into their bathrooms to watch them go pee and pop a pimple. Well, at least not for the past 100 years. I have a feeling that there was a lot less privacy in the Middle Ages. For one thing, when you went to a hotel in the Middle Ages, everybody slept in the same big bed. I kid you not. You can look it up. And people tossed their garbage right out the window onto the street. People did not have bathrooms or even outhouses. So I don’t think there was very much privacy. Read Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales.

Why did this change? Think of the Victorian era in England. Suddenly, everybody wanted to hide anything to do with sexual identity. Women wore big, billowing skirts, with layers of undergarments. Bathing suits were big enough to camp in. Men wore long pants, jackets, and hats. Why did people suddenly become obsessed with keeping their privates private? A wave of piety and religion? No. How about this: privacy was valuable because it was rare.

Then more and more people acquired their own homes, with outhouses. They lived separately, as families, rather than communally with the entire clan. Clothes became cheaper to make. More and more people could afford to wear different clothes on different days. The hardworking bourgeoisie developed habits of thrift and restraint, and one of the things they wanted to restrain was their bodily functions.

Let’s jump into the mid 20th century: everybody’s moving out of apartments (at least, in North America) into private bungalows in the suburbs. At last they’ve got it: privacy. Nobody can even hear you through the walls.

Today, privacy is no longer valuable. What is the value of something that everybody has? Zilch. Why are the social and sexual values of the “third world” so much more conservative than those in Europe and North America? Because their “social economy”, the balance of scarcity and abundance of social values, favours privacy. Privacy hardly exists, so it is very valuable to them.

So why does Ana Voog let the world into her living room, her kitchen, her bathroom? Because privacy is so easy to obtain, that it’s no longer as valuable to her as other things, like, say, her desire to succeed as an artist.

Perhaps that’s also why fashions have changed so much. It’s the economy of sexual relationships. Until the 1950’s, it was in the woman’s best interest to be married to one man, who would provide everything for her until the day she died. A prospective husband would want to make sure that the woman he married would be loyal to him for life. So any indications that she could be available to other men would doom her. She could become a poor spinster, or be forced into prostitution to make a living. Thus, it was not economical for her to appear to be available, even if only for visual ravishment, to a large number of males.

It used to be uneconomical for a woman to be available for visual ravishment by a large number of males. Marriage was different, because social conditions were different. People were less mobile, less prosperous, less flexible. Marriage was for life as much for economic reasons as for moral reasons.

What happened? Why did the mini-skirt appear? Why so many people “shack-up” nowadays, rather than get married first?

What has happened to our society is prosperity. What has happened is that women now are able to earn a living independent of men. What has happened is that our society has adjusted. With the abundance of wealth, privacy, health, and mobility, people are probably actually behaving pretty well the way they’ve always wanted to behave, seeking some kind of emotional fulfillment in relationships, and leaving the relationship if it isn’t there.

We are going to know more and more about ourselves. We are going to watch people live their lives (just wait until the Internet improves to the point where we can have efficient, live streaming video and audio!). It will be a strange knowledge for many of us because we will have never seen these things before. We are going to realize how similar we all are. We all fart, belch, pick our noses, scratch where it itches… we’re just not used to not pretending that we don’t. Once we know that everybody does it, we may have a healthier knowledge of ourselves, and greater acceptance of our own fleshy existences.

Of course, many fundamentalists Christians have a different explanation for all this new behaviour. They call it moral decay. I have never bought that. I have just never believed that we are behaving a whole lot worse than our ancestors behaved, or wanted to behave.

I also have a broader definition of what is “moral”. The fundamentalists, and the American people in general, seem to consider sexual sin to be way, way more important than greed, materialism, or exploitation. What gets you more upset? A man and woman having a consensual sexual relationship outside of marriage, or a society that decides that we are going to turf welfare mothers and their babies so we can all afford a second VCR? Condoms or military aircraft? Swearing or forcing governments in Africa and Central America to close their hospitals before they receive aid from the IMF?

Sorry, James Dobson. I think it’s way more important to save human lives and prevent physical suffering than it is to stop sex between consenting adults. Why don’t you take your $185 million a year and feed the hungry, instead of lobbying against same-sex benefits at the Disney Corporation?

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Cal Ripken Sit Down!

Cal Ripken is a decent player. I don’t think anybody would seriously mistake him for Brooks Robinson, but he used to hit pretty well for a shortstop. But his range was never very good, so they used to let the grass grow long on the Baltimore infield to slow those hard grounders down so Cal would have a chance at them. People used to say that he made up with intuition what he lacked in speed– as if speedy shortstops at the major league level didn’t have any intuition. Then they finally moved him to third base where his limited range was less of a liability. And he’s still a fairly decent hitter. Well, 12 home runs this year isn’t all that special for a third base man… I think Ed Sprague, God help us, has more.

Cal Ripken’s real claim to fame, of course, is the streak. Everyone in Baltimore, and sometimes around the league, raves about THE STREAK. Even Sports Illustrated, which usually has more sense, occasionally chips in with a little tribute to the STREAK.

And what is this streak? Consecutive hits? Consecutive 30-home-run seasons? Consecutive successful stolen bases? Consecutive game-winning RBI’s? Consecutive put-outs? Consecutive at bats without striking out? Consecutive games without an error? Consecutive games played without the use of steroids?

Nah. You see, those kinds of streaks actually help your team win victories. No, no, no– Cal Ripken’s streak is for showing up at consecutive games. That’s right: he shows up. More than 2,600 games in a row by now. Hey, there he is again, Iron Man Cal!

And interesting point here is that nobody else is even close. Why? Because IRON-man Cal is so much more durable than other players, and such a consistent hitter that he deserves to be in the line up every day, whereas poor old Mark McGuire has to sit out once in a while to stay effective?

Nah. Because no other manager in baseball is allowing any other player to develop such a streak. They don’t want it. They are deliberately sitting players out once in a while– even Mark McGuire– just so they don’t get any ideas in their heads about setting a new streak. The truth is that a streak of consecutive games played doesn’t help your team win, and, in fact, may even hurt your team’s chances. Your manager is forced, every day, to work his line-up around the one immutable fact of your streak. Try out a new, promising third-base man for a game or two? Oops, can’t. Try a left-handed batter against this strong righty? Not today, or the next day, or the next week. See if a bit of rest puts some juice back into his line-drives? Oh no, can’t break up the streak!

I told some friends about five years ago that I didn’t think Baltimore would ever win a World Series as long as Cal Ripken kept his streak going. So far, I’ve been right. Why? If Ripken is a decent player, and he is that– though he is vastly over-rated by most– why does the streak hurt the team? Baseball has become very competitive in the past few years. Teams like Cleveland, long the doormats of the AL, have built themselves into contenders. To maintain such a high level of competitive performance requires that the complete focus of the team be on one goal only: winning as many games as possible. Ripken’s streak robs the Orioles of that kind of focus.

Ripken, by the way, is not the saint he pretends to be. He’s smart and says all the correct things to reporters, but he’s also a prima donna who often travels separately from the team and stays in separate hotels. He pulled strings to get his brother, Billy, the job at second base– he hit about .200 with no power. The owner of the Orioles, Peter Angelos, loves Ripken and let his father manage the team until it became rather clear to everybody that he was in way over his head. Then he had to be fired, which created a lot of tension with Cal, and again disrupted the team’s chemistry.

Cal says, why should I sit out when I can still play? I got news for Mr. Ripken: there’s about 10 million other guys who all think they can play too, including your brother Billy. Until the Orioles show that they are willing to make decisions around the success of the team, instead of one player’s selfish statistics, the Orioles, and their fans, will be losers. If I became manager of the Orioles tomorrow, the first thing I would do is tell Mr. Ripken that the streak is over.