Signal to Noise

Apparently plastic cosmetic surgery comes with
butterflies and sparkling lights…

Okay, here is an idea that had to have come to a plastic cosmetic surgeon after an all-night bender that ended with him passing out to a Red Green episode featuring a Ranger Gord self-aggrandizing super-forest-ranger film. And I may not be the only person that thinks that the idea is odd, to say the least.

If a guy writes a book where the hero is a muscle-bound plastic cosmetic surgeon that explains to a young daughter why her mommy is having a nose job, breast augmentation, and a tummy tuck. Apparently the reason for all this is a pregnancy that leaves mommy less attractive and she wants to look the way she did beforehand–the nose job was probably the result of having the baby break it during a particularly energetic feeding.

Ranger Gord is Dr. Michael …

Okay, so this is a little messed up. I am willing to concede that discussing plastic cosmetic surgery with a child is both important and difficult; but I am not going to allow that the best way to do it is by making a plastic cosmetic surgeon appear as a handsome saviour to hour-glass women (though slightly imperfect, apparently) that drive upscale SUVs.

Gotta love the surgeon crowning mommy a beauty queen
in the picture on the right-hand side …

If plastic cosmetic surgery is going to be portrayed as a means to perfection (or betterment) then can we, at least, manage to portray it as something less than a panacea that is bequeathed to flawed women by gods that wield a sharp-knife path to beauty and happiness. Maybe, just maybe, the reason that a child is confused by the procedure is her perception of her mother as already being beautiful in more than just the superficial, visual sense.

<oblivious_to_reality_on>The fact that a plastic cosmetic surgeon would use the image of a strong and handsome man (with the same first name as the author) that makes an already pretty woman look “even more beautiful than before” is almost as offensive as the act of altering her body to match a societal (and changing) version of beauty. This is not a noble action undertaken by selfless heroes. Making it appear that way is self validation and every bit as sad as Ranger Gord.</oblivious_to_reality_on>

Today was a day of rest. One of the drawbacks of working from home on a self-scheduled set of tasks is the tendency to work all of the time. At least that is one of my problems. I have never really had a problem with not working enough–I tend more toward the ignore-my-family-and-work-all-the-time type of person. I am not proud of this particular bit of folly. And I am not stating it in a job-interview sense where the candidate suggests that his biggest fault is that he works too hard at his job. It is a bad thing to work too much. I never knew it for sure until a few years ago when my two-year-old daughter would not talk to me when I came home at around 7pm after being at work for three days without a break. She was as angry as a two-year-old can be and she told me she didn’t want to see me and that I should go back to work. That was a wake-up call.

It was also several years ago (I wrote “a few” above but it was much more like several) and I quit that job within a couple of weeks of being told off by my daughter. I have also tried very hard not to work all the time. It is amazing how easy it is to slip into snatching a few hours of work early on a Saturday morning and end up taking a break just in time for supper and missing a whole day. That almost never happens now.

This is all a lead up to the fact that I sat down and watched eight (8!) episodes of Battlestar Galactica today. Yesterday capped a long stretch of work with few breaks. Today was a day off. The best part was that my wife lazed around and watched with me–how is that for marital bliss?

But, do you know what pissed me off? It was the fact that after we had watched all of this televised wonder we felt incredibly guilty that we “wasted” half of the day doing it. Apparently we are wired for immediate guilt after taking off half of a day. Instead of reveling in the decadence, we were more concerned about the work we were not doing when we watched television. This was after about two constant weeks. What the heck is the point of working if the act of taking a break (albeit a brief one) invokes guilt for not working more?

This reminded me of a quote by Sir Andrew Macphail that is from “The Dominion and the Spirit” which was published in The University Magazine in 1908. I read the quote in the introduction to The Master’s Wife, a book by MacPhail that I have been told everybody should read. The quote relates to a changing Canadian work ethic and I think he had it right …

It is of some importance that we [Canadians] should make wheat to grow. The thing which is of more importance is that we should have a right reason for undertaking that labour, and a right spirit in the doing of it. The man who makes too blades of wheat to grow where only one grew before, for the mere purpose of providing unnecessary food, is working with the spirit and motive of a servant – of a slave even. The slave works because he is compelled to; the artist because he loves to; the fool does unnecessary work because he is a fool. Each of us is part slave, part artist, and part fool. The wise man is he who strives to be all three in due proportion, and succeeds in being not too much of any one. But the tragedy of our life lies in this: that the man who was designed for an artist is by compulsion so often a slave …

Work, then, in itself is neither good nor bad. … This “work for work’s sake” is entirely modern; and our present civilization is the only one which has ever been established upon that principle. To the Greek mind it was incredible that a free man should labour, even for his own support. That was the business of a slave. This citizen had other occupation, in considering how he could make the best of his life. His business was to think how he should govern himself, how he might attain to a fulness of life.

It is not the modern view that a man should occupy himself with his life. With all our talk about freedom, we have only succeeded in enslaving ourselves. We have created for ourselves a huge treadmill; and, if we do not keep pace, we fall beneath its wheels. Our inventions have only added to the perplexities of life. We have created artificial necessities, and consume our lives in ministering to them.

Keeping in mind that this was written A CENTURY AGO it is remarkably prophetic and (for me) very, very accurate.

If you had asked me those several years ago that Battlestar Galactica and a century old quote from an (undeservedly obscure, but slowly gaining recognition) Islander would reinforce my will to work less and enjoy life I would laughed in your face both at the absurdity of working less and the juxtaposition of a past author and television show set in space. Of course you would not have been able to convince me–it took a two-year-old to do that.

As an update to my aimless wanderings on the quality and control of the information being supplied to me, I read recently read that the board of directors of The Associated Press now includes Rupert Murdoch and Sam Zell. This would seem to reduce the diversity in the information (news) producing world even more by adding a “global media tycoon” and an investor whose direction to reporters is to generate revenue.

I remain unconvinced that making me a better educated and informed person is particularly high on their list of priorities. And they are now helping to guide one of the major sources of distributed and republished information.

It has been a while since I have been fascinated with Salvador Dalí and his work. He was an odd one, to be sure. I managed to visit the Dalí Museum in Florida a couple of times (yes, I went to Florida and went to a museum rather than Disney World). He was many things–several of them not particularly nice, in my opinion–but he was an amazing artist. He may not have been the first surrealist to put paint to canvas (and other things) but he was the best known.

If you want to get an idea of his work please check out this online gallery. There is a commercial element to the site but much of his work is available for viewing there (use the link at the bottom right). The picture above (if you click on the picture you will get the full story) was taken with a camera using film and not digitally created. It is called “Dali Atomicus” and the photographer was Philippe Halsman in 1948.

Everybody needs a little surrealism in their day from time to time.

I have been thinking about news–not (small-n) news but the general overarching thing that is News. I know it is the acme of cliché to talk about the “freedom of the press” and the “pen being mightier than the sword” (and “the power of the press“) but I have been taking a few minutes really contemplating these trite and overused expressions. The thing is … the sentiment behind the clichés is honest.

It is difficult to be diligent. Each of us does not have the time or ability to gather sufficient information on a broad range of topics and put this information into context in order to understand the events happening around the world. I do not know if anybody or any organization has the ability to do this. To take an example familiar to North Americans, the tension in the Middle East is the result of a long history (beginning before contact with Europeans) that builds through political and religious differences and results in a situation that few (if any) North Americans can understand except in terms of generalities and opinions of experts that have not reached anything approaching a consensus. Forgive my selection of the Middle East for the purpose of my discussion. I could have chosen the area surrounding the former Yugoslavia, Ireland, India, Pakistan, and area, a number of African areas, what was considered Central America, and so on. I am far from understanding the complexity of any of these situations. I am a Canadian and my perspective is one of a country that has never had an invader (I will accept an argument that invaders before 1867 were almost attacking Canada but this relatively distant for their importance to affect my view of the world). And it is my opinion that the flow of information to me is relatively unfettered–but my opinion here may be skewed, and that is my point.

My information comes from people who serve it to me. This is not only my government (though I do use CBC.ca as a source). But as radio stations become more generic and monopolized and news sources are served the same pieces of information both from news wire services and editorial control is corporately guided for large blocks of media outlets it is harder to see the press as being free–in the sense of being free and unfettered to research and present access to a broad range of topics and issues. By accepting the information I am served I am also accepting the editorial control placed on the information. That is the big deal around press freedom. Of course this extends to television and virtually every other means of information service.

So the question has become “What am I being served and to what end?” Better yet, let me skip to the last bit … to what end am I being served information. This is an important part of the service that I do not examine even though I know I should. The notion that the broadcasting companies in the United States are being branded as favouring one party or politician is a hint that the companies are providing information with a purpose that is unstated. This applies not only to the editorial slant given to reported information but also to the information that is selected for delivery. Even if an information service is not targeting a political group (or corporate philosophy or special interest group or whatever) almost all of delivery is subject to a profit motive. And today, profit is driven by consumption and consumption is driven by desire and desire is fuelled by sensationalism and popular culture (which has enough sensationalism as well). I cannot help but feel that I am being fed the illusion of information and not the actual information … mostly because I cannot see the profit in any company working to inform me. Entertaining me is easier and has a better return on investment.

The result of this trend is a decrease in perspective and a focusing of my interest on a select number of understandable issues that are presented in a relatively superficial manner. Most stories (that do not involve one of the Spears family having a baby or checking into a rehab centre) are not followed to their completion. They get boring and the resolution of an issue will sell less than the introduction of a new issue. Even in my little province, the coverage of political issues will surely die if they are left alone long enough. There is no need for resolution, only patience. Staying on message long enough and refusing to answer enough questions (or filling the answer with double-talk) will allow an issue to die. Was detox treatment funded by the government for a special person? The answer will never be known. It was important once but now it is gone.

So, I pose a quandary: I do not believe that the current state of news coverage is serving the purpose of informing me and many others to the level they should be informed. I do not see a profit in improving the level of information served from any information service. I do not see a demand for the information that might improve the perspective of an information consumer. So, do I deserve anything but what I am getting? Is there a place for a news service that provides its information under full disclosure of bias? Is any of this possible? Or should a relatively comfortable ignorance be the desired state of being?

Just thinking …

A nice little story about singing and my hope for a post-40 coda.

I like food quite a bit. When I use the word “food” what I mean is not just the stuff that has a label on it claiming food resides within the label (often with a very pretty picture on the outside that describes all of the value-added features that make the “food” be, in actuality, extra-super-good “food”) but the stuff that looks like it may have been an organic substance (meaning continuing a bunch of Carbon atoms existing in or derived from plants and animals) and might (just might) contain some icky dirt or blood that will have to be cleaned and cooked.

Wow, that was off topic. The zealot hovers ever so close to the surface these days.

What I meant to discuss was the unholy racket that scared the daylights (night lights?) out of me last night as I was nodding off to sleep. There was a crashing and banging of metal or stone on our veranda last night that made me wonder if a misguided (and seriously drunk) thief had chosen our home to plunder in the hopes of riches and whatever else thieves hope for when plundering around drunk. I was almost asleep, allow me my delusions.

Being the heroic type I sauntered (all heroes saunter, it is a little-known fact) up stairs and bravely turned on the light to examine the veranda and take care of any miscreants that would dare disturb my (and my family’s) sleep. There was, of course, nothing to see. Even wandering outside in bare feet and night clothing showed nothing out of the ordinary. I turned out the light and we all went to sleep (with the doors locked–one can never be too careful even if there are no footprints in the new-fallen snow and nothing is amiss in our decidedly untidy veranda.

Anyhow, we (and by we I mean Jan) are making lunch and we (again, Jan) has just returned from the veranda where we keep surplus food that will not fit into our fridge (it is winter, no matter what the calendar says). It was with a somewhat goofy (though always beautiful … she does read this stuff) grin she pointed out the dirty footprints on the handle and cover of the pot that contained leftovers from last night. A raccoon had presumedly climbed onto the handle, tipped over the pot (making a rather large bang) and then darted off in a scared hurry. The little footprints confirmed the raccoon’s existence. The pot managed to right itself in more or less the same place and the cover had fallen back onto the top of the pot (or maybe the raccoon is merely cleaning up after he was done–they are clever) as to make the scene appear free of incident to the foolish barefooted human who wandered around in the night.

We are currently discussing the need for a larger or secondary fridge to hold the food that results from cooking plants and animals (I had to get some sort of relation to the opening rant) rather than from simply defrosting “food”-labelled substances. It is still better to cook food even if it attracts a more distinguished form of nocturnal thief.

On March 26th we lost somebody I admired. He was the centre of one of the highlights of the time I spent in Ottawa. I first heard his name mentioned as somebody who had founded Jetform (now purchased by Adobe) and the person for whom my wife worked. When he formed another company (Tierra Communications) she went to work with him and I was fortunate enough to go to some of the corporate events and get to know Bob and his family a little better–not as well as I would have liked because to know Bob and his family was to want to know them better. They are very good people.

As a businessperson Bob set an example that only few will be able to follow in intelligence, honesty, and compassion. I aspired to his example and my memories of the few times I spent with him are fond (and some humorous–Bob had little fear of laughing). I will leave a proper eulogy to those who knew him better. I knew him a little and I will miss him greatly.