November 3, 2012
Context matters
Queen’s University may eventually have to consider apologizing for their ham-fisted treatment of Professor Michael Mason:
“If I were to continue teaching I would feel that there was somebody up on the stage with me making shorthand notes — a phantom censor,” he said. After the complaint was filed, the university said he could only continue teaching if the department chair sat in on lectures from time to time. He wouldn’t comply. Classes were cancelled and Mr. Mason was “banned,” as he puts it. He was never formally let go or asked to leave — health problems eventually had him sidelined.
Mr. Mason never disputed what was said, but the complaint didn’t divulge the context, he said.
The words “f—ing rag head,” “towel head,” “japs” and “little yellow sons of bitches,” did indeed cross his lips, he said, but he was quoting from books and articles on racism in that era.
[. . .]
Mr. Mason says he feels anything but supported by the school, which did not acknowledge the context of his statements nor let him explain himself, he said.
“I didn’t do it, I’m not guilty of it, they screwed up. The administration screwed up, mishandled it. They should have done it much more openly and honestly and fairly and they didn’t. And now they’re just saying ‘go away, we’re not going to deal with it.’”
He maintains that only one teaching assistant from the faculty of gender studies made the complaint, but the university and the Public Service Alliance of Canada, Local 901, which represents the TAs, say there were complaints from TAs and students.
November 1, 2012
The art of (bad) customer service
James Lileks had to do the leg work himself to track down a part to fix his stove. After finally getting it, he wanted to express his frustration to the company that sold the stove (but didn’t carry the replacement part he needed):
So. I called Centerpoint, asked to speak to a manager, and had a nice friendly conversation about the fact that I found the part with elementary googling, and I had to pay for it and wait to be reimbursed.
Manager: we have supply channels and have to set up payment contracts and we can’t find anything, and what’s more blah, blah, blah.
To which I said I understood, but the fact of that matter was: I found the part in seconds, which means someone entered the part number into your system, it came up null, and that was it. They’d done their job. They’d checked the box. Move on to the next. So what I get as a customer of your service is that you don’t really look for the part. You search one closet and call it quits. Apparently there’s no leeway for your people to look elsewhere.
She understood my dissatisfaction, of course, but
AAHOOHGA
NEVER “BUT” YOUR UNDERSTANDING OF MY DISSATISFACTION.
Lie to me. Lie to me over and over: I understand your dissatisfaction AND I will be adding this company to our database. I understand your dissatisfaction AND I will be sending my boss a letter about expanding our searches and allowing for more individual initiative on the part of the part-procuring people. I understand your dissatisfaction AND apologize you’ll have to carry a $476 charge on your card while we process your request. I don’t care if none of that’s true. Just say it.
I still think they’re going to try to wiggle out of this somehow. I think my wife was right: they don’t want to fix it. They don’t want to pay for it.
All it took for me to be that cynical was a manager invested too deeply in company policy. I would have trusted them more if they’d lied.
October 29, 2012
Who actually benefits from the expansion of “self-service” retail?
In the Wall Street Journal, Joe Queenan meets the modern grocery store checkout:
At the end of my visit to my town’s brand-new supermarket the other day, the cashier said she would be more than happy to help me self-check-out my purchases.
I said, “No, thank you, I would prefer that you do that.” She said, “Actually, we prefer that the customers get into the habit of checking out their groceries.” I said, “Actually, I would prefer to never get into that habit. I would prefer that you handle the entire operation. You are the cashier. You are the vicar of groceries. You, not I, work here. So earn your money and ring up my purchases. And then bag them. Please.”
Are we entering a dark, deeply un-American era when we literally have to do everything for ourselves?
Retailers love the idea of self-checkout and other forms of selling goods to customers with fewer staff members and more volunteer labour donated by the customers themselves. Some customers even prefer this, as it makes them feel more empowered about their retail experience. Bring your own bags (so we don’t need to provide you with bags we have to buy)! Pack your own bags (so we don’t have to hire as many checkout clerks)! But don’t fool yourself that the store is doing it “for the environment” or any other such catchy excuse: they’re on board with ideas like this because it’s more profitable for them.
October 28, 2012
The Two Scotts pick this week’s NFL matchups
Scott Reid and Scott Feschuk get serious about something … but not football, of course:
New York Giants (plus 2) at Dallas
Scott Reid: I have no way of knowing but I like to imagine that deep down, Tony Romo and Eli Manning loathe one another.
Romo’s hatred would be all bound up in his feelings of insecurity and gross inadequacy (not unlike your own feelings toward me, Mr. Feschuk). Manning probably just hates the dimples. My fondest hope is that deep in the fourth quarter of this week’s matchup – after the Giants gain a 10-point lead – Romo breaks down on television and begins to sob uncontrollably, confronted with the awful truth that he’ll never best his rival. Manning, meanwhile, will make Jessica Simpson jokes and snicker about the hands-off approach of John Mara. Eventually Romo cracks completely and beats Manning savagely with a Gatorade bottle – leaving Eli dead and himself condemned to a life behind bars. In no way would this scenario make Mike Vick the best starting quarterback in the NFC East. Pick: New York.
Scott Feschuk: That’s all very interesting but I have a more important question: What man would ever agree to date Taylor Swift? You’d have to know right from the get-go that everything that happens is basically fodder for her next three albums, right? Wouldn’t it get awkward pretty quick?
You and Taylor Swift are in bed.
You: That was amazing. Let’s do it again.
[Swift opens her journal and starts writing.]
You: What are you doing?
Taylor: Oh, nothing. What rhymes with horndog?
You: Are you writing a song about me and our relationship?
Taylor: What? No. No, of course not!
You: Then who are these guys? [Points to drummer, guitarist and fiddler in bed with them.]
Taylor: Take five, fellas. I need to work on the bridge anyways.
Pick: New York.
October 25, 2012
Something amusing out of Wikileaks
Charles Stross linked to this Wikileak-ed PDF this morning: The Stratfor Glossary of Useful, Baffling and Strange Intelligence Terms.
- Access
- Ability of an agent to get hold of information. Difference between having someone on the ground and someone who is actually valuable is access. Having someone on the ground in Washington DC doesn’t tell you if he works for the National Security Council or sells hotdogs on the corner. In intelligence there are three things that matter: access, access and access. Rule of thumb: anyone who says they have access doesn’t.
[. . .]
- After Action Report
- The final report on the conclusion of an Op. Intended for internal use only. Never show the customer. It’s like showing someone how sausage is made. Nauseating.
[. . .]
- ATF
- Alcohol Tobacco and Fire Arms. Rednecks with a license to kill. Never, ever, ever ask for their help on anything.
[. . .]
- Case Officer
- The person who manages an agent in the field. The management of an agent is a craft in itself, requiring the skills of a psychologist and the morals of a pimp. Highly prized in the business.
[. . .]
- CIA
- Central Intelligence Agency. Also called “Langley” or “up river.” Owns human intelligence (directorate of operations) and analysis (directorate of intelligence). Director, CIA is supposed to oversee all of the intelligence community. Isn’t that a joke? Imagine the Post Office with a foreign policy.
October 15, 2012
“[T]he Nobel Peace Prize Committee [wouldn’t] recognize absurdity if it slapped them in the face and did a Macarena”
Marian L. Tupy writes about the absurdity of awarding this year’s Nobel Peace Prize to the European Union at the Cato@Liberty blog:
The esteemed members of the Nobel Peace Prize Committee have awarded the 2012 prize to the European Union. So, if you thought that awarding it to President Barack Obama for the sole reason of not being George W. Bush was strange and unusual, think again. (By the way, I have nothing against our president. I am sure he was just as embarrassed as everyone else.)
[. . .]
As for democracy, the Peace Prize award to the EU drips with irony. The EU is not only un-democratic, in the sense that it is run by unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats, it is positively anti-democratic, in the sense that the democratically expressed wishes of the European peoples are either ignored or treated with contempt. When the Danes voted against the Maastricht Treaty, they were forced to vote again. When the Irish sunk the Lisbon treaty, they too had to repeat the vote. And when the Dutch and the French said no to the EU Constitution, they were simply ignored.
Here is how the president of the eurozone, Jean-Claude Juncker, sums up the decision-making process in the great bastion of democracy that is today’s EU: “We decide on something, leave it lying around and wait and see what happens. If no one kicks up a fuss, because most people don’t understand what has been decided, we continue step by step until there is no turning back.”
I could write about the overgrown and arrogant bureaucracy in Brussels; about the monstrously high and recession-proof salaries of European decision makers; about widespread and widely tolerated corruption; about the prosecution and silencing of whistleblowers, and about many other ways in which the EU does not deserve the Nobel Peace Prize. Suffice it to say that those have been widely documented and are available to anyone interested.
October 14, 2012
We’ve got to move these deer crossing signs to less heavily travelled roads!
H/T to Jon, my former virtual landlord, who sent me the link to this item at Ace of Spades HQ, suggesting it was a former co-worker calling in.
October 13, 2012
A new take on NFL power rankings: the “Lack of Power Rankings”
Scott Feschuk works his magic to ensure that Cleveland comes in first in at least one ranking this year:
Resuming a hallowed and time-honoured tradition that dates back all the way to the beginning of this sentence, we take a break from sucking at football picks to present our Mid-Mid-Season Lack of Power Rankings. Teams are rated from worst to first.
1. Cleveland (0-5) You know who’s having a terrible season so far? God. Defend Him all you like: the Guy is just going through the motions. Come on, God: we’ve seen you torment the Browns for the last eon. TRY SOMETHING NEW.
2. Buffalo (2-3) The Bills are giving up so much yardage so quickly that they’re on pace to break the all-time record set by France in 1940.
3. Jacksonville (1-4) So the NFL has announced that in 2013 it will again be sending Jacksonville over to play a football game in London. Twice more and we’ll be even for them sending us Coldplay.
4. Tennessee (2-4) Despite its win over Pittsburgh, this team is a bigger train wreck than Barack Obama’s debate performance wrapped in NBC’s fall comedies and driven into a tree by Lindsay Lohan.
5. K.C. (1-4) Ladies and gentlemen, the Brady Quinn era is upon us. Lock up your daughters! (Otherwise, they may steal Brady’s job.) On the upside, a few drives should be enough to earn Quinn an ESPY nomination in the category of Best Ryan Leaf Homage.
October 12, 2012
One for the heralds
On the Lois McMaster Bujold mailing list (http://lists.herald.co.uk/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/lois-bujold), Eric Oppen posted this in an off-topic thread about clothing trends:
Whenever someone starts waxing envious in my presence about foreign countries’ practice of wearing school uniforms, and wishes the same on American kids, I like to respond:
“That’s a wonderful idea! And I know just the sort needed! The colors would be “barry argent and sable, semee’ of pheons, countercharged.”
Most people don’t get the joke, but I said that in front of several SCA heralds once, who were all highly amused and said I was being quite multicultural.
(For those not familiar with heraldic language, what I am suggesting is uniforms featuring horizontal black-and-white stripes, scattered with “broad arrowheads” white on black and black on white. IOW, combining the features of traditional US and UK prison uniforms.)
Posted with Eric’s permission, of course.
October 6, 2012
Reporting from the St. Catharines Wine and Grape parade
Scott Feschuk goes back to St. Catharines to watch the parade go by:
In my hometown of St. Catharines, Ont., the last Saturday of September brings the Grape and Wine parade — a fun, child-friendly celebration of Niagara’s contribution to our national drunkenness. Join me as I attend the parade for the first time in 25 years:
9:48 a.m. We set up across from City Hall, just down from the viewing stand and just up from the elderly lady in the “Will work for wine” T-shirt. Behind us, at a church-run snack table, a sign announces that passersby are welcome to take a free apple as a gesture of God’s love. An Italian sausage, however, will set you back four bucks because the hydro company does not accept payment in love gestures.
9:54 The parade doesn’t start until 11 o’clock, which gives everyone plenty of time to brag about when they arrived downtown to Get a Good Spot. The exchange between two women in line for coffee is typical. “I got here around 8.” “Really? We were totally set up by 7:30.” Subtext: You are a terrible mother, first woman.
[. . .]
11:14 I didn’t know the Grape parade had a theme — and had I known, I’d have assumed it was Please Stop Laughing at Our Floats. But this year several of the floats commemorate the War of 1812, including one with a giant banner that reads: “1812-2012: 200 Years of Peace.” Being a stickler for historical accuracy and also a huge jerk, I loudly point out that the war didn’t end until 1814. Feschuk 1, Parade 0.
11:16 It’s still early, but if I had to pick my favourite War of 1812 re-enactor so far, it would definitely be the soldier in the period-accurate Nike cross-trainers.
[. . .]
12:27 The parade is almost over and there hasn’t been a single clown yet—not one. And where is the A&W Bear and why aren’t people on floats throwing candy and why isn’t everything exactly the same as it was in my childhood WHEN EVERYTHING WAS PERFECT AT ALL TIMES??
12:34 A final note: the Grape and Wine parade featured a number of cheerleading teams and academies — so many that I feel confident in stating for the record that we, as a nation, are good for cheerleaders. We do not require any more eight-year-old girls to paint on thick, sparkly eye makeup and thrust their pelvises in a sexualized manner. We are good for bare midriffs and self-esteem issues. Sure, Niagara may have lost most of its manufacturing jobs, but it’s in terrific shape if the key to prospering in the global economy turns out to be human pyramids.
October 5, 2012
IT security magazine gets trolled
At The Register, John Leyden talks about the researchers who finally got sick of being asked to write articles (unpaid) for the “biggest IT security magazine in the world”:
Security researchers have taken revenge on a publishing outlet that spams them with requests to write unpaid articles — by using a bogus submission to satirise the outlet’s low editorial standards.
Hakin9 bills rather grandly bills itself as the “biggest IT security magazine in the world”, published for 10 years, and claims to have a database of 100,000 IT security specialists. Many of these security specialists are regularly spammed with requests to submit articles, without receiving any payment in return.
Rather than binning another of its periodic requests, a group of researchers responded with a nonsensical article entitled DARPA Inference Checking Kludge Scanning, which Warsaw-based Hakin9 published in full, apparently without checking. The gobbledygook treatment appeared as the first chapter in a recent eBook edition of the magazine about Nmap, the popular security scanner.
In reality there’s no such thing as DARPA Inference Checking Kludge Scanning (or DICKS, for short) and the submission was a wind-up. Nonetheless an article entitled Nmap: The Internet Considered Harmful — DARPA Inference Checking Kludge Scanning appeared as the lead chapter in recent eBook guide on Nmap by Hakin9.
October 4, 2012
Here’s a reality TV show that should exist
At Marginal Revolution, Alex Tabarrok has a pitch for a new reality TV show that deserves a chance:
I suggest a game show, So You Think You Can Be President? SYTYCBP would have at least three segments.
Coase it Out: Presidential candidates have 12 hours to get a bitterly divorcing couple to divide their assets in a mutually agreeable manner. (Bonus points are awarded if the candidate convinces the couple to stay together.)
Game Theory: Candidates compete in a game of Diplomacy. I would also include several ringers — say Robin Hanson, Bryan Caplan and Salma Hayek. Why these three? Robin is cold, calculating and merciless — make a logical mistake and he will make you pay. Bryan is crafty and experienced. And Salma? I couldn’t refuse her anything but presidents should be made of stronger stuff so we need a test.
Spot the Fraud: Presidential candidates are provided with an economic scenario (mortgage defaults are up, hedge funds are crashing, liquidity is tight). Three experts propose plans. The candidate must choose one of the plans. After the candidate chooses, the true identities of the “experts” are revealed. One is a trucker, another a scuba diver instructor and the last a distinguished economist. Which did the candidate choose?
Entertaining? Check. Correlated with important skills for governing? Check. Can the voters tell who the winner is? Check.
October 3, 2012
One for the (male) gaming geeks
A few Twitter updates from “Muskrat John” Kovalic (of Dork Tower and Munchkin fame):
Craigslist: “Topless female DM needed for Adult D&D bachelor party.” THAC0 indeed… http://t.co/JVZwVHzT (via @whisperjeff)
— Blue Czech Mark (@muskrat_john) October 3, 2012
“Experience in 3.5 preferable.” God, I love the fact that they are edition-specific.
— Blue Czech Mark (@muskrat_john) October 3, 2012
“Must be able to provide a picture including the face and body (No nudes please.)” <<— LAST thing you want, seeking a topless female DM.
— Blue Czech Mark (@muskrat_john) October 3, 2012
@muskrat_john I think that is a good thing. Using 3.5 means no-one will be tempted to grapple.
— GragSmash@kind.social (@GeeCaret2) October 3, 2012
@muskrat_john What I'm most confused about is why they want her topless when you wouldn't be able to see her behind the screen.
— Morbus Iff (@morbusiff) October 3, 2012
“Each of us are gentlemen and will treat the Dungeon Master with the utmost of respect.” <— Which would be a first for D&D…
— Blue Czech Mark (@muskrat_john) October 3, 2012
https://twitter.com/GeekyGeekyWays/status/253497061922721793
