Richard BF

I don’t want to sound like I’m picking on Canberra at all, but I just happen to be spending a bit of time there in recent months, so it tends to be a big source of material.

This time it is back to cabs/taxis. Standing at the airport taxi rant, I’m asked if I mind someone else sharing.

Official cab rant guy: Would you mind sharing with someone else?

RBF: Not at all. So long as they get out at the same place I do.

I had an amusing, if not frustrating situation about 15 years ago when getting a cab back from Sydney airport. I was in the cab, and had some woman pushed in beside me by the official cab rank guy. I didn’t know the law, and she said she’d split the $50 fare, so who was I to complain? 10pm at night after a week away, I was just happy to get home.

That was of course until the cabby decided that she’d be the best to drop off first, then when we pulled into her street it must have have been about ten suburbs away from where I lived, and then the damn cabby gets pulled over by the police half way to my place, and I’m told that the cab was unregistered and wasn’t going anywhere. Another cab and another fare later, and I swore never to share a cab again.

Anyway, back to Canberra airport earlier this week. Although the company pays, I try to do my part to ease the load. 50% of the fare I figured would be a good saving, even though I’d have a stranger to deal with for the subsequent 15 minute cab ride.

Then as we get close to our stop, the following exchange happens:

Cabby: So are you both familiar with the new taxi sharing rules?

RBF: Err, no.

Silent stranger: No.

Cabby: Between 8am and 10am, we have ten times more passengers than taxis, so we have a new system to help people who find it hard to get a cab.

RBF: Uhuh. [ pause ] And what’s that then?

Cabby: Well, we now have a new rate, rate 3, the sharing rate. Rate 3 is 70% of the standard rate, so the trip costs less, but you both pay the amount on the meter. That way I get more, you pay less, and everyone is happy.

RBF: Happy that our discount has gone from 50% to 30% off the standard rate?

Cabby: No, you only end up paying 70% of the standard fare. It’s all up there on the sticker. [ he points to yet another sticker on the windscreen which seemly explains the cab share process ]

RBF: So let me get this straight, for the privilege of sharing a cab with a complete stranger, arguably the reason why I would probably have caught a bus instead if it didn’t frustrate me too much, I can pay an additional 40% more than I would have had I used the old sharing system, and not had the added emotional weight of knowing that you’re also getting 40% more out of the ride than you would for a single passenger. Sounds like a bloody rip off to me, as me and Mr. silent here are now in a lose lose situation.

Cabby: Are you from Sydney?

Anyway, silent stranger guy didn’t get out at the same place as I did, so the official cab rank guy is now the official cab rank bastard guy, and that’s probably the last cab I’ll share for a while.

I saw quite a few impro scenes the other day, 50 or so high school kids learning the ropes, and saw lots of great examples of how society negatively indoctrinates us as we grow up. We’re taught subconsciously (conciously even) that the individual is the most important, and that not knowing something, or not being good at something is embarrassing or inferior to our peers.

There’s a few studies going around at the moment showing that communal families, like prides of lions, are the more traditional and genetic programmed form of society for human beings, and only the last x thousand years of civilisation and religious belief has brought us this monogamous and egostistical structure of a society. I don’t know if that’s the case, but there’s some pretty strong programming inside the human animal that seems to take to egotism like a duck to water.

Or as Ripley in Aliens put it…

I don’t know which species is worse. You don’t see them fucking each other over for a goddamn percentage!

Protection from being embarrassed or appearing inferior, usually ends up in a high status competition, a simple fight or flight response, and in impro most often as fight, as again, we all think we’ve got a chance if there’s no physical fight required. Ooh, do we love to argue?! You see it in adult impro too, but with kids, it’s so much more pure and obvious.

Here’s a classic scene from today with four year 11 students, set on a beach.

Cassy: Look, what’s that?

Nathan: I don’t know, what is it Karen?

Karen: I don’t know.

[ at this stage, they’re all standing there pointing at this space on the floor ]

Kelly: I know what it is.

Nathan: What is it?

Kelly: I don’t know [ turns away from the audience and walks to the back of the stage ].

[ commit damn you! name it! (i said to myself) ]

Cassy: It’s a hole! [ Yes! A hole to another dimension? A city under the sea? Let’s see where it leads! ]

There was another scene with two blokes watching TV, changing channels, which ended up in a verbal slanging match “you want to have go?”, “no, you want to have a go?”, with the other two players trying to hold them back physically. All because they couldn’t think what would happen next. Kind of an implied “I can’t think of anything, but I’m not going to look uncool as well.” Get sucked into the TV, a celebrity comes out of the TV, the remote control starts changing life itself… It’s easy to see it from outside the scene, but not so simple when we’ve been taught from a young age that there’s lots of wrong answers, and wrong answers are bad.

Anyway, that’s one of the reasons I love impro, it helps break down those emotional and egotistical barriers, teaches team work, and promotes free thinking. It should be mandatory for high schools students. If only it were available when I was at school.

I love the power of language, particularly how we’re able to sculpt and mould it in ways that strongly effect people’s opinions and emotions. Taking a negative and turning it into a positive, is probably the most commonly attempted deception, if I can call it that, but is also usually the most poorly executed.

Our wonderful channel 7 Olympic Cycling commentators are a great example of this. Who on earth would even think of trying to use Australia’s recent dominance in cycling as the proof that we’re not a bunch of drug addicts? Yet I’ve heard at least four commentators all say something similiar to:

Let the doubters be proven wrong.

…or…

Australia’s cyclists have redeemed themselves.

In one case, they obviously figured it best to instead let one of our gold medal winning cyclists continue this quite deluded logic:

Commentator: So what do you say to all those pepole who doubted this team?

Cyclist: Mate, it just shows you, we’re clean, and it doesn’t get any better than this!

What? Was logic just chucked into the ol’ sharps bucket with all those vitamin syringes? And what’s with that anyway? If someone asked me if I wanted a vitamin C shot, more likely I’d just stick with the tablets thanks.

I’m not saying that our cyclists are all doped up to the eyeballs, because like any sport, we can’t detect every drug, and we don’t really know who is using what. Sure, I was one who said bring them all home, but maybe just perhaps, by slaughtering all comers, they’ve finally redeemed themselves? Nuts.

Mildly amusing banner on the Yellow Pages site today. Not funny, but definitely amusing.

Today, my understanding of history, physics, dating, sleight of hand, fiction, poetry and Bayesian filtering all changed. Don Juan sent me an email, asking if I’d like to learn his secrets to picking up women. The mind boggles…

Not bad for a walk down King St. Stumbled into some op/junk shop and found this $30 pot plant holder, which I then cleaned up and will use as the Scared Scriptless Cranston Qualifying trophy. Sweet.

Landmark ruling from Ninth Circuit finding that P2P software developers are not liable for contributary and vicarious copyright infringement. The EFF covers most of it. In particular, the most significant part of the judgement for the future of this type of technology is one which the blogosphere has been reiterating time and time again:

From the advent of the player piano, every new means of reproducing sound has struck a dissonant chord with musical copyright owners, often resulting in federal litigation. This appeal is the latest reprise of that recurring conflict, and one of a continuing series of lawsuits between the recording industry and distributors of file-sharing computer software.

[…]

Further, as we have observed, we live in a quicksilver technological environment with courts ill-suited to fix the flow of internet innovation. AT&T Corp. v. City of Portland, 216 F.3d 871, 876 (9th Cir. 1999). The introduction of new technology is always disruptive to old markets, and particularly to those copyright owners whose works are sold through wellestablished distribution mechanisms. Yet, history has shown that time and market forces often provide equilibrium in balancing interests, whether the new technology be a player piano, a copier, a tape recorder, a video recorder, a personal computer, a karaoke machine, or an MP3 player. Thus, it is prudent for courts to exercise caution before restructuring liability theories for the purpose of addressing specific market abuses, despite their apparent present magnitude.

Right, now it’s on. Tony Squires was just interviewing Rebecca Wilson about the opening ceremony, which she helped commentate with Bruce McAvaney, and talking about Costas Kenteris missing his drug test, she said…

…his career is under a bit of a cloud…

I have images of this intermittent cloud that has somehow made it’s way to Greece, and just drifts around looking for athletes over which to hover.

This week is going to be a bit of an Olympics week at our place, much to my flat mate’s chagrin, so excuse me if the focus is a bit sporty for the next few weeks.

One of the annoying things about the opening ceremony, was Bruce McAvaney’s continued use of the phrase “under a cloud” when referring to the careers of athletes currently under investigation for doping. If you’re not in Sydney, then I’m sure you have your own Bruce McAvaney, and most likely your own network’s family friendly version of the phrase “fucked, for cheating”.

The IOC are so strong on doping, that current chairman Jacques Rogge even spent around 20 seconds of his speech on it during the 13 or so hours that was the opening ceremony.

Instead of trying to not mention drugs, our commentators should be making a point of it, particularly for our young sporting kids coming up through the ranks. It is bad enough that drugs are banned, giving them a good marketing boost amongst youngsters, but then not making any reference to them in the actual arena that we’re supposed to be protecting from abuse, is just plain irresponsible.

If it is good enough for Jacques, then why can’t Bruce be a little more open about it? How about saying something like this instead?

The U.S. team of course without sprinter Torri Edwards, whose career is currently under a cloud in tatters because she’s a fucking drug cheat who is bad for the sport, a bad influence on kids coming up through the ranks, and a second rate runner who doesn’t deserve a place at the world’s ultimate sporting table.

Or perhaps something along those lines. The message would then start to sink in a little I reckon.

In fact doping seems to be so rife, well, not that it ever wasn’t, just that we’re now much more aware of it, that there’s even a drug cheats related blog, unofficial of course.

And why do they insist on calling it by the medical term doping? Trying to dumb it down perhaps? Why not call it drugging, taking steroids or of course the ever obvious cheating by shooting up illegal drugs.

And as for the drugs themselves, surely the history of drug use would be enough to turn some folks off, if only it was mentioned in the media. This page on MedicineNet gives a good history of drugs in sport, covering of all things the ancient athletic practice of eating sheeps’ testicles and mixing wine and strychnine. Yum.

The Olympic charter, like most things these days, is online for your reading pleasure, so there’s really no excuse for this kind of behaviour. I particularly like this IOC summary:

According to the Olympic Charter, established by Pierre de Coubertin, the goal of the Olympic Movement is to contribute to building a peaceful and better world by educating youth through sport practised without discrimination of any kind and in the Olympic spirit, which requires mutual understanding with a spirit of friendship, solidarity and fair play.

It is just the atheletes who are yet to actually get it, so perhaps the term under a cloud is quite appropriate after all.

Ten ways to improve the Olympics opening ceremony.

1. Don’t bring on the athletes. The ceremony starts at around 8:40pm. Skip the middle 5 hours or whatever it is, and we’d be all done and home in bed by 9:30pm.
2. Only bring on the women athletes, this way most of the middle east is skipped (I was watching and counting, so don’t bother arguing the point) and we end up with smatterings of Europe, Africa, Asia and the Americas. We’d be home by 10pm, and 90% of the male audience and 10% of the female audience would have something pretty damn fine to look at.
3. Bring on the pistol and skeet shooters first and have them take pot shots at the rest of the athletes as they come on, then we’ll see how many want to march on.
4. Do a full dress rehearsal (the teams don’t get to rehearse usually), video it, then on the actual night of the ceremony, play back on the big screen the part where the athletes march on, but at 8x speed.
5. Only let athletes march on who are at their first Olympics.
6. Leave the centre area flooded with water when the athletes march on, but to make it more interesting, make it deeper.
7. Mark the beginning and end of the athletes marching on with advertising subcodes, so that my TiVo skips it.
8. Fill the artificial lake with oil instead of water.
9. Drug test the athletes, and don’t let them in unless they’re clean. We’d get a dozen at most, and be home by 9:45pm.
10. Don’t broadcast it.