This queen-sized duvet/pillow sham set is cute. Too bad I have a king bed:



[ via Davezilla, master of the original cross-border blog romance, and who also has a great Engrish entry today. ]

I (finally) got my paws on a copy of Cory's new novel Eastern Standard Tribe at his reading on Thursday. Personally autographed, even:  "For Joey -- In circadian solidarity!"

(We agree on many things, but circadian rhythm is not one of them. Cory likes to start his day insanely early, while I prefer to end mine insanely late. His upcoming move to the GMT zone may actually put us in sync.)

I read it in two bursts: from the start to the point where the protagonist explains tribes to his incredulous group therapy-mates yesterday, and this morning, I read from that point straight through the end. There's a certain casual but insistent forward flow to his writing that makes you want to keep reading. It's rather like the motion of a Haunted Mansion Doombuggy: it shows you something cool, but its wiggle tells you that something cooler is waiting just over there in the next chamber.

One thing I enjoyed about the book was the way it was peppered with little bits of OpenCola cultural folderol:

• Quirky coworker/friends: argumentative personalities, smooth-talking biz-dev guys and anal-rententive user experience orthos so real that you want to pimp-slap them with a hardcover edition of Tufte.
• The wireless Napster on the Massachusetts Turnpike in the novel is a refinement of ideas that Cory would bounce at us during our runs to Fry's when we both lived in Bay Area ("Impulse-shopper aisle, Joey! Beef jerky plus porn equals-equals good!"). We talked about how a peer-to-peer network of WiFi nodes in cars could be used to report traffic conditions and provide drivers with optimal routes.
  
• The instant-messaging nicknames: "opencolon" and "ballgravy". "Opencolan" was the company's joke name for its employees. We'd started using the phrase "that eats serious ball chowder" after stumbling into it on a message board where the Icy Hot Stuntaz were getting dissed.
• San Franscarcity: Cory's pet name for Baghdad-by-the-bay. I called the satellite office we shared "Deep Space Nine" because it shared certain qualities with the ficitious space station: far from the central organization, a visiting place for strange aliens, and bad acting.
  
• The phrase "midget wrestling". One project we worked on, Colavision, was a personal broadcasting tool, and we always suggested, even to the most stoned-faced no-apparent-sense-of-humour investors,  that "backyard midget wrestling" was one of the things that people wanted to broadcast. I think the midget wrestling thing was an obsession of John Henson's (not the guy with the TV show, but our friend and coworker).
  

Of course, I can't imagine a writer not throwing in little bits of his or her own experience to give some meat to a novel. They make the story feel more "real". It's especially cool when you've worked, played, double-dated and gone to Disneyland and even watched Dude, Where's My Car? (and in the theatre, no less!) with the author; it makes those bits feel like little secret high-fives.

I was about two-thirds of the way through the book when the feeling of deja vu hit its peak, and then it dawned on me. A clever idea to make a cool tech product? Everything going smoothly until the double-cross? The idea's originators being run out of the deal and dicredited and screwed over by the suits? This was OpenCola. This was life, from late 1999 through to early 2002.

Keep in mind that this is Yours Truly's interpretation of the book. I have no special inside knowledge: I never saw any notes for the book, nor do I have direct access to the part of his brain that he will eventually stick a Creative Commons badge on, once we get wetware technology.

It's a great read, and I highly recommend it.

Had a great time at last night's Poliblogger (politics blogger, not polyamory nor polysaccharides blogger) get-together, which took place at the little side-bar on the west side of the Drake Hotel, a place where somehow a number of friends of mine have acquired jobs over the past few weeks.

I spent most of the evening chatting with the folks at the end of the table that still had some free seats, which inlcuded David "Ranting and Roaring" Janes, Rick "Boomer Deathwatch" McGinnis, Kathy "Relapsed Catholic" Shaidle and special out-of-town guest blogger Damian "Daimnation!" Penny to name just a few. The conversation and beer flowed freely, and topics ranged from poncy local journos to love-the-people-hate-the-Cuban-government to little indie pet software development projects to "you had me, then you lost me" politics to WiFi to hot tubs and rock and roll to wondering what it is about Accordion City that gets people from wildly divergent socio-economico-complexo-migraino backgrounds to get along reasonably well.

At one point, someone at the table saw Kathy and I in conversation and said "Glad to see you two have made up." We both got a laugh out of it, and took turns explaining that there's a difference between spirited difference of opinion and blood feuds. Besides, fashion-coordination rules alone dictate that we had to get along: she wore an American flag scarf, and my over-shirt was a big Hilfiger affair whose back was one huge stars-and-stripes.

One thing David and I talked about were sideburns. His wife made him trim down his. Wendy likes mine, so it's up to me to hold up the fort for the Toronto Python-programming sideburns contingent.

Rick and talked about Thor and his work at the Metro newspaper, which definitely has more of a local feel than the Metro in Boston (the Metro chain of free newspapers is owned by Metro S. A. in Sweden).

Damian told us a funny story about the independent TV station in Newfoundland, NTV, which is owned by a rich-but-completely-bonkers old man. One day, he wanted to watch the cartoon show Inspector Gadget right then, and phoned the station, demanding they put it on immediately. Unfortunately, it was during a broadcast of the news. He had enough pull for the station to come up with a compromise: they showed Inspector Gadget in a tiny window in a corner of the screen as the nightly news continued.

I had a great time at the gathering, and hope we can do it again sometime soon! Thanks to all who showed up, and thanks to David for pulling the whole thing together!

Some changes for Casa di Accordion Guy: the house has been sold, but it turns out the the people who bought it want to keep it as a rental property. Simply put, I don't have to move!

The room in my house that was available last summer is available again.  For simplicity's sake, I repeat last year's Room for Rent entry, along with the photos from the A very good house entry:

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It annoys me to have to spell it out to my readers, but...

I reserve the right to remove cheap shots at me or my friends in the comments, especially if you're going to take the coward's route and do so anonymously. This blog is my home, and while I am bound by the rules of hospitality, you are likewise bound by the rules of comity.

In my physical house, breaches of these rules will get you ejected. Often, I will make it clear by physical means that if you enjoy converting oxygen into carbon dioxide, you will behave while on the premises. On my blog, such breaches will get your comments deleted and your IP address blocked.

Have I made myself clear?

Here are the last of my notes from the presentation for The Corporation. I'm going to gather them all into a single entry and post that entry next week.

You might want to see part one and part two of the notes.

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The Hockey Allegory

• The general feeling in professional hockey is "What happens on the ice, happens on the ice". In the rink, you can commit all kinds of acts that would get you charged with assault in the real world.
• You end up with two selves: on the ice / off the ice
• A similar rule applies to corporations. Outside working hours, you're a citizen with moral values and views. During working hours, however, it's okay to do wrong things:
  • Use sweatshop or slave labour
  • Pollute
  • Break laws bercause the fines are inconsequential relative to the profits
• Under such circumstances, you live in a "bifurcated world, morally"
• In one extreme case, the CEO of Shell Oil managed to convince the Nigerian Government to have people hanged
• Distinction between corporate behaviour "off the ice" and "on the ice" is blurring: CEOs are taking favouring a "Howie Meeker" approach over the "Don Cherry" approach: Tom Klein (Pfizer) made an effort to refurbish the Brooklyn neighbourhood in which a Pfizer branch was located, the CEO of BP supports the Kyoto accord and BP even has solar-powered gas stations

Social Responsibility vs. The Coprporation's Legal Mandate

• The problem with social responsibility is that it comes up against the legal mandate of the corporation. How does a corporation justify actions it takes to be socially responsible?
• The answer: Any "socially responsible" initiative has to be good for the company. All corporate acts must be in the corporation's best interest
• The law demands that when companies do good, they must justify it in terms of self-interest. This is the "Best Interest Principle": the head of the corporation has to act in the best interests of the company. The courts have interpreted "acting the best interests" as "maxmizing profit".
• Example: Although BP's CEO supports the Kyoto accord, he is also pro ANWR drilling. The reason? Supporting Kyoto costs BP nothing. They found efficiencies that allow them to follow the accord without losing money. At the same time, there is an opportunity cost in forgoing drilling in ANWR, and it cannot be conclusively proven that the porcupine caribou herd in ANWR will be wiped out or that the way of life for native people who depend on this herd will be altered irrevocably.
• Example: the Steven James story. James, a reporter, does a story on hormones given to dairy cattle, which end up appearing in their milk. He filed the story for FOX News. Monsanto came down very hard on FOX for allowing such a story to enter the queue, and threatened to pull all their advertising. FOX news killed the story and fired James.

Why did people who "ought to have known better" consent to be interviewed for the film?

• The people who consented to be interviewed are proud of what they do. They were, according to Bakan, "intrigued by the project, and were intelligent and thoughtful people" who wanted to engage in the discussion.
• Most notable case -- the one that got the most laughter from the audience was Lucy Hughes.
• Hughes was trying to solve the main problem with marketing children's goods: children don't buy things, their parents do.
• Her solution: "The Nag Factor". She realized that there were two levels of vulnerability: parents are easily manipulated by their children, and children in turn are easily manipulated by television. The trick was to turn kids into a live-in marketing department targeting their parents.
• Hughes looked at effective nagging habits: 20% to 40% of purchases were the result of successful nagging on the part of the child. According to Bakan, "entire coporate empires" live and die by the nag. Hughes was trying to answer the question "How do you create the ad that creates the right kind of nag?"
• "You have to admire the brilliance" of this, Bakan said.
• Lucy took this common-sense knowledge and turned it into a science. She got behavioural scientists to do research for her, and based on that research classified nags. For example, there are simple "I want it! I want it!" nags, and there are more complex "reasoning" nags, such as: "I want the Barbie Dream House so that Barbie and Ken can have a family" -- these nags get an "Oh, how clever!" reaction. The best results are obtained when kids use both style of nags.
• She also classified 4 types of parents:
  • Deniers: Upper-middle class. Kids have to make good arguments in order to convince their parents to purchase.
  • Kid's Pals: These are typically younger parents. They actually, if subconsciously, want the toys for themselves, and will look for any excuse to purchase.
  • Indulgers: These people -- often single parents -- feel guilty about not spending enough time with their children and purchase to compensate.
  • Conflicted (Bakan puts himself in this category): These parents resent the fact that their children are the targets of such intense marketing, but buy the toys anyway.
• Another interviewee: Milton Friedman. His assistant said: "If he's bored with your question, he'll walk out of the room".
• Many CEOs said "no", but not out of any explicit objection to the concept of the film, but because they said were too busy
• The corporate spy who was interviewed in the film has not ended his career by appearing in it. He is, in Bakan's own words, "a master of disguise".

Anti-globalization

• "Anti-globalization" is an imprecise term. A more correct term is "anti-a-particular-kind of globalization". It's against the neo-liberal kind of globalization that we're experiencing.
• First signs of this movement: the APEC meeting in Vancouver in 1997. By this time, they'd already started making the film. The APEC demonstration was the first major mass demonstration of this sort, and arose from concern about the complicity of nation-states and corporations.
• "Deregulation" is a misleading term: it's really just a shifting of control from government to corporation.

Government: Antidote to Corporate Malfeasance?

• You can't have property rights and contracts without the state
• In the "Anti-globalization" movement, there is a sense that you can't confront government anymore.
• Bakan says that still have to work with governments and even with political parties and "build more democracy around the shell of democracy we already have".
• Corporations can still be influenced by governments; after all, there are no porperty rights nor contract law without government.
• The idea that we can somehow rely on socially responsible consumers, CEOs and shareholders to "self-regulate" is a myth -- we still need some other mechanism, and that is government.

On Non-Fiction Book and Documentary Filmmaking

• Documentaries are likely to become a more popular type of film, considering the attention it's been receiving lately. Cites:
  • The interest in SuperSize Me
  • Errol Morris' recent Oscar
  • Mark Achbar being invited to a Vanity Fair party
• Documentaries can have influence: in the wake of SuperSize Me, McDonald's announced that it will remove the SuperSize items from its menu. Its rationale: they want to "simplify their menu".
• There seems to be an appetite for non-fiction books and documentary films. Bakan suggests that this appetite is driven by people's opinion that that the world is veering onto a dangerous path and their need to understand the "why" and "how" behind things. They try to reckon what's going on with the world. They come with their own point of view, but you know what that point of view is. Their format must be entertaining, moving, inspiring and humourous.
• Even if what the non-fiction book or documentary film's content is dpressing, they are successful if their audiences walk out feeling hopeful, inspired, becuase they have new knowledge.
• Many good non-fiction books and documentary films take what their audiences intuitively sense, and build around them with evidence.

The Success of the Book

• There's a lot of angst out there, and that has contributed to the book's success. It's angst over:
  • Encroachment of commercial values in the schools that their kids go to
  • The environment
  • Less job security
  • The lowering of safety standards
• A lot of this comes from governments' giving more leeway to corporations.
• One very important part of Bakan's message: this state of affairs isn't part of natural law. Corporations are not forces of nature; they are creatings of our own making: we have somehow allowed our governments to hand over power to them, and we can take it back.
• Trying to provide "a sense of understanding and a sense of hope".

What You Can Do

• In book, Bakan proposes what can be done in the near future
• "The fact that we can't do everything doesn't mean that we shouldn't do something."
• Start acting:
  • Join a political party
  • Join your school board
  • Do something
• We're losing that sense of being citizens -- if we lose that, we've lost the possibility of democracy
• See The Corporation web site for more discussion/ideas/ongoing dialogue

Q&A Session

People I know fall into vicious cycle of avoidance and denial -- things are bad, and instead of changing the situation, they're retreating and avoiding it. How do you motiviate such people?

This is a hard question to answer at such a general level. You have to talk to your friends.  "If we care about issues, we should to talk about them to people who something to us" -- it's part of being a family member / community member.

You talk about the corporation as a monolithic entity. They have different forms depending on where in the world they are. Why didn't you analyse the corporation in its many forms?

The focus is different in the book and in the film. In the film, we were looking at the US transnational for-profit, publicly traded company, the institution having the greatest impact. We tend to think of corporations in terms of difference -- company X, company Y, company Z, industry 1, industry 2, industry 3 -- but I wanted to convey the sense that corporations share the same institutional structure. Once you abstract away the industry they're in or what they produce, the actual underlying institution doesn't vary much from corporation to corporation. Underneath it all, they are entities whose reason for existence is to generate wealth for their owners.

What about the relationship of the filmmaker to the corporation? In some way you have to play into the corporation to get published or your film shown.

True. The US book publisher is Simon and Schuster, and they in turn are owned by Viacom. The film was shot on Panasonic cameras, and distributed bycorporations in the US, Canada, UK, Italy. They were shown in theatres owned by corporations. This is proof that the corporation is the dominant entity in our society: you can't make anything without them. To try and make something outside the sphere of their influence is "like saying you'll operate outside the monarchy in 13th-century England".

It seemed silly and ironic, but they thanked their corporate sponsors at the awards ceremonies at Sundance. American filmmakers said of them: "Well, those guys can joke about corporate sponsorships; they have a whole public infrastructure supporting them."

The problem: Public broadcasters are under attack and privatization is a holy grail. We should be concerned about the demise of public cultural institutions. Certain people such as Michael Moore are stars, and have the appeal to do what he wants, but most of us don't have that luxury.

When you look at the success of corps in China, India -- outsourcing -- is this the beginning of reform?

Appeared on a talk radio in the US. Heard from a truck driver: "I only buy American, and I make wife buy American too. I'm a conservative anarchist, but I don't like the way things are goin'."

We're losing jobs to the developing world: self-interested concern. This will probably shape up to a major issue in the election and could be an election winner for the Democrats.

Of course, there are those such as Michael Walker of the Fraser Institute, who say that by outsourcing jobs, we're doing people in developing countries a big favour. They'll do slightly better than without us. Alturism isn't the goal, though, cheaper rpices are. The high-mindedness is over an "incidental benefit" to these people. It's the old "in a slave system, the slaves are materially better off" argument. It's "a morally specious argument, and it's always suprising to me when people make it with a straight face."

We need to twin policies to both protect local jobs and support aid programs and redistribution of wealth [The "R" word! I just felt a great disturbance in the Libertarian Force -- Joey]. We have to be willing to pay more so that people in the developing world can have decent lives.

What do mean that corporations are required by law to act in these ways?

It's meant to safeguard investors, to guarantee that their money will be used for the prupose they intended rather than to pay for some manager's vacation. It's the Best Interest Principle.

How did you go about balancing appeal to emotion and appeal to reason?

There is a difference between appealing to emotion and being manipulative. Not all appeals to emotion are manipulative, and not all are for profit. There is a difference between art for advertising and art for creativity. In writing the book and film at same time, they influenced each other: the film had more intellectual rigor, and the book had more narrative and emotion.

How do you pose a political challenge to corporations, if they're so powerful and pervasive?

If you look at history, you'll see that it's often at the time that the dominant forces seem most omnipotent that they are actually the most vulnerable, whether it was the Church, the monarchy, or the Communist Party. In the end, it was people's willingness to stand up to these forces that caused the chnage to happen.

Bakan: "I don't know what choice we have" other than to believe that we, as citizens, can change for the better. Ultimately, we are the ones who empower the corporation. We in essence created corproate law and property rights. The institutions that we're up against are institutions that we've made. "Perhaps I'm an optimist, and perhaps I being naive, but corporations aren't forces of nature. We can change them."

Other notes

• Other Bakan comment: Advertising encourages us to think in terms of our own self-interest solely, and tries to paint corporations as "good neighbours".
• My personal rant: Will you people at this sort of Q&A session stop prefacing your questions with mini-manifestos? Just ask the damned question!
  

So much work to do, and so much stuff to blog, notably:

• The Thor concert
• The remainder of my notes from the reading/gathereing for The Corporation
• That "Best Date Ever" serial
• The untold story about how I dodged getting a lot of fines for the Hot Tub Truck at my birthday party
• How someday soon, a room filled with sweaty, skimpily-dressed women will be obeying my every command

I'll try and make a dent in it this weekend.

As a resident of the suburbs of Centerville (my co-worker Guile took the test and found out that he lives downtown) and the sort of person who learned accordion repair from Burning Man's former chief pyrotechnician and had lunch with Cardinal Sin and the former First Lady of the Philippines (the wife of this gentleman), I like hanging out with all sorts of people. Tomorrow night is no exception as I will be attending the Poliblogger gathering organized by David "Ranting and Roaring" Janes at the Drake Hotel on West Queen West, deep in the heart of an area where you're not likely to find conservative gathering. The crowd will be an intruiguing, entertaining and well-spoken bunch, including special guest Damian "Daimnation!" Penny.

The fun starts at 8 p.m.. Be there and be square!

Here are my notes from Cory Doctorow's reading last night. I entered the notes straight into my PowerBook in point form and fleshed them out with a little sentence format and HTML last night.

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The Reading

I arrived about ten minutes into Cory's session, during a reading of what I later found out was Human Readable. Every seat in the Merril room was full; many were occupied by what The Onion might term "high-profile Area Nerds". Sci-fi authors Mike Skeet and Karl Schroeder took their places near the back of the audience, while closer to the front were Ian Goldberg (who has forgotten more about computer security than I will ever learn) and his wife Kat. As the reading went on, a guy sitting down in front of me drew an impressionistic sketch into a handmade blank book. Everyone's attention was focused on Cory, who sat at a desk beside a large bottle of water, looking trim (Atkins and a busy schedule will do that) in a two-tone Blogger T-shirt. You never forget your first blogging tool.

My timing was perfect. As soon I'd settled in and opened my laptop on top of a low filing cabinet just behind the audience, Cory was hitting a part of the story where two characters were conversing. One of the characters quipped "When life gives you SARS, make sarsaparilla," which he took from a title of my older blog entries. As he read that line, Cory threw me a "how do you like them apples?" glance. I must have been beaming with pride. Later, at dinner, he would say "I only steal from the best." I'm honoured.

(This is the second time that my something in my blog has served as fodder for one of Cory's stories. The first was the entry in which I had answer twelve essay questions about general computer science and culture before this local company would even grant me an interview.)

The story Cory read was my kind of science-fiction: a hip mix of cultural references (Ethiopian restaurants in Adams-Morgan, Star Wars, personal shoppers), mixed with extrapolations of today's ideas (copyright reform, Eric Bonabeau's ant-trails) and spiked with those little moments of human drama that give you sense of deja vu.

On Toronto, America and Europe

• Cory loves Accordion City! His upcoming novel, Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town is a love letter to Toronto.
• Cory also loves America. He says its simultabeous best and worst quality is that the only industrialized country where ambition isn't frowned upon. When he and I had dinner last week, he told me he suspected that subconsciously, the Americans realize that the Indians also have this ambitiousness, and it worries them.
• In Eurpose, he says, it's different. In the "Ambition vs. Commonweal", the Euros tend to favour the latter. He then relates this idea in the form of a joke:
  • If you were to end washed up Robinson Crusoe-style on the East River and declare to the natives that you wanted to start a media empire that would grow to crush Rupert Murdoch's and in the end do the thinking for most people in the developed world, the natives would gladly direct you to nearest investment banker.
  • If you were to make the same declaration after washing up on the Thames, you'd be laughed at
  • The declaration that would get appreciated in Eurpoe would be that you wanted to start a modest little publsihing house that published quaint little stories that would garner a small but elite readership of the type of people who hung out in the pub where Tolkien and C.S. Lewis gave each other wedgies.

On Wikis

Cory was asked about what he though about wikis. He said he liked them, and then went into a story about wiki ecology:

• Being openly editable, sometimes people with opposing opinions turn wikis into little battlefields where each party redacts the other's work. Someone makes an entry, someone else wipes out that ebtry and replaces it with their own, that redaction gets redacted, and so on...
• An example of the most vicious battles of this sort are the Israel/Palestine entries
• What edventually happens is that the hardliners start out fighting, each obliterating the others' entries
• But eventually, each side softens a little. One side does first, and then the other.
• Eventually, what remains is a collection of facts that both side can agree upon, or at least can concede to the other side
• Then both sides end up in the same camp, joining to fight off the "tinfoil beanie contingent" from both sides of the argument.

Copyright and Freedom

For those members of the audience who hadn't been following the story, Cory told the story of the problems with Diebold voting machines and thge saga of their memos. He brought up the fact that Diebold makes all kinds of machines that spit out a paper ticket as proof that a transaction had taken palce (for example, Diebold makes ATMs). Diebold, for some reason, won't do this for their voting machines ("Tell us more about this strange hu-mon 'paper' you use," he said, in a mock alien voice). He also mentioned that the EFF is suing Diebold for abusing copyright laws: they were never meant to allow "fradulent felons to disguise their wrongdoings".

He also told the story of how Diebold tried to affect the IEEE standard for voting machines by making the specs for their machines the official spec for voting machines (and worse still, these specs described how the machines were built, not what they were supposed to do).

He pointed out that the general standards bodies is the mistaken assumption that we're all on the same side. The IEEE is made up of a large number of engineers who by and large want to draft standards so that they can make things that work and interoperate well. As long as that's the goal, standards bodies are great things. The problem arises when a company like Diebold tries to use the stadards body to further their own business goals at the expense of the common good.

"It was a close one," Cory said, but thankfully, an EFF grassroots campaign, where the EFF managed to convince enough IEEE members to petition to stop the Diebold-drafted IEEE standard from being accepted, was successful. If passed, the standard would've been a major coup for Diebold because standards adopted by the IEEE tend to be adopted by the world's engineers. Cory said -- exaggerating only mildly: "the EFF, along with the IEEE, saved global democracy!

On Ad Hocracy (or "Shut up hippie, this is our room!")

A guy who'd gone to high school with Cory (they both went to SEED, an alternative school where students had a lot of input into their curriculum) asked about Cory's opinion of ad hocracies, especially in light of the one he wrote about in Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom. "At some point," the friend said "you're going to get some people who aren't ready for an ad hocracy. Maybe it's my inner fascist..." and went on to describe a situation in which his students, all around the age of fifteen or sixteen cannot be trusted to govern themselves, and sometimes a teacher needs to step in and bring order.

Cory pointed out that the free school they went to was an ad hocracy of sorts, and it produced a dispropotionately high number of people who stand out and have excelled in their fields.

He then pointed out that it's not for everyone. Some people need more frameworks that others. He also said "I don't think ad hocracy is a universal panacea. There's a time and place for it." However, there are times when you need more formal structures, otherwise you get tyrannies of the majority.

He summed up the problem with ad hocracies by telling a story of the Anarchist's Unconvention, which he attended fifteen years ago. It took place at the 519 Community Centre on Chruch Street. He remembers going to attend a meeting which had been scheduled in a specific room, and when they entered the room, they found a guy sitting on the table playing the flute. The flute player objected, asking the meeting attendees "since when was 'booking' the room the accepted procedure for claiming it?". There comes a time, Cory said, when you have to say "shut up hippie, this is our room!"

The State of the Union

Cory admires the US for two of its finest documents: the Constitution and the Bill of Rights ("with the notable exclusions of the Second Amendment. For those of you who don't know what that is, it's the gun one.")

What disillusioned him about America, which he likes at least as much as I do, is the fact that in Ashcroft's America, people on work visas can be secretly arrested in detained without counsel. He told stories about getting job offers from Saudi Arabia a long time ago; friends would advise him: "Good God, don't go there, people on work visas can be secretly arrested and detained without counsel!"

He talked for a little bit about Bruce Sterling's address at the recent South by Southwest Interactive Festival, summarizing it. "In an oil state, there's no reason to pay for a civil society. You dig a big hole and you put a fence around it. Then you put bayonets in front of the fence to protect that hole. Then, you wait for society to collapse around it." The only difference between an oil state and a failed state is that an oil state has oil.

Plans

Cory's plans are:

• To move to London and live and work there for at least a couple of years.
• Work will consist of writing (3 novels on the go) as well as being the EFF's man in Europe.
• One mission: To "completely and utterly destroy the worst elements of the broadcast treaty" that is under discussion there right now. They're trying to give creative control of works to people whose only contribution to the works were providing the transmission medium!
• To knock out the bad parts of the Pan European Copyright act: without evidence, you can claim infringement, which gives your the right to confiscate the accused infriger's computers for 31 days, which in turn will probably be used as a legal-but-wrong means of destroying your competition.
• The problem with copyright acts, says Cory, is that when they're often bad, and once one place adoptes them, other places copy them. It is, he says, "a race to the bottom".
• Also plans to do some work with the BBC archives, which are being opened up to the Web
• A goal: to get 10% of Slashdot readers to buy my books.
• A final goal: "to find what I did that made the reviewer at The Onion hate my last work".

The Boing Boing sideblog has a link to this cool article on how male angler fish mate:

It is worrisome when a teenage girl does it, and more so when a guy my age who should know better does it.

Chris S., as a representative of one of the companies that makes the Internet go, I must request that you wear an "Net-Speak Badge of Shame" for a week.

Update: Oh, Chris and Deenster both used "LOL" in speech! Arrrgh! There should be a constitutional amendment forbidding them from marrying!

The current topic on the #joiito IRC channel is: "Bush/Cheney 2004: Don't change horsemen in mid-Apocalypse".

"Just a Gwai Lo" Richard writes that "Dive Into" Mark Pilgrim writes:

I concur. In fact, I have mentally referred to some losers as my "Future Girlfriend's Future Ex-Boyfriend".

On days during which I'm feeling particularly arch, I wear an US Postal Service workshirt that used to belong to a former FGFEB. That's right, I stole a girl away from a guy who belongs to the world's most dangerous demographic.

Balls of steel, yo. I clank when I walk.

The Film and The Book

• Bakan called himself the content maker, giving credit to Achbar and Abbott for their filmmaking skills.
• Tried to make the book less driven by dry analysis and driven more by stories. He wanted to draw the the points he wanted to make from the stories, which really serve as metaphor.
• Some of the stories in the book are same as in the film, some are different. The media are different and require different approaches.
• Ray Anderson is major in the film, but not the book. Anderson had an epiphany in 1993; became a "sustainable business" kind of guy. "People just fall in love with him" on the screen. Bakan was able to say cover his story in 2 or 3 pages in the book. In the film he's in and out because he's "incredibly compelling", and works well in the "emotional medium" of film.
• To use him in the book as often as in the film would "seem strange".
• Wanted to make the book not just informative, but interesting and fun to read.
• Joked: wished he could've got a "push button book" in which you can hear Ray Anderson speak.

Psycopathology of the Corporation

• Bakan did psych as an undergrad, many psychologists in the family (both parents, an uncle).
• In Psych 101, you learn a "psychopath" (someone with antisocial personality disorder) has these qualities:
  • Pathologically self-interested
  • Incapable of concern for others
  • No feelings of guilt or remorse
  • Relationships are limited to ones in which they use other people
  • No moral obligation to obey laws or social norms
• In Law School, you learn that:
  • Corporations are legally required to serve their own self-interest
  • Decisions had to be made to maximize the wealth of shareholders
  • Corporations are persons in the eyes of the law (something drilled into to you on the first day of Business 101)
• The corporation as a person is one that has been programmed to have a psychopathic personality. "We created this artificial person and we've required it to be self-interested."

The Redhead writes about my phoning her whilst in the middle of some serious St. Patrick's Day imbibing (from which I am suffering no ill effects).

Don't scoff: you've all made drunken phone calls before. And hey, it was to the current girlfriend.

Cory Doctorow, my friend and the guy for whom I was a lieutnenant at OpenCola (whenever I called myself his lieutenant, we'd both break into our impressions of Harvey Keitel from Bad Lieutenant -- it wasn't pretty), is on the cover of Toronto's free alt-weekly, NOW magazine. If you're in Accordion City, pick it up at your local bookstore or hipster hangout. If you're not, you can read the story online.



Tonight at 7, there's a book signing for his latest novel Eastern Standard Tribe at the The Merril Collection of Science Fiction, Speculation and Fantasy, located inside the Lillian H. Smith Branch of the Toronto Public Library (239 College Street West, one block east of Spadina). I'll be there.

Even Mars Rovers have their own blogs!

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argh! NASA's making fun of me now with their wake-up music! OMG, I am soooo dusty and disgusting right now!! I have red grime everywhere, especially under my abrasion instruments! It's no wonder I can't grind anything! I find evidence of past water, but I can't even find a puddle to splash my treads in here! I so need a shower. And a manicure. OMG, what if Stardust saw me like this?! And I can't add all my rover budz back on LJ without getting some kind of limit exceeded error when I hit 750! Man, this day has just been awful. Current Mood: dirty

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[ via Being American in T.O. ] Where would you live in Politopia?

I seem to be in the north-west suburbs of Centerville:

[ via CarbWire.com ] This Arizona Republic article, Diets all the rage since at least 1087, is a timeline of diet plans for the past millennium. My favourite one:

Not everyone thinks that The Corporation is a book/film with good ideas. Take this news release from epublicrelations.ca:

Activist film aims to destroy the corporation:
Capitalism, democracy, health, education and environment threatened

� ePublic Relations Ltd 2004

Posted February 2004
Contact: rsirvine@epublicrelations.ca

Activists are sending corporations on wild goose chases. At the urging of activists, businesses are pursuing ideas such as the triple bottom line, corporate social responsibility (CSR), and smart growth. But these pursuits are merely ruses to keep business leaders and their PR consultants preoccupied and distracted.

While businesses �invest� enormous amounts of time and money in attempts to earn accolades and recognition for �successes� in these areas, activists have a different goal. They want to redefine, dismantle, destroy and reassemble � in a manner more to their own liking � the entire corporate world. The first step is to totally malign virtually every corporation along with its managers, directors, shareholders and even, in some cases, employees. What better way to do this than through a movie!

The Corporation has opened to critical acclaim at movie festivals in Europe and North America. It recently won the World Cinema Documentary Audience Award at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival.

For the film�s producers, corporations and the pursuit of profit are sources of many social evils including planetary destruction;

The documentary�s web site (http://www.thecorporation.tv) states:

Self-interested, amoral, callous and deceitful, the corporation�s operational principles make it antisocial. It breaches social and legal standards to get its way even while it mimics the human qualities of empathy, caring and altruism. It suffers no guilt. Diagnosis: the institutional embodiment of laissez-faire capitalism fully meets the diagnostic criteria or a psychopath.

To reach this judgment the film takes a creative and effective approach. It runs through a checklist used by psychiatrists and psychologists to diagnose mental illness. The list is based on the diagnostic criteria of the World Health Organization and DSM IV. By going through the list, the film attaches the following characteristics to a corporation:

� callous unconcern for the feelings of others
� incapacity to maintain enduring relationships
� reckless disregard for the safety of others
� deceitfulness: repeated lying and conning others for profit
� incapacity to experience guilt
� failure to conform to social norms with respect to lawful behaviours

Based on this assessment corporation, the film concludes that corporations are psychopaths. To support this contention, a former FBI agent familiar with psychopathy is interviewed.

The Corporation is playing in theatres across Canada; will be aired by TVO in Ontario, Canada; and, American distribution is expected. DVD and VHS copies will be available.

Must viewing for activists

The Corporation is important viewing for activists around the world. Regardless of the business or industry you work in �- biotechnology, banking, ranching, agriculture, transportation, manufacturing, fishing, chemical, pharmaceutical, nanotechnology, financial services, computer, retail, fast food, etc. -�- NGOs and activists who oppose you will be inspired and motivated by the film. And regardless of where your business is located � Canada, the United States, New Zealand, Australia, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Poland, India, Pakistan, South Africa, Japan, you name it � the film will successfully recruit more activists, invigorated to challenge the corporate world. (A visit to the film�s online discussion forum reveals how activists are reacting to the film.)

In making their anti-corporate film, the producers interviewed many people from the business world, including spokesman for the Disney-built town of Celebration Andrea Finger, Goodyear Tire Chairman and former CEO Sam Gibara, former Royal Dutch Shell Chairman Sir Mark Moody-Stuart, Landor and Associates CEO Clay Timon, Initiative Media Vice President Lucy Hughes, Canadian Council for International Business President and CEO Robert Keyes, Pfizer Vice President Tom Kline, Burson Marsteller Worldwide CEO Chris Komisarjevsky, and IBM Vice President Irving Wladawsky-Berger.

The Corporation is a powerful film. Its perspective is clear. In an interview, commodities trader Carlton Brown says that when the terrorists directed planes into the Twin Towers in Sept. 11, 2001, the question on brokers� minds was �How much is gold up?� In other interviews, the corporations are described as modern slave owners and CEOs are seen as monsters because corporations are monstrous.

The anti-corporate movement is strong and getting strong. Dealing with it is probably the most difficult and important challenge confronting PR folks. It�s certainly far more important and challenging than dealing with a crisis. A crisis comes and goes. It's usually pretty clear-cut and business generally resumes when it's over.


Activist attacks threaten democracy, health, education and environment

In the photo below, which person is the direct descendant of an Irish-American school teacher named James O'Hara? The born-in-Manila mocha-skinned gentleman on the left, or the sweet red-haired-and-freckled lass on the right?


Kiss me, I'm 12.5% Irish!

The guy on the left, naturally. Can't you tell?

During the Great Famine, one James O'Hara left County Cork, Ireland for the United States and a better life. At around the same time, one Catherine Kelly, whose sister was supposed to leave for America but chickened out, took her sister's steamship ticket and left in her place. Somehow both James and Catherine ended up in Ohio, met each other and got married.

One of their children, also named James, was a teacher. The United States had just won the Spanish-American war, and one of the territories handed over to the U.S. was a Spanish colony called the Philippine Islands. The Americans were establishing a presence there, and there was a call for all kinds of workers, including teachers. James boarded a ship in San Francisco and set sail for Manila. He ended up outside Manila in the city of Antipolo, where he settled down, got married, had several children and learn to speak and read Spanish and Tagalog fluently.

One of his children is Marietta O'Hara, who was my fair-skinned, green-eyed grandmother. Marietta married Guillermo deVilla Sr., had a kid named Guillermo O'Hara deVilla Jr., who in turn had me. The combination of Irish and Filipino genes makes us great partiers who can hold their drink and have strong family ties and fabulous shoe collections.

Happy St. Patrick's Day, everybody!

Here's the first of my notes from last night's session with Joel Bakan, author of The Corporation. More later today.

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Innis TownHall Theatre was packed solid, even with the extra folding chairs that had been set up. It was decided to open the balconies which ran the length of the sides of the theatre. Eldon and I took seats on the atrium steps to the near the front of the theatre, just to the right of the seats.

They first showed the trailer for the movie, followed by clips. Among the clips were:

• The "Bad Apples" Sequence: A rapid-fire series of jump-cuts from news programs in which various interviewees kept saying that the scandals of 2002 (Enron, Worldcom, Arthur Andersen, et. cie.) were either "just a few bad apples" or "not just a few bad apples".
• Michael Moore, talking about the cognitive dissonance between the products we make and the effects they have, citing his family's history of working on th elines at General Motors.
• Ray Anderson, president of Interface, talking about the epiphany he had. His discovery that his business -- carpet tiles -- was not an asset to the planet and not sustainable. This discovery, in his own words, was "a spear through his heart".
• Noam Chomsky, complete with the finger-wagging that is his stock in trade, talking about the difference between the individuals in corpoations -- very nice people -- and the corporations as entities -- not very nice.
• Commodities trader Carlton Brown, who said that he could guarantee that the first thought running through the mind of every trader who wasn't in the World Trade Center on 9/11 was "How much is gold up?"
• Lucy Hughes, Director of Research for AdLink (VP of Initiative Media during filming) and co-conceiver of a concept called The Nag Factor, talking about how her book and her studies were not about helping parents cope with nagging, it's to help us help kids nag more effectively in order to sell more children's products. "Is it ethical?" she asks, with a grin. "I don't know."

Origin story

• 1997 - Bakan had just published a book about Canadian Charter of Rights.
• He came to the conclusion that the reasons why the Canadian Constitution had little or no impact on social justice was that the rights specified within dealt with the behaviour of the goverment towards people. Corporations have more power over people these days.
• With economic globalization, corporations do more than making products. They dictate political, economic and social conditions.
• We need to look at and think about corporations in the same way we do with governments.
• The Corporation was originally conceived as an academic book
• The problem with academic books: largely inaccessible, read mostly by other academics.
• Met Mark Ackbar (co-directed "Manufacturing Consent"), who said "Why don't I make a film about the book?" "The book doesn't exist." from this came the idea to write the book and make the film simultaneously.

The pitch

• 3.5 years to get funding for the film
• Lots of pitches, many unsuccessful
• Fortunately as a lawyer, he is trained in the art of persuading people of certain things ("often you have to do this for thing you tyourself don't believe.")
• Pitching to TV people is similar to making a case in court
• You can't just walk to Sony or Miramax and say you want to make a film that says their institution is psycopathic. He talked to public companies.
• Turned down by CBC
• Bakan has two theories as to why they were turned down: the film idea was (a) too edgy (b) not edgy enough. He thinks that both were true.
• Kept falling between the two poles of too/not controversial enough
• VisionTV first sponsor; TVOntario also funded the film.
• Raised $1.4M to shoot the film
• The film couldn't have been made in the US where public broadcasting is heavily funded by corporations. Testament to the value of public broadcasting and the public sphere.
• Trying not to focus on the "bad execs", and not just "bad corporations", but a larger topic: the corporation as a generic entity

The "Bad Apple" Jump-Cuts in the Film

• Mark Ackbar got a sattelite dish and taped news channels in the wake of the Enron/Worldcom scandals for source material for this sequence.
• 80% of the pundits said it was "just a few bad apples", 20% said the opposite.

I really should take much greater pains to make sure I'm at South By Southwest Interactive Festival next year. Once again, I missed Bruce Sterling's usual excellent keynote, followed by his equally excellent party. Cory took notes, and here are some snippets:

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Once again, Cory's full notes are here.

[ via Boing Boing ] Tom "Plasticbag.org" Coates has come up with another two-axis classification scheme for working types: the Pirate/Ninja axis, and the Elf/Dwarf axis. The meat of his essay:

I have always considered the profound distinction between ninjas and pirates to be an absolute one. One was either ninja or pirate - there were no inbetweens. One personality type was skilled and proficient, elegant and silent, contained and constrained, honourable and spiritual. The other type loud and flamboyant, gregarious and unrestrained, life-loving and vigorous, passionate and strong. I thought all people must pledge their allegiance, or be categorised accordingly.

The other day at work, another binary pair was presented to me - a co-worker who doesn't declare people pirate or ninja, but instead elf or dwarf. For him, humanity falls into doers and thinkers - elves being elegant and timeless, conceptual and refined, abstract and beautiful while dwarves are practical and structural, hard-working and no-nonsense, down-to-earth smiths and makers. It's a view of the world that's expounded a bit in Cryptonomicon.

Coates drew the two axes and plotted a number of big bloggers on them, resulting in this chart:

I wonder where I'd fall. Probably much closer to pirate, maybe straddling elf and dwarf. What do you think?

My mother's family traces its ancestry back to Chinese pirate Limahong, so I guess I should declare my allegiance to the pirates. Besides, I think that hot tub parties are more a pirate thing than a ninja thing.

Very interesting reading. Perhaps I should contact Coates and offer to program the "where are you on this chart?" quiz.

Go read the article, and while you're at it, read Scott "PvP" Kurtz' "Pirate vs. Ninja" series of comic strips.

It's news from two Saturdays ago, but still relevant: Kraft Bonuses: $10M Amid Layoffs.

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I am mindful of the fact that a lot of things aren't possible without corporations. From the development of the railways that opened up the continent, to the global communications infrastructure and computers from which I make my livelihood, to life-saving drugs, corporations make the things and provide the services that we need. It's just that like any other powerful entity with influence over our lives -- governments come to mind -- we need to watch them like hawks.

I updated the events listed in my Accordion City goings-on entry. Check it out.

If it's Tuesday, it must be Carnival of the Canucks, the weekly gathering of interesting links of Canadian blogs. This week's host: Enter Stage Right.



Thanks to Steve from Enter Stage Right for doing a fine link-collecting job, and David "Ranting and Roaring" Janes for starting and organizing the Carnival!

[ via Eldon Brown ] Here's an excerpt from an interview with Gloria Estefan:

Music was her only refuge. It led to an invitation to sing at a wedding, where she would meet her future husband.

[NBC interviewer Matt] Lauer: �You said the first time you laid eyes on Emilio, he was wearing brown shorts and playing the accordion.�

Estefan: [Laughter] �Yes.�

Lauer: �Now, that is not usually the opening line of a romance novel, okay?�

Estefan: �And he was playing �Do the Hustle� on the accordion. Now that was sexy and brave.�

I tell you, chicks dig accordion players, especially if they break free of the shackles of polka.

Two girls in Catholic school uniforms were purchasing a two-litre bottle of ginger ale while I was buying beggies for salad at the convenience store at Queen and John. From their conversation, they were apparently plotting some sort of clandestine alcoholic get-together.

I get the feeling that The Passion of the Christ is a popular meme even with teens; one of them said to the other "Dude [yes, girls these days call each other "Dude"], if my Mom finds out that I've got booze, she's gonna beat me like Jesus!"

Scourge, scourge, scourge. Maybe the movie should've been called The Bashin' of the Christ.

Either that, or they should make Jesus a new character in X-Men 3. He can heal people, alter molecular structure and he's got a much better healing factor than Wolverine!

Here's a list of events in Accordion City that I find interesting and will probably attend.

Today (Tuesday, March 16th)

Joel Bakan, author of The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power speaks at the Innis College Townhall (2 Sussex Avenue, on the University of Toronto downtown campus) at 7 p.m.. A presentation of Pages Bookstore's "This is Not a Reading Series" reading series.

Tomorrow (Wednesday, March 17th)

Drinking with co-workers at The Foggy Dew (803 King Street West, at Niagara) at 5-ish. Accordion playing of "Wild Rover" and other tunes from my handy-dandy Irish songbook.

Later that night, Kickass Karaoke at the Bovine Sex Club (542 Queen Street West, one block east of Bathurst)! The fun starts at 9-ish.

The Day After Tomorrow (Thursday, March 18th)

Cory Doctorow's book signing and promotion of his latest novel, Eastern Standard Tribe at the The Merril Collection of Science Fiction, Speculation and Fantasy, located inside the Lillian H. Smith Branch of the Toronto Public Library (239 College Street West, one block east of Spadina). The event starts at 7 p.m..

Saturday, March 20th

David "Ranting and Roaring" Janes is organizing a "Poliblogger" bash at The Drake Hotel (1150 Queen Street West, near Dufferin). They'll have a special out-of-town guest: Damian "Daimnation!" Penny. They'll have both kind of political bloggers there: right-wing and conservative!

But really folks, they're nice people. Even if you don't agree with the politics, it's always good to step out of your own personal echo chamber.

[ via my crack team of anonymous readers who email every now and again ] Cropped straight out of muhajiroun.com: "The obligation of inciting religious hatred"...

The obligation of inciting religious hatred  This Saturday's LIVE talk on Paltalk will discuss one of the greatest  forgotten obligations in Islaam - Inciting religious hatred. Allaah (swt)  orders the believers to hate all other religions, way of lives, creeds,  doctrines and beliefs that contradict with Islaam, and one cannot be  Muslim without to declare animosity and hatred towards kufr, bid'ah,  shirk and nifaaq (Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Sikhism,  Buddhism, Democracy, Freedom etc.).

Looks like someone got up on the wrong side of civilization today.

Here's an image from the site. Its filename is "whitehouse.jpg".

Psst! Dudes! It's the Capitol! This is the White House!

And really, only one wing? Even in their imaginations they're clearly not trying hard enough. Slackers! Roland Emmerich did a much better job with Independence Day.

It's either very crude or very sophisticated propaganda. Anyone care to speculate?

Ah well, it was nice to be nominated.

Boing Boing pulled a "Wil Wheaton Dot Net", collecting three Bloggies: Best American Weblog, Best Group Blog, and the one for which I was nominated: Weblog of the Year. Congratulations, Cory, Mark, Pesco, Xeni, Ken the sysadmin and all the sidebloggers!

A victory for Boing Boing is still a victory for The Adevntures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century. I've known Cory for nine years, worked with him for two, and am one of the privileged few who have gone to Disneyland with him (you should see him -- he practically channels the spirit of Walt Disney right out of the cryo-chamber). I know Ken the sysadmin from the OpenCola days as well, where he was our sysadmin.

Most importantly, this blog wouldn't be where it is today without Boing Boing, and especially Cory. When the con man came a-knockin' at my door, I wrote the story, and Boing Boing told you to read it. Syd the accountant? You know him because of Cory. I became a go-go dancer, and Cory made sure you found out about it. I terrorized pop stars with the accordion, and most people heard about it via Boing Boing. The stories that really put me over the top -- Worst Date Ever and the New Girl story -- would be obscure little-heard-of entries if not for Cory and Boing Boing.

So congratulations, Cory and Boing Boing, and thanks for making Accordion Guy the "little blog that could"!

According to Rum and Monkey's Which Survivor of the Impending Nuclear Apocalypse Are You? test, I'm Tom Jones!

It's not unusual to survive my, my, myyyyyy apocalypse, because you're everybody's favourite Welshman,

Tom Jones!

Forged from molten steel beneath the Earth's crust seven hundred million years ago, you are like a great big hairy Welsh crooner of iron. Which is just a well, because it's all-out death time! And great big steel fighting machines tend to survive that kind of thing.

It's good to know your music will live on. Truly, it is.

Come into my shelter, baby. It's safe, and it's sexy.

If you want a quck and easy way to stick polls into your blog, Blogware-based or otherwise, Blogpolling, a free service by Rackshare, makes it pretty easy!

There's an example poll in the sidebar to your left. Give it a try.

Today is the day they announce the winner of the Fourth Annual Weblog Awards, a.k.a. "The Bloggies". This fine blog is one of the nominees for the kahuna category, weblog of the year!

According to the Bloggies site:

Those who aren't attending may join the excitement on IRC, in #BlogIRC on irc.turlyming.com:6667. Winners will be announced live and a play-by-play of the ceremony will be given.

After the ceremony, the results will be posted on this page.

I won't be able to attend the event in person, but I'll be on the IRC channel.

Wish me luck!

Pages Bookstore, located on the corner of Queen and John Streets, is a great independently-owned bookstore which features a reading-and-speaking series called "This is Not a Reading Series". They've brought in some pretty interesting authors; Dave Eggers, Neal Stephenson, Douglas Coupland and Chuck Klosterman are just a few who've spoken at these events.

This Tuesday, Joel Bakan, author of The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power, will be the guest in the next installment of this series. The event will take place this Tuesday at 7 p.m. at Innis College's TownHall Theatre (2 Sussex Avenue, located on the University of Toronto downtown campus).

Interested in catching this, followed by a late dinner? Let me know either via email or the comments!

I've just started the book, and will review it at a later date.

Recommended Reading

The Amazon.com page for The Corporation.

The web site for the documentary film based on the book.