Santa's secret life

My name is Santa, and I am a success addict.

For over sixteen centuries I have been living a lie.

It started honestly enough. At first all I wanted to do was bring some happiness to deserving children at Christmas. I wanted good children to be rewarded at Christmas, regardless of how wealthy their parents were.

Well, as you no doubt have noticed, for many centuries now it's the rich children who've been getting the good gifts. Lately it's the rich children who've been getting gifts, period. I skip so many poor kids that people have to organize drives to collect presents for them.

Oh, at first I told myself I was justified in favouring the rich kids. It all started with children praying to me for toys. If, I told myself, I answered the rich children's prayers, their parents would be impressed and build chapels to me and endow orders of monks to pray to me. That was good, I told myself, because it would strengthen the Christian faith. At bottom, of course, all I was interested in was me, me, me.

I got even more self-indulgent when the modern economy arrived. I started signing promotional contracts. You don't think Coke gets me for free, do you? When I endorse a product, I get paid for it. I get paid handsomely.

And that's how I got fat. If you look at the pictures of me from before the nineteenth century you'll see that I was pretty fit in those days. By the time I got that Moore guy to do PR, though, I was a blob. He did preserve the myth that I come down the chimney, which shows how gullible kids are, eh? Look at me! – how many freaking chimneys am I going to get down? But the kids lap it up.

By the middle of the twentieth century the money was rolling in. I had long since contracted out delivery. I mean, I cannot get down a chimney. Then some years ago I closed down the North Pole operation. Taxation and labour costs are so much lower in Indonesia. I appointed a chief operating officer so I'd have more time for my self-indulgent jet set lifestyle.

But as the tissue of lies I wove got bigger and bigger, I became less and less able to face myself and my betrayal of all that had once been dear to me. Yes, I had money. I had lots and lots of money. I had women. Oh, I had lots and lots of women. I had cars and planes and estates and plenty of time to enjoy them.

But none of these could numb my anguish. Expansion into the former communist countries kept me occupied for a while, but the anguish soon returned. Many's the long night of the soul I have passed, debating whether or not I should simply put an end to it all.

Then, one afternoon, reeling from a hangover and racked, as always, by guilt, I was idly channel surfing on my magnificent home theatre. I switched to one of the channels to find Oprah Winfrey looking at me and earnestly telling me "You can change."

It was a revelation. Yes, I thought, I can change! After all, I had changed, hadn't I? I'd seen business opportunities and taken them. The people who hadn't changed, the people who were not adapting to circumstances, were all those dimwitted kids and their clueless parents! Year after year I run my game on them and year after year they fall for it!

And now I'm going to change some more. I'm going to enjoy some high self-esteem for a change. And instead of feeling guilty about my obvious business talents, I'm going to use them!

So I am proud to announce that Kringle Logistics International has entered into an arrangement with one of the great corporations of world commerce to produce the new Microsoft Christmas 7.

Microsoft Christmas 7 offers many new features never previously incorporated into Christmas! Christmas will now be held monthly instead of annually, so that you can enjoy good cheer and merrymaking year round! Twelve Christmases a year might sound like a lot of work, but not with the new Microsoft Christmas wizards! Just click on the egg nog icon, for example, and the egg nog wizard appears to make egg nog preparation easier and more enjoyable!

Best of all, to facilitate Christmas gift giving, Microsoft will be upgrading its operating systems monthly! No need to worry about what to get your loved ones for Christmas – get them the newest and most up to date operating system around! Plus the upgraded Microsoft software they'll need to get the most out of their new OS!

Rollout date for Christmas 7 is February 1, 2010, just in time for the celebration of February 25, 2010! Order your copy now to ensure that you don't miss out on all the fun and personal satisfaction of the first non-December Christmas! In history!

Santa, Santa Claus, Father Christmas, Kris Kringle, St. Nick/Nicholas, Jolly Old St. Nick/Nicholas, and That Jolly Old Elf are registered trademarks of the Microsoft corporation.

Santa's Secret Life © John FitzGerald, 2001, 2010

Are YOU a Success Magnet?

Just in case you haven't noticed, we'll point out that the world has changed. No more can you expect to get through life in some cushy, undemanding job with an inflated salary.

These days you have to fight to make a decent buck. You have to take initiative. You have to be goal-oriented, a go-getter, a never-quitter, you must be...an ENTREPRENEUR!.

To find out if you have what it takes to succeed in this new competitive world of today, all you have to do is complete this simple quiz. The instructions for scoring follow the quiz.

 1. Suppose you worked for a jerk. Which of the following would be the most likely way you'd deal with the problem?

1. try to do as good a job as possible in the circumstances?
   
2. ignore him/her?
   
3. vigorously contest his/her unreasonable actions?
   
4. shoot him/her?

 2. Which of the following singers do you like the least.?

1. Michael Bolton
   
2. Sheryl Crow
   
3. Alanis Morissette
   
4. Joe Valachi

 3. Which of the following do you try to model yourself after?

1. Mother Teresa
   
2. Martin Luther King
   
3. Bill Gates
   
4. Sammy "The Bull" Gravano

 4. Suppose you went on a trip to Paris. What is the first thing you'd do as soon as you arrived?

1. visit the Louvre
   
2. enjoy a fine French meal
   
3. go to the top of the Eiffel Tower
   
4. pistolwhip the first freaking Frenchman whose fat freaking face you didn't like

 5. Your favourite fashion accessory was designed by:

1. Roots
   
2. Ralph Lauren
   
3. Gianni Versace
   
4. Glock

 6. The type of investment you consider best for you is:

1. a savings account
   
2. a GIC
   
3. mutual funds
   
4. skimmed casino cash flow

 7. Your favourite exercise is:

1. striding
   
2. jogging
   
3. running
   
4. shaking down terrified shopkeepers

 8. The chief way in which you are politically involved is:

1. voting
   
2. canvassing
   
3. sitting on the executive of your riding association
   
4. municipal corruption

 9. Your favourite popular song of the Seventies is:

1. You Light Up My Life
   
2. Shake Your Booty
   
3. Let's Stay Together
   
4. I Shot the Sheriff

10. For Christmas, you would most like to receive:

1. a token of love and affection
   
2. a modestly priced gift
   
3. an expensive gift
   
4. a bribe

That's it! Now follow the simple scoring instructions below to determine YOUR success magnetism!

Scoring. Give yourself a point for each answer you chose which was identified by the letter d. Here's what your score means:

0 to 6 points: Communism is dead, you scumbag pinko degenerate! Either get with the program or get your ass on a plane to Cuba! But first drop by my place so I can kick your Commie ass from here to the airport! Of course, you'd probably like that, you sicko Commie pervert!

7 to 9 points: You have some hope, but your work is still cut out for you. You still retain some of the lazy, soft, defeatist values of the old days, and until you eradicate them completely you'll never earn a slice, however small, of the success pie. Remember, there's still a possibility that you're a threat to society. As more real men and women rise to the top in society, your chances of getting away with being the deviate you still are will get slimmer and slimmer.

10 points: Congratulations! You've got what it takes to get what you want! You're willing to take risks, to set goals, to work together in co-operation with other self-starters so that all may reap benefits! You make money the old-fashioned way – you take it from other people! With this get-ahead entrepreneurial attitude you can get whatever you want! I've wet myself!

Are YOU a Success Magnet? ©: 1997, John FitzGerald

The truth cult

For much of its history human beings have taken part in rituals in which an authority informs other people of what is supposed to be the Truth. I call this the pulpit model of information. For centuries Europeans went to church and an authority got up in the pulpit and told them what to believe about the world (and other places).

This model was later adopted by the schools, no doubt because the schools were established by churches. Whatever the reason, schooling until recently consisted of listening to an authority tell you what to believe about the world (in universities, it still often consists of this). In school, though, you were even tested to make sure you’d learned the approved view of things.

In school you also acquire the idea that Truth is something that can be found on the printed page. Consequently we come to accept something that has been published as true, without verifying that it is.

It’s not surprising that we come to look on the truth as something that is dispensed by authorities. Consequently, we look around for people who look like authorities, and treat what they say as information. Furthermore, we treat the methods they use to come up with things to say as methods that can be used to define information. We are often wrong.

Given the track record of authorities (remember all those biological weapons that, according to authorities, Iraq was just itching to use against the West?), depending on them to tell us the truth is a questionable approach. Another problem with this approach is that there is considerable doubt as to whether we need to know the truth, anyway.

Here’s something that’s true: Churchill, Manitoba, is named for John Churchill, first governor of the Hudson’s Bay Company. That’s a fact. Despite being a fact, though, it doesn’t help me get served when I drop in to the local branch of his company.

Every day we are bombarded with truths. The newspaper tells us things like what the temperature was yesterday in Beijing and what celebrities have (or had) their birthdays today. I remember once reading in the paper that it was the late Alfred Hitchcock’s birthday and thinking “I can’t really send him a card, can I?”

Better than mere truth is information. Information is confused with many things that are not informative, though.

Facts, as we have just seen, are not necessarily informative. Unless I’ve made a bet about what the high temperature in Beijing was going to be, that fact cannot be said to inform me of anything.

Furthermore, many items of information are not factual. The idea of intelligence, for example, cannot be said to be a fact, since there is widespread disagreement about just what intelligence is. However, the concept of intelligence is informative because in speculating about it we discover useful things. We have even discovered some of the shortcomings of the idea of intelligence.

As we have also seen, authoritative statements are not necessarily informative. Another reason they're not necessarily informative is that they disagree with each other. In fact, many of them work according to decision models which encourage disagreement as a way of establishing crucial issues that need to be tested. Courts of English law, for example, require two or more highly trained professionals to argue for exactly opposite points.

People also often assume that a logically sound argument is informative. However, it need not be. We can reason as soundly as it’s possible to reason and still be wrong.

Deductive reasoning starts with a general premise or principle. It then applies that premise to a specific piece of evidence and draws a conclusion about that piece of evidence. For example, we might reason like this:

• All Canadians are British subjects. (general principle)
  
• John FitzGerald is a Canadian. (evidence)
  
• Therefore, John FitzGerald is a British subject. (conclusion)

Well, that conclusion is true. However, let’s suppose we reason like this:

• All Canadians have French first names.
  
• John FitzGerald’s first name is not French.
  
• Therefore, John FitzGerald is not a Canadian.

That conclusion is not true, although the reasoning is entirely sound. Since my first name is not French, the conclusion that I am not Canadian follows logically from the general principle that all Canadians have French first names. The problem, of course, is that the general principle is wrong. Consequently, all statements that follow logically from it are most likely to be wrong. That example is a bit artificial, but people draw sound conclusions from erroneous premises all the time.

For example, many people reasoned out thoroughly logical arguments that on January 1, 2000 the world would be thrown into chaos. I say their beliefs were serious because they acted on them. They stockpiled food, for example, they bought portable electric generators, and some even created fortified shelters to protect themselves from people who hadn’t stockpiled food or bought generators.

As we saw on January 1, 2000, though, the computers didn’t fail. Some of the premises in those thoroughly logical arguments had been unsound. Logic is a tool. Logic does not guarantee that your arguments will stand up any more than a hammer guarantees that the bookcase you build with it will stand up.

Information is often confused with consensus. The supposed existence of a consensus among scientists about global warming is supposed to imply that the consensus opinion is highly likely to be true. Well, a hundred years ago a consensus of scientists would have told you that other races were inferior to whites.

The issue of consensus about global warming seems to have been raised initially as a red herring. That is, people argued against taking action against global warming because there was no scientific consensus about what caused it.

However, consensus has nothing to do with it. At one time there was a scientific consensus that the sun revolved around the earth. That point seems to have escaped the people who are opposed to taking action against global warming, though. Now they complain that this consensus they considered so desirable is being forced on them.

What is informative about an idea is its ability to predict events. The chief value of consensus seems to be coming up with a plan that everyone, or at least everyone important, is willing to go along with. To me, that seems a lot like what lemmings do.

Information cannot be defined by its source. If an expert meteorologist says tomorrow will be sunny, clouds don’t decide to go somewhere else just because a respected source says they will. Information is defined by its effect. Information increases the probability that we will act in effective ways. If it never rains on days when the weather forecast calls for rain, you’re going to end up lugging around a useless umbrella. If it always rains on days your bunions hurt, though, your bunions are a mine of information.

The Truth Cult © 2007, John FitzGerald

Young Girl

Aboriginal-bashing

Some Quebec nationalists believe the English-Canadian press is Quebec-bashing, as they call it. They comb the English-Canadian press for anything that can be considered to be anti-Quebec, find a dozen or so articles written over the past fifteen years, then claim that these articles represent a pattern on the part of the entire English press of smearing Quebec whenever possible.

As you will recall, Mordecai Richler was considered to be Quebec-bashing when he suggested that la revanche du berceau had not been a wholesome development in Quebec history. You can also be considered to be Quebec-bashing if you disagree with the government of Quebec, as the city of Westmount was considered to be when it opposed, along with many francophone municipalities, a project of amalgamation of municipalities.

The idea is that Quebec-bashing is part of a campaign to make Quebeckers look incapable of managing their own affairs, and therefore unready for sovereignty (whatever that might eventually turn out to be). Granted, the ignorance of Quebec displayed in the English-Canadian press is sometimes staggering, and if some people see it as a campaign against Quebec I suppose we shouldn't be surprised. Also granted, some members of the English-Canadian press corps have formidable hates on for Quebec.

However, English-Canadians are well aware that Quebec has been managing its own affairs for 140 years. There is another group, though, which the English-Canadian press is bashing constantly, with the effect, if not the goal, of implying that it is incapable of self-government.

That group is aboriginals, and in particular members of First Nations. English-Canadian news coverage of aboriginals almost exclusively depicts them as ravaged by social problems and incapable of managing their own lives. On February 5, 2008, I did a search on the Google News Canada English-language site for the word “aboriginal” and the phrase “first nations.” The stories I found were overwhelmingly negative. They dealt with:

• a policing crisis on reserves,
  
• aboriginal drug addiction,
  
• the inability of some aboriginals to manage their compensation payments for abuse at residential school,
  
• the “growing and urgent needs of the aboriginal population”¹,
  
• discomfort felt by aboriginal students at university,
  
• rundown reserves,
  
• aboriginal unemployment,
  
• aboriginal alcoholism (you’ve been waiting for that one, I bet),
  
• the impeachment of the grand chief of the Dehcho First Nations of the Northwest Territories,
  
• the possibility of a shutdown of the First Nations Technical Institute on Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory in Ontario,
  
• the inflated remuneration paid the chief of Peguis First Nation in Manitoba,
  
• the refusal of a group of Roman Catholic bishops to apologize for abuse at residential schools, or to promise to bring abusers to justice.

Aboriginals are depicted in the English-Canadian press as people who are overwhelmed by the pressures of modern society, and unable to cope with these pressures themselves. Lurking behind this depiction are two inferences:

1. that maybe it’s best for Indians to continue to be segregated on reserves, and
   
2. that these problems are so huge that they can only be solved by Big Daddy, the government.

Well, the government’s been doing a fine job so far, eh? As far as I can make out, government policy towards the First Nations is to keep the chiefs happy. They do audit band councils, but the well-being of the ordinary citizens of the reserves, and of those members of First Nations who live off the reserves, is not a prime concern. If you don’t believe me, ask yourself why conditions on most reserves are so abominable, and why the average income of Indians living off reserves is so low.

As for the Métis, the government looked the other way in the late nineteenth century when land reserved for them under the Manitoba Act was being given to white farmers instead. The Inuit were for decades the victims of daft federal schemes which imperilled their survival – for example, moving them to places where they could no longer hunt.

In short, the aboriginal peoples have been wards of government for over two hundred years, and its tender care has rewarded them with shorter lifespans, lower incomes, and higher suicide rates than the rest of us. And now we want the government to do more.

So, you may ask, what else can we do? Well, we could start trying to like aboriginals. We could ask ourselves why we have an apartheid system for Indians. Could it possibly be that we don’t want to have them among us? And why would we not want to have them among us? Could it possibly be that we consider them racially inferior? In this day and age?

Yep. It sure could. It could be that our long history of acting as if aboriginals were children, and the lack of success we’ve had when acting on this assumption, has left us with the idea that our approach failed because aboriginals are bad children, evil children, who are best encouraged to stay in the north or on their reserves where they can do the least harm.

If we are to overcome the current poisonous state of race relations in Canada, we could start by treating aboriginals as our equals. That would mean, for example, dismantling the apartheid system erected by the Indian Act. What do we do after that? I don’t know. It’s not as if we’ve ever had the experience of treating aboriginals as equals before. However, I’m pretty sure that whatever we try will have no chance of failing as catastrophically as the approach we’ve been taking so far.

Aboriginal-bashing © 2008, John FitzGerald

The unsinkable Jerome K. Jerome

First published on my own little website in 1999, after I had learned that many of my well-read acquaintances had never read one of the masterpieces of English literature.

Jerome K. Jerome was born in Staffordshire in 1859, grew up in London, and left grammar school at 14. As a youth and young man he worked as a railway clerk, an actor, a freelance journalist, a private secretary, a purchasing agent, a parliamentary agent, and a solicitor's clerk. In 1889, when Three Men in a Boat was published, he had only recently become successful as a journalist and author.

Three Men in a Boat is an account of a boating trip on the Thames undertaken by three male friends – Jerome, Harris, and George – and a fox terrier, Montmorency. It features several expertly written comic setpieces (for example, an account of trying to open a tin of pineapple when one has forgotten to bring the can opener but really wants to eat some pineapple) and several expertly written meditations, ranging from the mystical to the informative and solemn, on life and history. Jerome's style is masterful, and he uses it to create a strong sense of good humour, benevolence, and well-being.

Three Men in a Boat is commonly regarded as a comic masterpiece, which is true as far as it goes. The book is often comic, and it is a masterpiece, so therefore it is a comic masterpiece. But Three Men in a Boat is more than that.

What struck me most about the book during my most recent re-reading of it was that it had the character of a post-modernist book, although it was written by a pre-modern. If Jerome's autobiography is to be believed, the literary establishment of his day certainly thought Three Men in a Boat was different from the usual run of books. According to him they execrated the book, castigating it as impertinent and vulgar – two accusations which seem bewilderingly unfounded in this the last year of an impertinent and vulgar century.

These charges probably arose from Jerome's treatment of events – the idle recreations of young men – which would have been beneath the notice of most serious writers of the day, and from his frank materialism. Here's an example of the materialism, which even today would probably offend many people:

How good one feels when one is full – how satisfied with oneself and with the world! People who have tried it, tell me that a clear conscience makes you very happy and contented; but a full stomach does the business quite as well, and is cheaper, and more easily obtained. One feels so forgiving and generous after a substantial and well-digested meal – so noble-minded, so kindly-hearted.

Then there was his comment about a poor single mother whose corpse the three friends pull from the river, and whose story they later learn: "Six shillings a week does not keep body and soul together very unitedly." Suicide was of course considered in those days to be a result of grave moral weakness, and attempting it was a crime. Blaming it only on lack of money and, as Jerome did, on the failure of the woman's family and friends to support her was probably far too lax morally for the professional protectors of public virtue who flourished in the Victorian era, as in ours.

Instead of being moral, as writers of his day tried to be, Jerome chose to be adult. He did not encourage the reader to pay homage to a severe moral code which was a poor approximation of the true values of society. Instead he wrote a book in which people have failings and other people forgive them because they realize that they, too, have failings. As he wrote of the suicide: "She had sinned – some of us do now and then." And, as we have seen, he argued that the world had failed the sinner, not that she had failed the world.

Three Men in a Boat was probably also considered vulgar and impertinent because of Jerome's use of a style which was much closer to conversation than most writing of the day. His writing is, though, the glory of the book. He writes with exceptional facility in many tones ranging from the broadly comic to the reverent.

The book is in fact primarily a virtuoso display of writing. Perhaps in their day Jerome's comic pieces were novel and refreshing, but over a century later many are all too familiar. Nevertheless, thanks to Jerome's accomplished handling of them, they remain highly entertaining.

Jerome also used his mastery of style to accomplish a goal which would be considered postmodern in a contemporary book. Three Men in a Boat is full of
engagingly written passages in which Jerome persuasively imputes deep significance to mundane events but eventually reveals that he is less than serious. These exercises demonstrate the limited validity of both fictional and non-fictional accounts of human undertakings.

Along the same line, in his introduction Jerome asserted that Three Men in a Boat was a work of "hopeless and incurable veracity," even though the reader quickly realizes that it is in fact at least in part a fabrication. Nevertheless, Jerome was not lying. The book is true.

It is true in that it is not propagandistic, as the literature of the day tended to be. Three Men in a Boat is an honest account of honest feelings which Jerome and his friends doubtless had, and of beliefs which they doubtless held. This honesty, expressed in elegant and limpid style, produced a book which a hundred and eleven years after its publication thrusts the reader into the lives of Jerome and his friends with an invigorating immediacy and verisimilitude which make the humour of the story richly entertaining. That is why people who read this little book tend to read it again and again.

The Unsinkable Jerome K. Jerome © 1999, John FitzGerald

You are what you ought to eat

Every day it seems I hear something new about good food and evil food. Eat the good food and you will live forever! Eat the evil food and you will die, shortly, in sin and despair!

The decline of organized religion has resulted in the ascendancy of morality. Without God around to save us, we must save ourselves.

Food is important. We have to eat to live, and we have to eat fairly frequently. So our new morality has a lot to say about food.

Of course, Christianity had nearly two millennia to perfect its act. The new mainstream religion is considerably more primitive. In recent Christian days evil was considered to be intangible; it was an inherent personal disposition against which one had to fight constantly. We sophisticated moderns, though, prefer to think that evil is tangible.

Specifically, we have embodied evil as taboo food, most notably fat. Fat is evil made flesh. Fat clogs your arteries! Fat makes you fat! Turn from fat and all its works so that you may be saved!

What is this salvation, though? It appears to consist of losing weight and having a greater chance of living into that period of life in which health problems get extremely serious. It doesn't quite measure up to the Christian idea of salvation.

On the other hand, salvation by food has the advantage that evidence of its existence can be found. People do indeed lose weight by changing their diet. They tend, though, to gain it back, and more.

Then once you fail in your attempt to gain earthly salvation you are open to the religious argument that you have been following a false god. You were eating the wrong food. And on you go in your spiritual quest.

To be fair, food cultism may on the whole promote healthy eating. It exaggerates the effects of diet, however, and of specific components of that diet. It holds, for example, that blood cholesterol can be easily controlled by diet, while the research is considerably more equivocal.

The main point of food cultism is not really good diet. Food cultism uses food to satisfy our hunger for evidence that we are not ordinary and that we have control over our lives. It tells us that if we only stop violating its food taboos we will live healthy, productive lives, unlike the sinners who do not share
our knowledge of good and evil. Believing that we are pure and everyone else is foul is of course the traditional conception of human dignity.

Technology, globalization, and poker

There’s been a lot of speculation here at Global HQ about just why poker has become so popular. It seems to be on television somewhere at every hour of the day and night. They show poker tournaments, cash poker games, poker played by celebrities. People have always liked poker, but they haven't been gaga over it.

I realized that as a literary man I had an advantage in this discussion, since I had actually once read a book about the world of high-stakes poker as it was before the game became so popular. The book was The Biggest Game in Town by the British writer and poet A. Alvarez. Mr. Alvarez likes to play poker, and in 1981 he took a holiday in Las Vegas at the same time as the World Series of Poker. Like the enterprising writer he is, he got a book out of it.

The main event of the World Series of Poker was already a big deal in those days. In 1981 it attracted 75 entrants, each of whom paid $10,000 to compete. As it is now, the main event, like the other events, was a knockout competition, and the winner was the last player not to go broke. The first prize was $375,000, half the entry fees. Not bad for a few days’ work.

How the world changes, though, eh? In 2006 nearly 9,000 players ponied up the ten grand (or had the ten grand ponied up for them by poker websites at which they had won tournaments), and the first prize was $12 million. The prize for finishing 238th was nearly $43,000.

Even after changes in U. S. law which restricted the ability of poker websites to subsidize entry fees, the 2007 main event still attracted nearly 6,400 players. The first prize shrank to a paltry $8.25 million, in part because a smaller percentage of the entry fees was put into it.

Back in 1981, the game was dominated by a small group of professional players, several of whom Mr. Alvarez interviewed. Surprisingly, most of these players are still active or were active until recently. While Mr. Alvarez’s interviews were somewhat uncritical, he did use them to put together a good picture of the professional players of the time. Almost all of them were men, and all of them had two other important characteristics:

• ready sources of finance
  
• a consuming obsession with poker

The players made their living from high-stakes cash games, and since the luck of the cards can often run the wrong way for a long time, to keep playing in those games they often needed someone to provide a huge bankroll for them when they were broke. Going broke was a frequent danger, because they did little else but play poker. A couple of players (one of them the great Doyle Brunson) observe that in their younger days the only part of the world outside the poker rooms which interested them was the white line they drove along to the next poker room.

Their obsession seems to have had little to do with money. Mr. Alvarez notes that some of the players seemed not to understand the uses of money away from the poker table. The winner of the main event in 1981, Stu Ungar, died broke in 1998, although he had won $30 million at poker tables. A large percentage of that $30 million was simply given away; the rest seems to have been pretty well thrown away.

Nowadays things are different. To get into a tournament you no longer need friends with deep pockets. Chris Moneymaker, who won the 2003 main event, won his entry fee online, in a tournament he paid $39 to enter. The internet and the knockout tournament format have proven to be an ideal combination for poker. Because people from all over the world are playing at the big poker sites, you can always get a game. The tournament format means that you don’t have to have big money to get into that game, either. Entry fees reportedly start at under a dollar. If you’re playing in a game with a 75-cent entry fee, you won’t be winning much if you finish first, but you’ll have had some pretty cheap fun.

In Idle Passion: Chess and the Dance of Death Alexander Cockburn argued that world chess champions tend to be narcissistic repressed homosexuals with Oedipus complexes – except for one group. The group which consisted of more or less normal people was the group of champions from the Soviet Union. The reason they were different is that they had been selected by the Soviet government because they had the abilities necessary to become a chess champion, then trained to play well, then required to play chess for their country. The chess champions from the rest of the world had not been encouraged by their countries to play chess, but devoted their lives to the game because of their obsession with it.

A similar process seems to have been at work in poker. Although poker players don’t seem to have a pathological or even a standard psychological make-up, in 1981 playing high-stakes poker for a living pretty well required that you be obsessed with the game and be able to get your hands on large sums of money on short notice. These days, though, a Chris Moneymaker can get to the heights of the field while working as an accountant.

Becoming a poker champion is no longer as much trouble, and the field is becoming flooded with normal people who just like to play poker and can now do it without making the personal sacrifices or taking the financial risk they once had to. Doyle Brunson observed to Mr. Alvarez that as the game grew more popular and amateur play became more competent, the professional players would find it difficult to maintain their dominance of tournament play. Since in tournaments you can’t buy more chips when you start to run out of money, the professionals’ big bankrolls wouldn’t help them when they hit an unlucky streak.

Mr. Brunson was right, of course, even though he couldn't have foreseen internet poker in 1981. Today you can play a lot of poker for very little money and develop professional skill. As differences in skill between amateurs and professionals become smaller the outcome of tournaments comes more and more to depend on luck. Amateurs can have good luck as easily as a professional can. No one has won consecutive main events since 1988; between 1970 and 1988 four players won consecutive main events.

So there you have it – poker has been democratized by technology and sound business thinking. The big poker capitalists have been forced to forgo their monopoly control of the big tournaments, and poker proletarians like Mr. Moneymaker, Greg Raymer, Jamie Gold, and Jerry Yang have begun taking the World Series of Poker main event.

It’s no wonder the American government is trying to kill internet poker. The idea that technology and globalization might give ordinary people a chance against the big guys is not one the current administration is likely to want to see in general circulation.

But you can fight the Man! Stand up for democracy – shuffle up and deal!

Technology, Globalization, and Poker © John Fitzgerald, 2007

The myth of useless information

We are told that we live in an Information Age. If we do, though, we are remarkably uninformed. In fact, most people don’t know what information is. They routinely confuse it with data. Collecting data is described as collecting information, for example.

People noticed that researchers collect data and extract information from it, so they concluded that if they collected data, they’d be able to extract information from it, too. However, they might as well think that since Wayne Gretzky won the National Hockey League scoring championship by putting on some skates and carrying a hockey stick, they can win the NHL scoring championship if they also put on some skates and pick up a hockey stick.

Here is a simple example that illustrates the difference between data and information. A few years ago I was out of town on business. I had never been to the city I was visiting before, so I bought a map of it. The map had been published as recently as three years before, but failed to show a major street that, I was informed, had been opened five years or so before that. The street was the street on which my clients had their office.

To become information, data must at the very least be accurate and relevant. My map failed on both counts. If information is not accurate, it cannot be relevant. Obviously, if a city map does not contain a major street it cannot be valid. A map of London that omitted Trafalgar Square would simply not be a map of London.

Even if information is accurate, though, it need not be relevant. An accurate map of Detroit is not relevant to you if you are trying to find your way around Minneapolis. That point may seem irrelevant itself, but too often people trying to interpret data are performing the equivalent of trying to find their way around Minneapolis with a map of Disneyland.

For example, people often assume that opinions and other ideas predict behaviour, so that instead of observing the behaviour of the people they are interested in understanding, they need only collect their ideas. This assumption is often wrong. For example, students' educational aspirations often are unrelated to how far they end up going in school.

In general:

1. If you need to know what the capital of Ontario is, and you consult an encyclopedia that tells you the capital of Ontario is Toronto, the encyclopedia is informative (since Toronto is, in fact, the capital of Ontario).
   
2. If you need to know what the capital of Ontario is, and you consult a different encyclopedia that tells you the capital is Ottawa, that encyclopedia is not informative (Ottawa is the capital of Canada, but not of Ontario).
   
3. If you don’t need to know what the capital of Ontario is, then neither encyclopedia is informative, since you’re not going to be consulting either one. An aspirin you don’t take won’t make your headache go away.

Information is conventionally defined as data that reduce uncertainty, and the preceding three rules are consistent with this definition:

1. If you’re uncertain about where the capital city of Toronto is, then an encyclopedia that tells you the capital is Toronto has reduced your uncertainty to zero – you know what the capital is.
   
2. An encyclopedia that tells you the capital is Ottawa hasn’t reduced your uncertainty at all, even though you may think it has.
   
3. And if the question of the capital of Ontario is of no interest to you (because, for example, you already know what it is, or you don’t need to know what it is)), you’re not going to consult either encyclopedia, so neither of them will reduce your uncertainty about where Toronto is.

What these observations boil down to is a definition of information as:

1. necessary,
   
2. accurate, and
   
3. intelligible.

Data may be unnecessary for two reasons:

1. you have no reason to consult them, or
   
2. they tell you nothing about the subject you’re interested in.

Consequently, if data are not accurate they are not necessary, either. If you want to know who won the hockey game last night you don’t ask someone to guess who won. Instead you go to a reliable source. Even accurate data are unnecessary, though, if you don’t need to know them. If you’re not a hockey fan, you don’t subscribe to the Hockey News.

There is no such thing as useless information.

The Myth of Useless Information © John FitzGerald, 2008

Forgive me, Dr. Phil, for others have sinned

God is dead, but Oprah is alive and kicking. Even those of us who are familiar with Oprah Winfrey's television show only through the brief glimpses we get while channel surfing know that its function is now chiefly religious. The frequency with which one stumbles across members of the audience confessing their sins (aka issues) is astonishing.

Like all the religious leaders who infest the airwaves Oprah promises her flock release from their sorrow and travails. As part of her evangelization she has for yers been aided by one Phillip C. McGraw, a psychologist known to his admirers as Dr. Phil. Dr. Phil is a big Texan with a deep voice which he uses to give Oprah's guests what he describes on his website as a talking to. People with problems describe them to Dr. Phil, and he sternly lectures them about what they need to do to get back on the path of clean living.

These lectures have made Dr. Phil wildly popular. His picture has appeared on the cover of at least one major newsmagazine, and he now has his own television show. But what exactly does he say in these talkings to?

Well, I once saw him inform a large woman who wanted to lose weight that she had to be committed to losing weight. If you try to make sense of this statement, the best translation you can come up with is "If you want to lose weight, you have to do something that will make you lose weight, and you have to keep on doing it." Can't argue with that, eh?

In fact, all Dr. Phil has seemed to be doing, any time I've watched him giving someone a talking to, was saying aloud what most people in the audience were thinking. He was not impressing the audience by demonstrating how he could come up with solutions they wouldn't think of but by showing that a Ph. D. had come up with the same solutions they had come up with. And by allowing the audience to pile on, metaphorically, to the person getting the talking to.

To be fair to Dr. Phil, though, he has not shied away from explaining his ideas about how people should be behaving. He has published three popular books about his ideas, the most recent of which when this article was first published in 2002 was Self Matters, published by Simon and Schuster. On his website Dr. Phil describes this book as groundbreaking. So what does it say?

The central idea of Self Matters is that the feeling that one's life is "incomplete, unbalanced, and altogether more difficult than it really should be" stems from a lack of congruity between one's "authentic self" and one's "fictional self." Your authentic self is "the person you once were before life took its toll," while the fictional self is "the identity...you believe you are supposed to be, the person people tell you you are." The problem, apparently, is not that life is difficult but that you believe it should be difficult. Get rid of that evil fictional self and what's left is your original authentic troublefree self!

Dr. Phil does propose a method for eliminating the fictional self. It involves asking yourself questions like:

• What are the ten most defining moments of your life?
  
• What are the seven most critical choices you have made to put you on your current path?
  
• Who are the five most pivotal people in your world and how have they shaped you?

Of course, the only answer an honest and moderately intelligent person could give to those questions is "How am I supposed to know?" Well, Dr. Phil says you're supposed to know. This is part of what is called an internal audit. You audit your fictional self, decide how you can change your attitudes and beliefs about your defining moments so that they are authentic, and then change them.

In other words, years of conditioning don't matter, social pressures don't matter, economic necessity doesn't matter – you can change your attitudes and beliefs all by yourself and when you do your problems are over.

Of course, it's not attitudes and beliefs which cause problems, it's behaviour, and as psychologists know, attitudes and beliefs are poor predictors of behaviour. For example, we all know people with very liberal attitudes and beliefs about life who still behave like reactionaries – gee, for some reason Bob Rae just popped into my mind. Even in the unlikely event that you can discover for yourself the crucial psychological factors in your life, simply changing your attitudes and beliefs about them, even if that is possible, is likely on average to have zero effect on your behaviour.

I suppose one could argue that Dr. Phil has uncovered an enormous vein of alienation in society and is at least trying to do something about it. And getting people to think about their lives and to take responsibility for them are good things, aren't they?

One could also argue, though, that what Dr. Phil has uncovered is an enormous vein of narcissism and paranoia. According to Dr. Phil, the individual starts out as perfect and his problems begin when other people take part in his or her life. In fact, his conception of the fulfilled life is startlingly similar to the one conventionally assumed to be that of the prettiest girl in high school. The appeal of this conception to such a large part of the North American population is at the very least depressing.

Viewed in this light, Dr. Phil's ability to get people to think about their lives and to take responsibility for them would seem sinister if there were any chance of his ideas working. Would you like to work for an "authentic" boss who thought you were the source of all his problems?

Of course the truth is probably less threatening, or at least we can hope that it is. I don't believe that Dr. McGraw is a charlatan or any other kind of crook. Unlike respected members of the conventional religious community he isn't peddling consecrated prayer cloths or oil with the story that they'll make you rich or cure you of cancer. He actually wants people to think, which in my experience is a sign of sincerity. For all I know Dr. McGraw's intent is to use people's narcissism and paranoia to get them to examine their own lives rationally, and then to substitute effective non-narcissistic and non-paranoid strategies and tactics for the ineffective narcissistic and paranoid ones they have been using. Where was id, there let ego be, and maybe Dr. McGraw thinks you have to trick people into substituting ego for id.

If that is Dr. McGraw's strategy, it is still likely to be ineffective, for the reasons which have been given above. So why do people swear by Dr. McGraw's immature ideas and patently ineffective internal audits? One reason is that, like many psychologists and psychiatrists, Dr. McGraw may well have an ability to get people to change which is independent of his ideas. That is, he does help people personally, but not for the reasons he thinks he does.

Of course that doesn't do anything for people who just buy his books or sit in a large audience at one of his seminars, but there is also a phenomenon called cognitive dissonance reduction. If you pay money for a book or to attend a huge seminar at which you do not get personal attention you have an interest in believing that you got your money's worth, so you believe it.

Then again, people's problems are not naturally immutable. As we know, many people's problems become less serious over time without therapy or counselling. If that improvement follows a reading of one of Dr. McGraw's books then one may attribute it to the application of his principles. And Dr. McGraw makes a lot of money, so everybody's happy. Which is what everyone wanted in the first place, isn't it?

It is most likely, though, that the reason people swear by Dr. Phil is that there is always a seller's market in hope. As Dr. Johnson observed, hope is the chief species of enjoyment that human life affords. Unfortunately, the supply of hope is always limited, especially since conventional religion lost its ability to inspire it. Obviously Dr. McGraw's contention that your life is not hopeless but in fact an unending opportunity for unlimited gratification is going to appeal to people, and it will be all the more appealing for being so lengthily argued.

In other words, ideas like Dr. Phil's are religious. In a country which has abandoned the old gods, people like Dr. Phil step in to introduce a new opiate for the masses, a new improved god for a new improved society. The most popular new god is the self, which if left unfettered will, according to Dr. Phil, bring about paradise on earth. You can say another thing for Dr. Phil, though – he's got enough guts to place his paradise on earth, rather than in the neverneverlands where conventional religions place theirs.

Forgive Me, Dr. Phil, For Others Have Sinned © John FitzGerald, 2002

Oprah hates you, girlfriend

Oprah – what a gal! I didn't have to use her last name for you to know who I was talking about! She's on TV, she writes books, she has a glossy magazine, she raises millions for charity, she puts millions of her own money into philanthropic projects. Why does she have those millions of dollars? Because millions of people hang on her every word.

And what are those words saying? Often they're saying admirable things. Oprah (the NIH style book says I should call her Ms Winfrey, but really – she's Oprah!) – as was saying, Oprah was one of the few major American figures in either show business or the news business to question the utility of invading Iraq (which was a Good Thing regardless of whether or not you think the invasion was a Good Thing). She has played a major role not only in making the mainstream of society aware of the problems of people on its margins, but also in getting the mainstream of society to accept marginal people into the mainstream.

But...there's another side to Oprah. Much, if not most, of what she tells her audience, which consists chiefly of women, is "There's something wrong with you, girlfriend." There is a lot of money to be made in telling women they don't measure up, and Oprah seems to have made most of it.

The most frequent theme on her website is that women need to improve themselves. They need to be more organized, they need to figure out what they want to do with their life and then do it, they need to improve their health, and, most of all, they need to lose weight.

But – you don't have to take my word for it. Simply visit her website. I visited it on March 26, 2007 and here's what I found.

First of all, here are some of the topics on the page that day:

• Top five personal rules to live by
  
• How to improve yourself from the inside out
  
• The five best things to do for your relationship
  
• Dr. Oz's Excuse-Busting Workout

Do you get the feeling, girlfriend, that Oprah thinks that maybe you're totally messed up? I mean, you don't even have your
own rules to live by! Or, if you do, they're not as good as Oprah's!

What are those five rules to live by, anyway? They turn out to be the opinion of one Martha Beck, who starts her advice by writing "When you spend almost all your time thinking about how people can achieve their best destiny, as I do....." And here they are:

1. A little pain never hurt anybody.
   
2. Sunscreen is for necks and chests, not just faces.
   
3. Television is a vitamin (Ms Beck goes on to say that watching television is "essential for social and personal well-being").
   
4. It is good to be wrong.
   
5. You can work miracles.

Hmm. Do you think Oprah might have some ulterior motive in promoting the idea that television watching is essential to your well-being? And I wonder how much sunscreen stock she holds. No, I'm not being cynical here. It just seems strange to me that an intelligent woman like Oprah would think that two of the most important considerations in leading the Good Life should be slathering on the sunscreen and plunking yourself down in front of the box.

The advice about being wrong is good, and presents some important ideas from the philosophy of science in a way that's easy to understand. But, you know, a little pain can hurt you. For example, if you're like me and have a high threshold of pain, you can find out that those little pains you were feeling were symptoms of a big problem, the probability of whose existence you discounted because you weren't feeling big pain.

Anyway, Ms Beck advises you to get through pain at the dentist by thinking "It's only pain," when the most effective way of getting through it is to say "Hey, cut that out and give me some more freezing."

And then there's "You can work miracles." I have news for Ms Beck and Oprah – if anyone could work miracles, they wouldn't be called miracles. Ms Beck's idea of a miracle is the nice backyard she built for herself. That ain't a miracle, Martha – that's gardening. If you want us to believe in your power to work miracles, tell us how you managed to build that garden when people were throwing things at you every time you stuck your head outdoors (a request whose relevance will become apparent over the rest of this article).

The idea of people being able to work miracles is fundamental to Oprah's view of the world, as it is to her close comrade-in-arms Dr. Phil. Dr. Phil tells Oprah's followers that they have the power to accomplish whatever they want. Oprah also vigorously promotes The Secret, a book full of new Age nonsense about how your thoughts about becoming successful "magnetically" attract success to you. If you surf through the "Thoughts for the Day" on Oprah's website, you find one quotation after another about pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps. Of course, that implies that you need to pull yourself up by your bootstraps, and the rest of the site is about how you're too dumb to find your own bootstraps.

For example, as we noted before, Oprah tells you how to improve your "relationship" (by which is meant your relationship with the man – sic – you're sleeping with) by following just five simple rules for dealing with problems in it. Here they are:

1. Stop all shame, blame, and criticism
   
2. Change from a critical habit of mind to a positive one.
   
3. When your relationship has a "breakdown," deal with it by apologizing, showing affection, and promising to take action to improve things.
   
4. Don't expect your man to give you the sex a porn star would.
   
5. Don't let your relationship get stale.

Not bad advice, as far as it goes, but the problem is that it only goes as far as the woman. Men apparently need to take no action to promote a good relationship. The commentary about rule 1 advises women that "men need to feel competent." You know, maybe if they want to feel competent they could start being competent. Isn't that a plan?

As for rule 3, the irony of this advice being the tactic men use to cop out of their responsibilities in a relationship is lost on Oprah. "If you take me back, baby, I'll never do it again, I swear. C'mon, give me a hug." You know, Oprah, men are hip to that jive. Anyway, how about getting them to promise to take some action? How about them doing something to keep the relationship from going stale?

Oprah's vision of paradise is of a world in which women have improved themselves by becoming more satisfactory to men. Again, you don't have to take my word for it. Just visit her website and look at all the links on the home page to articles about losing weight, becoming more beautiful, and complying with men's wishes.

Where does this vision come from? My colleague Wentworth Sutton believes it may be a neurotic manifestation of psychic traumas Oprah suffered in childhood. According to Oprah, she was horrifically abused in her mother's questionable care, and became a success after going to live with her father, who loved her and encouraged her to become the success she is today. And today she thinks women are defective. Hmmm.

As Wentworth freely admits, his analysis could be a load of the old cobblers. I have included it here chiefly because I need a structural device to get me to my boffo finish. Nevertheless, Oprah's fondness for Dr. Phil, who advises people that
they become successful only when they liberate themselves from the influence of others, suggests that Wentworth may be on to something.

Wentworth's explanation, even if it's valid, does not, of course, imply that Oprah's advice to women is bad. The thing that implies that it is at least partly bad, though, is that it encourages women to believe that they are solely responsible for their own problems and that they can extricate themselves from their problems solely through their own individual action. Okay, sometimes that's true. I have good reason to suspect, though, that usually it's not. Ask the women who have tried to deal with their abusive husbands by implementing rule 3 about improving your relationship.

So, is Oprah a force for good? Yes. Is Oprah a force for bad? Yes.

In the end, then, Oprah is just like us.

What a gal!

Oprah Hates You, Girlfriend ©
John FitzGerald, 2007

Pathology is destiny

Thirty years ago the progressive opinion about the differences in the characteristic behaviour of men and women was that they were the result of sexist childrearing, but these days progressive opinion is divided. Behavioural differences are thought by some to be the product of hormonal differences, for example, by others to be the result of a conspiracy among men to oppress women, and so on and so on.

One possibility appears to have been neglected, though. When we look at the conventional catalogue of differences between men and women, we find that men are assumed to have characteristics remarkably similar to the characteristics of people with brain injury.

On the whole, men are more violent than women and more likely to express anger. They are more likely to be restless and impatient. They have been shown to have poorer verbal abilities than women. They are often assumed to have difficulties with attention (being unable to find things which are in plain view, for example) and with memory (as when they forget important anniversaries). They are often assumed to be more egocentric and impulsive.

All these characteristics are associated with brain injury. Men are twice as likely as women to be diagnosed with traumatic brain injury, and most victims are young men aged 15 to 30. Young men are more likely than young women to take dangerous risks and to suffer head injury as a result. These figures, of course, apply only to diagnosed brain injuries, injuries which at the very least have resulted in loss of consciousness, loss of memory, alteration of mental state, or neurological deficit – that is, injuries other people notice and arrange to have treated in hospital.

However, men are also more likely to suffer concussion which, although it usually does not have the catastrophic consequences of more serious brain injury, still has some pretty serious ones. "Repeated concussions," note Kelly, Nichols, Filey, Lillehei, Rubinstein and Kleinschmidt-Demasters in an article published in JAMA in 1991 (vol. 266, no. 20, pp. 2867-2869), "can lead to brain atrophy and cumulative neuropsychological deficits."

As children we often hit our heads without the idea crossing anyone's mind that we should undergo a neurological examination. Boys are more likely to hit their heads. As boys grow older they take part in contact sports. Kelly et al. reported that in 1991 football was producing an estimated 250,000 concussions every football season in the United States, and that 20% of high school football players in the United States suffered at least one concussion every season. The probability that at least some of the behavioural difference between men and women can be explained as a result of brain trauma seems fairly high.

History confirms the thesis. The behavioural differences between men and women are less marked than in the past, and society is less violent and less dangerous. Until fairly recently, for example, a large part of the male population spent much of its time working in dangerous occupations without head protection; one of these occupations was war, in which men often found themselves fighting hand to hand in conditions likely to lead to brain injury. Today, of course, jobs are less dangerous, workers wear head protection, and war is fought with weapons which act from a distance. As the likelihood of brain injury has decreased, so have the behavioural differences between men and women.

In North America, contemporary worship of sport threatens to widen the gap again. The most popular sport in the United States is football, while in Canada it is hockey. Both sports inflict head injury at a high rate, and both are played primarily by men. Women's hockey is popular, but the women's game is less violent (bodychecking is prohibited) and far fewer women than men play hockey. The fanatical devotion of young boys to these sports seems likely to create a more "masculine" generation.

In the end, then, the behavioural differences between men and women may not be due to hormones, the worldwide male conspiracy, or, as women seem commonly to suppose, men's inherent moral and intellectual inadequacy. They may after all be due to sexist childrearing, but not in the way people thought in the 1960s and 1970s. That is, the problem may not be that girls are trained to act in submissive ways, but rather that boys are encouraged to act in ways which endanger their physical, emotional, and intellectual function.

The question remains of how we are to eliminate this sexism. Well, one thing that would help would be for young women to stop encouraging young men in this behaviour. Young women reward football players, hockey players, motorcyclists, and so on. They reward the recklessness which produces brain injury. Another big help would be for schools, including our institutions of higher learning, to stop promoting sports which produce brain injury. Movies and television will have to stop promoting the invulnerable action hero as the model of masculine behaviour.

Okay, I knew it was too much to ask. We won't act on this problem, even though action, even if it didn't eliminate differences between the sexes, would reduce the horrible toll exacted by brain injury among both men and women. The opportunity for each of the sexes to feel superior to the other would be reduced, opportunities for profit would be reduced, and we couldn't have that. What was I thinking?

Pathology is Destiny © John FitzGerald, 2001

Lightning, lotteries, and probability

People often claim you have more chance of being struck by lightning than of winning the lottery. The argument appears to be that one Canadian in 5 million is struck by lightning every year, while your chances of winning the standard 6/49 lottery are about one in 14 million, and one in 5 million is a higher probability than one in 14 million. However, this reasoning is unsound.
The problem is that these two probabilities are not comparable. The estimate of the probability of being hit by lightning is an empirical one, derived from observation, and applies to an entire year's worth of thunderstorms. The estimate of the probability of winning the lottery is a mathematical one, derived from a formula which applies to a single drawing of the lottery.

We could derive from the first estimate the probability of being struck by lightning at the time the lottery number is drawn, which would provide a fairer comparison (and one which would favour the lottery), but the more important issue is why we would want to do that. The frequency of an event relative to electrocution by lightning is not a standard of worth. For example, the probability that an individual Canadian will become prime minister in the next year is lower then the probability that he or she will be struck by lightning, but no one would conclude that that difference in probabilities tells us anything about the value of the Canadian political system.

Lightning, Lotteries, and Probability ©: 2001, John FitzGerald

Howl

The Fifties, we are told, were a time when everyone and everything was trite, respectable, and boring. Louis St-Laurent led the country as it sleepwalked through the decade. Ozzie and Harriet and Leave It to Beaver kept millions entranced in front of their television sets. Norman Vincent Peale and Dale Carnegie wrote best-sellers.

People, though, have forgotten John Diefenbaker, a prime minister vastly more interesting than the simulacra of corporate lemmings who have been running this country since the mid-Eighties. They have forgotten Charlotte Whitton, a mayor who makes Mel Lastman look like a retired refrigerator salesman. They have forgotten that in the Fifties the CBC routinely presented items like Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" in prime time, as well as dramas about contemporary public injustices rather than about injustices conveniently long past. They have forgotten that in the United States, television brought down Joe McCarthy.

In literature the Fifties had a certain edge to them, too. Today's writers have been absorbed into the giant publicity and distribution systems of modern global publishing. In the 1950s, though, people actually published books that got banned and seized by the police.

One such book was Howl and Other Poems by Allen Ginsberg, published in 1956 by the legendary City Lights Books of San Francisco. It was seized by U. S. Customs and by the San Francisco police, and was the subject of a long trial for obscenity (it was finally concluded that the book was not obscene).

These days, people don't get quite so upset about poetry. They don't really get emotional about anything. Contemporary life is basically a lock-step procession of zombies into the abyss. Having abandoned the use of our brains we have satisfied our need for guiding principles by adopting those sold to us by the same media which so effectively sell beer, tampons, and anything with the word light in it. The world is filled with dutiful citizens who spend their waking hours occupied with the thoughts "We must reduce the deficit; we must reduce the debt; I must save for my retirement."

These observations were inspired by a review that – thinking of the impending millennium, whenever that may be – I once conducted of poetry written in English during the twentieth century. It's frightfully refined, isn't it? Compare, for example, the horridly bloodless poems of James Kirkup to the highly raffish and scabrous life he vividly and engagingly recounts in the many volumes of his autobiography.

Certainly, great poetry was written in the twentieth century. There is the work of Wallace Stevens, for example, and one must admit that despite its superficial reserve it does have a distinct visceral aspect. Some – we repeat, some – of T. S. Eliot's work (or the work which he may have plagiarized) actually says something about reality, although something like "The Dry Salvages" deserves the name it is usually given around the literary department – "The Dry Heavages".

Nevertheless, the general run of poetry in the twentieth century is largely trivial. Poetic form has been abandoned, and what chiefly distinguishes poetry from prose these days is typography. Prose is written in paragraphs, while poetry is arranged differently on the page.

For example, on my daily trips in the funereal equipages of the Toronto Transit Commission, I have become acquainted with Poetry on the Way, a program which puts Canadian "poetry" in the place of advertising cards. The supposed poetry to which we are treated consists largely of trite and inelegant writing arranged in scattered blocks of print. Louis Dudek writes a couple of quick sentences about a seeming contradiction in his dogs' behaviour and then arranges them in arbitrary lines within a couple of blocks of print placed at random on the page and voilà…there's your poetry. In the literary department's opinion this type of work seems to have little in common with the definitely poetic – "Bateau Ivre," say – but that opinion is a minority one these days.

By modern standards, then "Howl," which takes up a third of Howl and Other Poems, is poetic. It doesn't rhyme and it doesn't scan, but it is written in a series of hanging indents, so it's poetry. But is it good poetry? That question has been much debated over the past forty-two years.

Certainly "Howl" is gripping. It seizes your attention at the very beginning and doesn't let go. It inspires you to read it aloud, an effect some people still consider to be a mark of good poetry. It inspires you to shout it aloud, and that may be a bit unrefined for most responsible contemporary citizens.

One of the characteristics preferred by modern consumers of poetry is obscurity. Obscurity allows the reader to bathe in a pleasant wonderment at the incomprehensibility of existence, which is apparently a pleasant experience for many. It is certainly a convenient preference for those whose goal is to maintain the populace in its apparently exemplary state of zombitude. "Howl", though, wants you to actually get up and do something, even if it's just to get excited. "Howl" is not obscure. It focusses your attention on actual real things and expects you to think about them.

Two other characteristics often considered these days to be defining characteristics of poetry are loveliness and fatuousness. Anything that deals too clearly with the facts of life is likely to upset the privileged types who make
up most of the modern poetry market. The poetry market in fact consists chiefly of social ballast – people with comfortable jobs and comfortable lives who don't actually do anything productive but who keep society stable by acting in accordance with one of the approved social myths. In poetry, as in fiction, in belles-lettres, and in non-fiction, this group prefers impressionist gewgaws, the elegantly puzzling, and the self-confidently stupid.

"Howl" is neither lovely nor obscure, and although it is often fatuous, there is still enough intelligent appreciation of the real in it to disqualify it on that score as well. How can you not like "I saw the best minds of my generation...who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities contemplating jazz"? How can you not like "who cut their wrists three times successively unsuccessfully, gave up and were forced to open antique stores where they thought they were growing old and cried"? How can you not like "[who] rose reincarnate in the ghostly clothes of jazz in the goldhorn shadow of the band and blew the suffering of America's naked mind for love into an eli eli lamma sabachthani saxophone cry that shivered the cities down to the last radio"? How can you not like:

"I'm with you in Rockland/where we wake up electrified out of the coma by our own souls' airplanes roaring over the roof they've come to drop angelic bombs the hospital illuminates itself  imaginary walls collapse        
O skinny legions run outside           
O starry-spangled shock of mercy the eternal war is here                
O victory forget your underwear we're free"?

How can you not consider this to be good poetry?

Well, some of the ideas in those excerpts are trite, but so are most of the ideas
in much highly regarded poetry. One problem with the excerpts, though, is that they are exuberant, as is the rest of "Howl." Exuberance is démodé
these days, considered appropriate only in adolescence or in appreciation of a sporting event. In other ages or circumstances we are not to indulge in anything which might impair our solemn concern about the important social issues helpfully defined for us by the Liberal and Conservative Parties of Canada and the International Monetary Fund.

"Howl" also makes too many references to phenomena typical only of the lives of the less favoured, and these days the appetite for literary slumming is much less keen than it was in 1956. Memories of the Depression are much rarer and fainter now, as is the realization that the misfortunes of the poor are not a sign of their moral inferiority to us, the more favoured.

"Howl" also fails to meet contemporary standards by refusing to lie quietly on the page without bothering us after we lay the book down. The images stay in our heads, distracting us from contemplation of the moral necessity of the elimination of barriers to international trade.

"Howl" is just too raucous. It offends the contemporary sensibility by being vital, vibrant, and exciting. It provides an unpleasant contrast with the pageant of steely-eyed sadism which passes for both entertainment and news these days. It suggests that there is an alternative to the modern "lifestyle" of hard work and regular deposits in one's retirement fund. "Howl" is actually fun, and if the masses ever re-acquire a taste for having fun with serious ideas, whatever will happen to us?

Howl © 1998, John FitzGerald

God works in mysterious ways

Faith is a fine invention
For gentlemen who see,
But microscopes are prudent
In an emergency.

–Emily Dickinson

Did George W. Bush lie about Iraq's supposed weapons of mass destruction? Did he lie about Iraq's supposed plans to obtain uranium? Did he lie about Saddam Hussein's supposed support for al-Qaeda?

Probably not. He probably didn't tell the truth, but the reason he didn't is far more interesting than the idea that he simply lied.

One fact which people consider important about the contemporary Republican Party is its strong support among evangelical Protestants. Chief among these evangelical Protestants is Pat Robertson, head of the Christian Broadcasting Network, which grew out of his evangelical television show The 700 Club. Despite the recognition of the importance of the evangelicals to the Republican Party, though, no one seems to have realized the connection between evangelical theology and the Bush administration's dubious assertions.

Now, no one questions Christians' abilities to come up with wacky ideas. After all, the largest Christian denomination continues to organize its worship around what it considers to be an act of cannibalism in which believers consume the body and blood of their god. Nevertheless the evangelicals have come up with a few lulus lately.

Pat Robertson is known as an exponent of Kingdom Now teachings. In themselves Kingdom Now teachings are not all that wacky, but he combines them with another type of evangelical teaching which is, to use the technical term, looney.

Kingdom Now teachings hold that it is the duty of Christians to establish dominion over the earth by taking control of government and social institutions (I said they weren't all that wacky, not that they weren't wacky). Is it all that surprising that sending missionaries to Iraq turned out to be one of the chief American concerns after Iraq fell? Anyway, Kingdom Now devotees believe the Second Coming will be postponed until this dominion is established.

Kingdom Now adherents have many close relationships with another Protestant school of thought, the Word-Faith movement, also known as Positive Confession (we have now reached the really wacky bit). Word-Faith holds that if a person has faith, any word that he utters as a consequence of that faith must be true. Often the proponents of this view – the most prominent these days being Kenneth Copeland, Paul and Jan Crouch, and Benny Hinn – encourage people to believe that faith can make them rich.

Wealth, in fact, is seen as the right of the believer. Word-Faith has a highly deistic view of God, and believes that if what you say is based on faith in God, God is required to make your utterances true. So if you say "God will make me wealthy" (a statement of the type known as a positive confession), God must make you wealthy. Really. They believe that.

On the other hand, Word-Faith preachers tend to be loaded, so maybe they're onto something. Have a look at Rod Parsley's television show sometime. Besides being one of the most entertaining people on television, Pastor Parsley simply reeks of moolah. His suits are magnificent, and his headquarters in Columbus, Ohio is starting to make the Taj Mahal look like a shack. Benny Hinn doesn't look as if he has to go down to the food bank too often, either, although you'd think if positive confession was all that effective he could do something about his hair.

Anyway, one Kingdom Now adherent who has close ties to Word-Faith is...Pat Robertson! The 700 Club has Word-Faith preachers like Rod Parsley as guests, and the show has long featured Word-Faith shticks like praying over stacks of viewers' letters containing prayer wishes.

Now, George W. Bush, as every Republican tells us, is a spiritual man. No doubt he has been heavily influenced by Pastor Robertson. When faced with doubt about whether Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, what would a Word-Faith believer do? He would believe that if he said Iraq had WMDs, then Iraq must have them.

That does seem to be the most persuasive explanation of what happened. It is simply more plausible than thinking that a bunch of intelligent people like Mr. Bush's advisers could think they could lie about issues like that and get away with it. It's more likely that they thought that if they believed it then it must be true.

Of course, many people think like that without the encouragement of evangelical preachers, and this type of thinking is rampant among the wildly popular American success experts. Even Dr. Phil, who at least has had the decency not to start his own cult, tells people that they come into this world with every ability they need to get whatever they want. However, among the exponents of this doctrine it is Pat Robertson who is the power within the Republican Party and the source of much of its funding. President Bush is more likely to have been influenced by him than by Dr. Phil or Anthony ("if I can go from being an overweight slob living in a rundown apartment to being an immensely wealthy exemplar of fitness who is accused of stealing other men's wives then so can you") Robbins.

The Administration's response to the failure to discover weapons of mass destruction confirms my analysis. Instead of simply planting some evidence, they continue to tell us that they are sure they will find some WMDs. They believe they will, so it must be true.

When you think about it, isn't it much better to have your country run by a bunch of those lying bastard politicians that everyone is always complaining about than by a bunch of religious wackos who are immune to reason and evidence? A lying bastard would have known better than to lie about things you could be caught out on.

But what about Tony Blair? He's probably not a Word-Faith devotee, and he's not a lying bastard (because a lying bastard would have known better). So I guess that makes him a stupid bastard.

Originally published in 2003

God Works in Mysterious Ways © 2003, John FitzGerald

Better living through cynicism!

According to a passage in The Picture of Dorian Gray, a cynic is someone who knows the price of everything but the value of nothing.

Since being published in 1890, that little statement has enjoyed an attractiveness longer-lived than even Dorian's. It is approvingly quoted any time someone wants to castigate someone else for being a cynic.

Somehow the people who use this quotation seem not to have noticed that it's one of Wilde's characteristic paradoxes. It's a cynical remark about cynicism. So by quoting it to castigate cynics you become a cynic yourself. As Lord Alfred Douglas would have said, way cool.

So if it's contradictory to be cynical about cynicism, let's be consistent and be upbeat and positive about it! Wow! What a great idea! I can think of all sorts of wonderful things that the cynical community has given to the world!

• First of all, there's contemporary television! Cynical television executives realized that if they took the value, or quality, out of television programs they could reduce the price! When they reduced the value and price of television programs, they ended up with shows like Survivor and The Bachelor! And that's a good thing! How do I know? Because everybody likes them as much as those expensive "quality" shows they replaced! Wow! High ratings, low cost! I guess sometimes it helps not to know anything about value!

• Then there's contemporary fashion! Cynical marketers suspected that what people wanted in fashion was nothing more than a trademark that certified they'd spent a lot of money on a garment or accessory. How could they find out? Why, they marketed expensive clothes that were identical in every way to cheaper garments except that they prominently displayed the designer's trademark! That's how we got the $100 T-shirt! And you know what! Everybody bought them! Lower costs for designers, but higher revenues – who needs to know about value!

• And of course there's contemporary politics! Neo-conservative and neo-liberal politicians just couldn't see the value in democracy. For them, democratic values could be reduced to one question – how much did they have to pay? So they embarked on campaigns to cut social programs and to cut taxes. And you know what? Everybody loved the idea! They voted the slash and burn cynics into office, where they slashed and burnt! Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, Brian Mulroney, Mike Harris, they all slashed and burnt! And after they slashed and burnt they all got voted in again!

And you know what else – the possibilities are endless! What if...we combined all three of these things! What if we selected ordinary citizens at random to run for the Calvin Klein party on a platform of eliminating government service and reducing taxes to nothing! Now there you have absolutely no value at all! And everyone'd love it!

Instead of having to fork out to pay for the pet projects of a bunch of fat old ugly politicians, you'd have the discretion to purchase any service you wanted from any giant transnational corporation that was supplying it! You wouldn't have to put up with clunky old government health care, government police services, or government electricity, you could buy designer health care, designer police, and designer electricity!

And once Parliament was eliminated the parliamentary channel would be freed up for reruns of Survivor!

So what are you waiting for! Those old outmoded bleeding-heart do-gooder attitudes are yesterday's news! For a better society, for a better country, for a new improved, more confident YOU, let's all get cynical!

Better Living Through Cynicism © John FitzGerald, 2003

Frank who?

Ever heard of Frank Sprague? Sorry, you're thinking of Howard Sprague.

You may be asking, Why should I have heard of Frank Sprague? There's a good reason, really, which we'll get to after a largely cribbed but lively bio of Himself.

Anyway, Frank was a Connecticut boy who graduated from the United States naval Academy in 1878. He was interested in electricity a bit.

While serving in the navy, for example, he installed the first electric call-bell system on a U. S. Navy ship and invented a new type of dynamo. Okay, there were more types of dynamo still to be invented in those days than now, but there still weren't all that many people inventing them.

In 1883 he was persuaded to resign his commission and sign up with Thomas Edison. Frank introduced mathematical methods to Edison's operation, which until then had proceeded in its work by conducting trial-and-error experiments. Frank showed them how to use mathematics to select the experiments which would be most effective. He also fixed up Edison's system for distributing electricity from a central station.

The year after that – yup, he knocked those achievements off in his first year on the job – he decided he wanted to run his own company, so he resigned and set up Sprague Electric Railway and Motor Company.

At the time, electric railways weren't all that profitable an item. The electric streetcar had already been invented, but could only run on single lines – that is, cars couldn't transfer from one line to another. But Frank apparently was confident in his ability to make something out of electric railways, which he did.

But first – he invented the first commercially practical electric motor, which was heavily promoted by Edison, and invented a system for returning electricity from electrical equipment to their main supply systems. Both of these developments are handy if you're interested in making money off electric railways, of course.

In 1888 Frank built the first streetcar network in Richmond, Virginia. People came, people saw, and people wanted to build their own. Electric railways meant people could get to work faster, which meant cities could be bigger, which meant businesses could be concentrated together more effectively. By the end of 1889 one hundred and ten cities around the world had completed or begun Frank-style streetcar systems.

In 1890 Edison, who built most of Frank's equipment, bought Frank out. Frank, you see, was now interested in elevators. He realized that increasing the capacity of elevators would increase the earnings of tall buildings. So he and Charles R. Pratt improved the electric elevator. They invented the automatic elevator, for example. The Sprague-Pratt Electric Elevator ran faster with bigger loads than the hydraulic elevators which were then the standard, so people started queuing up for them, too. Frank then sold his company to Otis Elevator.

For his next trick, Frank turned his attention back to electric railways, devising a system by which electric railway cars could be hooked up in a train and controlled simultaneously by a single motorman in the lead car. People wanted them, too. Trains without locomotives produce more revenue per unit of rolling stock, and run faster and accelerate quicker than trains with locomotives. Frank had invented the subway train.

So, before turning forty Frank had revolutionized urban life. Buildings could be built taller and produce more revenue, and the increased number of workers needed for business districts full of tall buildings could be accommodated in the larger cities which his streetcar and commuter train systems allowed people to build. Along with other pioneers of electrification, Frank invented modern life.

And Frank didn't stop, continuing to improve electric traction, both horizontal and vertical, for the rest of his life. And you'd probably never heard of him until you started reading this article.

Why is Frank an obscure figure today? An important reason is probably his penchant for selling his companies and inventions to other people. Those companies had no reason to promote the achievements of Frank J. Sprague. On the other hand, many of the other giants of the electricity business of Frank's day didn't sell their businesses, and they're no better known today than Frank. What people today think when they see SIEMENS on the side of a factory is probably better left unconsidered.

In the end, though, the reason is simply that we're incurious drones. We're trained by incurious drones to be incurious drones. And really, curiosity is a threat to the stability of society. If everybody was always asking questions about everything, Iraq would hardly ever get invaded and gun registries would never get set up. It's much better for people to abjure curiosity in favour of cheap thrills. Frank's contemporary Lizzie Borden is far better known today than he is, and according to her trial she never did anything. Frank's contemporaries Ty Cobb and Babe Ruth are better known today than he, because they excited people. They electrified crowds in ball parks, and Frank electrified society. We know what we'd rather watch. And who we'd rather honour.
Frank who? © 2005, John FitzGerald

Syllogisms of apathy

• If one is not virtuous oneself, one can still profit from the virtue of others.
  
• There is no such thing as the golden mean. Moderation in all things is a recipe for mindless consumption. Drinking in moderation is unentertaining compared to drunkenness and uneconomical compared to sobriety.
  
• Politics is the process of establishing who's going to impose whose will on whom, or at least of establishing who thinks who's going to impose whose will on whom.
  
• Leadership is a talent exemplified by, among others, the fastest lemming.
  
• Self-righteousness: The common form of righteousness.
  
• If your knowledge of Italy came entirely from Italian television, you'd believe all Italian women were blondes.
  
• Fortune favours the fortunate.
  
• If we were ever privileged to be shown The Truth, we'd be too embarrassed to believe it.
  
• We no longer believe that suffering ennobles, but instead believe that it profits.
  
• Orderly habits are the sign of a disorderly mind.
  
• People make fun of the superstitious, but believe that a well-dressed person is trustworthy, and a beautiful one admirable.
  
• Reading allows us to live vicariously in a fantasy world other than the fantasy world we actually live in. Its chief function is to distract. People don't remember what they read, they don't think about it, they don't apply it in their lives – they don't even follow instructions. Perhaps it's because they've tried doing all these things.
  
• The chief problem with luck is figuring out which is the good and which the bad.
  
• Adoption is a process by which, instead of redistributing income, we redistribute children.
  
• People seem to feel compelled to offer a justification for their actions, but not to examine it.
  
• Euphemism is the politeness of the condescending.
  
• Since we can't tell the truth to ourselves, how can we be expected to tell it to others?
  
• Insecurity is the belief that one's life, to be successful, must be guided by something other than common decency.

Syllogisms of Apathy © John FitzGerald, 2005

Word up!

We live in the most public age in history, so we have more things to hide than people have ever had before. Since we have more secrets, we have to have more places to keep them. To make sure the secrets stay secret in those places, we need passwords.

I’ve got more passwords than the KGB. I have a password at the public library. I can reserve a book from home now, but only if I do it in secret, through a library account that I can only use if I enter my fourteen-digit library card number and the correct password. Besides that, every couple of years I have to provide proof of my identity.

For the first fifty-odd years of my life no one cared too much about who I was at all; now it seems my library card makes me a prime target for identity theft. But then, think of the havoc terrorists could wreak on the world if they were able to log on to my online library account and reserve whatever book they wanted.

I know, I know. There are good reasons for security precautions. There are bad reasons, too. In Ontario we now have to provide official identification when we vote – or rather, when we vote in person. If you vote by mail you don’t have to. Apparently the danger to the public interest from voter fraud is neatly balanced by the revenue it generates for Canada Post.

But the government also mails you a card, with your name and address on it, which you take to the polling station. Why do we need to provide further identification? Are they afraid we’re going to get mugged for these cards on the way to the polls? It’s not like we’re wearing signs reading I’m going to vote and can’t fight worth a damn.

Whatever your opinion is of the merits of passwords, whether you think all passwords are necessary or, like me, have the correct view of them, you must admit that life has changed considerably over the last twenty-five years or so. In 1980 the only secret number I had to remember was the combination to the lock on my locker in the basement of the building I lived in. Now I spend my days logging in to accounts. And waiting while other people log into accounts while I wait in line behind them.

When I got a letter in the old days, I didn’t have to enter a password to open it, even though in getting it to me the post office had left it vulnerable at several points to interception by the nefariously minded or the royally mounted. In fact, we still require no password to open letters, even though the mail is no better protected. You could open one of those drop boxes for letter carriers with a can opener.

I suppose the problem is that the criminals are becoming as computer-bound as we are. They spend so much time entering passwords and checking e-mail that they just don’t have time to go out and bribe a letter carrier to lend them his or her keys for a few hours. So they end up having to conduct their business through the internet, trying to get e-mail recipients to go to phony websites and innocently enter their credit card numbers – and passwords.

The price of convenience is eternal inconvenience, it seems. In the old days, if I couldn't find a book I wanted at the bookstore, I'd ask the bookstore to order it for me, then go back a week or so later to pick it up.

If I can't find a book I want in the bookstore these days, I search a website or two, find the book, log into my account with my password (if I have one) or create an account (if I don’t), fill out forms, supply my credit card number and the special four-digit code, click a button, print out the receipt, log out, then sit back and wait a week or so for the book to turn up.

I have saved the time I would have spent previously going back to the bookstore. Time is money, and money talks, and talk is cheap, etc. The time I save by using my password I can now use for productive activities, like waiting for hackers to steal my credit card information off the bookstore website. Or making erroneous entries on Wikipedia. Or sitting hunched over my computer, entering more passwords.

Word Up © John FitzGerald, 2007

Why we hate lawyers

Jokes about lawyers are very popular these days, and the most popular ones display, especially in these politically correct times, a surprising bloodlust:

What do you call 5000 dead lawyers at the bottom of the ocean?
A good start!

What do you do if you run over a lawyer?
Back over him to make sure. Then, make another notch on the steering wheel.

What do have when a lawyer is buried up to his neck in sand?
Not enough sand.

Now what do lawyers do to arouse such animosity? Chiefly, the problem is that they're smart. Being smart is definitely démodé these days. It is outré. It is, above all, pas comme il faut.

For one thing, having to acknowledge that someone other than us is smart restricts our ability to perform our duty of esteeming ourselves. Moreover, the existence of a group of people who make good money from living by their wits rather than by doing what they're told to do makes most of us feel inadequate, so we hate them.

Intelligence is also the enemy of the good life, as defined for us by giant corporations. It hinders our ability to follow the directions for living that our employers so thoughtfully send us over our cellphones and pagers, and that Oprah and other corporate giants send us over the airwaves. If we actually exercised intelligence, how could we enjoy Survivor, taking work home on the weekend, or reading all those self-help books? Lawyers are intelligent – they must want to ruin our lives.

Furthermore, lawyers are just not genteel enough. If the people had their way, life would not be marred by such embarrassments as the release from prison of Donald Marshall, David Milgaard, Guy-Paul Morin, Rubin Carter, Rolando Cruz, and on and on. When society says that someone is a murderer, the well-behaved accept its judgment.

Often our hatred of lawyers is justified as a dislike of lawyers' greed. Given the incidence of selfless behaviour on our parts these days, though, we can safely assume that this explanation is but another example of the defence mechanism of projection. Feeling guilty about our own greed, we project it onto some outgroup. Certainly lawyers place a high value on their work, and like to get paid for every second of it. On the other hand, people are willing to pay their stratospheric fees, so maybe they're worth it.

Anyway, if lawyers were that greedy, they wouldn't be lawyers. They'd be where the real money is – playing professional sports. Representing the legal interests of citizens caught up in the toils of the "justice" system, or even the interests of giant corporations, pays peanuts compared to what you can get for batting balls about. And when you bat balls about, people worship you. And you get a lot more time off.

We also justify our hatred of lawyers as hatred of their questionable ethics. Insert your own sarcastic comment about that idea here.

Perhaps I have not persuaded you. Luckily for you, society seems to be evolving in a way which will make most lawyers obsolete. People seem to be losing interest in the mainstay of lawyers' business.

Specifically, they are losing interest in democracy. They don't vote; they don't pay attention to the issues when they do vote; they vote, as Ontario voters have done, to reduce their control over the expenditure of public funds. Democracy just takes too much of our valuable time in a world full of rewarding things to do, like watching So You Think You Can Dance or searching YouTube for videos of dogs dancing the hula. Why not just leave the running of society to the experts?

Once the experts take over lawyers will become unnecessary except, of course, to the experts. At any rate you won't have to deal with them, since your rights will be thoughtfully reduced to a convenient number you can protect all by yourself - the right to pay taxes; the right to have your urine tested; the right to be denied unemployment insurance, workers' compensation, and health care. And, of course, the right to tell jokes about lawyers.

Why We Hate Lawyers © John FitzGerald, 2001