Essay: "Black Swans and Game of Thrones"

Warning: This essay contains spoilers about the first season of Game of Thrones and the first book in the series A Song of Ice and Fire.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb defined a "Black Swan" event as follows:

"First, it is an outlier, as it lies outside the realm of regular expectations, because nothing in the past can convincingly point to its possibility.  Second, it carries an extreme impact.  Third, in spite of its outlier status, human nature makes us concoct explanations for its occurrence after the fact, making it explainable and predictable."

What's great about Taleb's book is how it points to a simple phenomenom that most of us (myself included) managed to ignore: how bad we are about predicting the future, and how good we are about forgetting about how bad we are about predicting the future.

Memoir: "The Burden of Control"

Last year, about this time, I went on a trip to Uganda to visit my little sister, who spends a lot of time in Africa doing research for her PhD (she's in AIDS research).  Now Uganda is very, very poor.  The roads are terrible and dangerous, the buildings are all falling down, and there's not much infrastructure.  So there's not a lot of "culture", per se.  The local people eat simple food and have simple hobbies.  Furthermore, unlike, say, Asia or the Middle East, "civilization" is a relatively new thing.  Most of the cities were founded in the late nineteenth century.  So there's not a lot of history you can see.

Essay: "The Solution to Piracy"

Like most people, sometimes I am a pirate.  One thing I don't pirate, however, is video games.  I tend to buy them through Steam.

Essay: "We Don't Need a Left-Wing Tea Party"

When the Tea Party movement first started up (at the time, hilariously referring to themselves as "tea baggers") I remember thinking that it wouldn't last too long.  It was just too stupid.  But I think, in the long run, their stupidity has been an asset to them, and I think this has some alarming implications for the new left-wing "Occupy Wall Street" movement.

Essay: "Humility in the face of randomness"

Most people, it seems to me, are obsessed with talent.  They look at someone successful, assume that person is successful for a reason, and work backwards (identifying the exceptional qualities that person has, or the exceptional things they did, that led to that person becoming exceptionally successful).  But is that initial assumption correct?  Are people really successful for a reason?

I have always believed that the differences between people are not as big as we think they are (click here for a great quote on this) and I have always chocked up my own successes and failures, and the successes and failures of others, to randomness, or to factors that have nothing to do with the matter at hand, rather than my skill and intelligence.

Essay: "Keeping it Real"

It seems to me that people, especially our generation, are very preoccupied with "authenticity."  You best see this when people go on vacation.  You'll take a trip to Rome or Paris and you'll be looking around for for a restaurant to go to, and you'll think to yourself: "I don't want to go to some tourist joint, I want to go get real Italian/French food.  I want to eat where the locals eat.  I want to get something authentic."

Which begs the question: if you are a tourist, isn't going to a tourist restaurant the authentic thing to do?  Isn't going to a local restaurant sort of a poseur move?

Essay: "In Defence of Baseball"

I'm not going to look up the stats, but I understand that they're pretty grim: young people aren't as interested in baseball as they are in other sports.  The reason for this is pretty straightforward - baseball is fucking boring.  I love baseball, I was raised on it, it's probably my number one team sport (although my passion is on a slow burn these days until the Blue Jays look like they have a chance of making the playoffs) but even I'm aware of it, especially early in the season, when I'm adjusting from the frantic pace of the NBA and NHL playoffs or the structured mayhem of the NFL.  I'll be sitting there, enjoying a 5-3 win in April over the Kansas City Royals, while the pitcher and the catcher are leisurely talking to each other, and I'll think to myself: man.  This game is boring.

Essay: "Being Ignorant the Hard Way"

"Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than he was before. He is full of murderous resentment for people who are ignorant without having come by their ignorance the hard way." - Kurt Vonnegut

Essay: "The Stupidest Myth in the World"

The death of Amy Winehouse  made headlines, but it didn't exactly sweep the social media landscape the way other, seemingly more trivial events, have done recently.  Whether you liked her style of music or not, Winehouse was exceptionally talented.  Her voice was unmistakable, of course, but her songs were very well put together too, and had an intense raw honesty that you don't see very much in popular music.

Essay: "Social Media and the Panopticon"

I was not particularly surprised by the riots after Vancouver lost game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals.  That kind of thing is nothing new, but you wouldn't know it from all the tut-tutting.  I think the spread of digitical cameras and social media made the stupidity and destruction of the riots hit home in a new way, much the same way that the photograph brought home the horrors of the American Civil war.

Essay: "Video Game James"

It's easy to forget, these days, how much people used to love Lebron James. I'm too lazy to look up the study, but the spread between those who looked on him favourably and those who disliked him was enormous for such a prominent athlete. Of course, that's all gone now, thanks to the way he publicly screwed around with Cleveland last year.

Essay: "The Future of the Novel - Part 2"

A reminder: I'm only discussing the survival of the novel as an art form, not as a business. My concern is not that Steve King or Random House will be poor. My concern is whether, in thirty years, people will read novels at all.

Essay: "The Future of the Novel - Part 1"

I resisted the temptation to call this essay the "death" of the novel. I hate it when people prematurely proclaim the death of things. It's so melodramatic. Relax everybody - the novel is never going to "die." But something his happening to the novel, something important enough that I think it's worth sitting back and thinking about what it is.

Essay: "What I Do Best Isn't Very Nice"

 "I'm the best at what I do. But what I do best isn't very nice." Wolverine

 I like to play videogames but I don't own a TV, so I'm not able to use a Playstation, Xbox, or Wii. After some careful thought and research, I decided to invest in a Playstation Portable (or PSP) around the same time I was wrapping up law school. I figured I deserved a treat, and it was right after the first God of War game was released for the system.

Essay: "Slacktivism"

Sometimes I've got a vague concept in my mind but don't have a word to express that concept. One of my favourite feelings is when I learn the word for that concept (if it already exists) or if someone invents a new word to do the job. I've got the feeling now, with the word "slacktivism."

News: Book Signing Sunday!

I will be signing copies of my book of short stories, "Deeper", at the Chapters in Etobicoke (1950 Queensway) on Sunday April 17 from 1 pm to 4 pm. Hope to see you all there!

Essay: "As Long As You Have A Why"

One of my favourite quotes was said by either Nietzche or Dostoevksy, I forget which, but I first read it in Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl - man can bear any 'how' as long as he has a 'why.'  It was one of those things I'd always known without realizing it. Imagine your boss tells you to work late. Does it make a difference to you if you really need to be staying late? Would it make a difference to you if you were staying late for no good reason? Of course it would. Staying late is a bad thing, but it can be bearable if there's a reason for it.

Essay: "Detroit Needs a Statue of Robocop: Part Two"

So why does Detroit need a statue of Robocop?

Essay: "Detroit Needs a Statue of Robocop: Part One"

On February 7, 2011, Detroit Mayor Dave Bing, in response to a direct question on the subject, tweeted that the city had no plans to build a statue of Robocop. The internet being what it is, calls for just such a statue immediately intensified, and a group of artists organized a fundraising campaign to make it happen. Within a week they had raised the necessary $50,000.

Essay: "The Problem of Good"

The "Problem of Evil" is the question of how evil can exist in the world if there is an all-knowing and all-powerful God who is good. It's a doozy. But evil also seems to be problem for secular folks, as well. Whenever anything terrible happens, when someone absconds with the trust funds or when a woman drowns her kids in the bathtub, it always seems like people just can't believe it (as satirized in this Onion article) and search desperately for a reason.

Essay: "Predators"

To see my African pictures, click here.

I recently took a three week trip to Africa which included a four day safari in Tanzania.  You have a guide who drives you around the national parks (including Ngorongoro Crater and the Serengeti) in a big SUV with a roof that lifts up so you can stand on your seat and look at the animals.  The animals are quite accustomed to the vehicles and so you can drive right up to them but they are otherwise living in an entirely natural environment.  Part of the magic of safari is that you never know what you might see (or, disappointingly, fail to see).

We were lucky and we saw all of the so-called big five animals.  Everyone has a favourite animal but, in general, most people seem to prefer the predators to the herbivores.