Categories
Media Shoddy Journalism Technology teh internets

Modern Life Is Not Rubbish

I’ve come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to technologies:

1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.

2. Anything that’s invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it.

3. Anything invented after you’re thirty-five is against the natural order of things.

So wrote the late great Douglas Adams, in (according to teh internets) The Salmon of Doubt.

It’s one of those great quotes to remember if you ever hear or read someone lazily complaining about technology ruining everything that was great about life (or, heaven forbid, catch yourself starting to think that way…)

Today’s Age has one such example: “Stop filming with your smart phone and start living”

The writer offers a varied list of complaints about how people today are doing it wrong, with all this technology they are carrying around allowing them to do stuff like film gigs, or have fictional relationships with Scarlett Johansson. Even, gosh, not talk to strangers in cafes:

Today, I watch as people sit in cafes alone, with headphones plugged in, eyes fixed on a scrolling personal tablet or phone screen, cocooned from their surrounds and people next to them. They’re chatting online to people they’ve never met in person.

Yeah. Because before smartphones I couldn’t stop talking to strangers whenever I was in a cafe on my own.

At least I’m not staring at strangers eating their lunch. Maybe you’re the weirdo in this scenario…

I was going to write more about this, but as with most things in life, there’s an XKCD comic for that. It makes the point far, far better than I ever could:

The Pace of Modern Life

Categories
Media Shoddy Journalism

China Eastern Airlines Passenger Eats For Free For A Year? I Call Bullsh…

So there’s this story doing the rounds. It tells of an enterprising guy in China who supposedly managed to eat for free for the best part of a year, purely by purchasing a first class ticket, which he then used to access the airline lounge. Once he’d finished eating for free in the lounge, he simply cancelled and rebooked his fully refundable ticket for the following day, and then repeated the exercise 299 times. When the airline found out, he cancelled the ticket and got a full refund.

Now we all like a story of the little guy finding a loophole to get one over the big corporation, but there’s something about this story that just doesn’t ring true for me.

It’s certainly been reported uncritically by churnalists worldwide with column inches to fill and pageviews to generate.

But let’s think about it for a moment. This guy can’t afford to pay for food, but he does supposedly have enough disposable income for a first class plane ticket (even if he gets the money back at the end, he still had to have enough spare cash to have the cost of the ticket tied up for the best part of a year).

And what about getting to the airport? Wouldn’t the cost of transport or parking outweigh the benefits of the free food?

Even assuming our hero works at the airport, or lives nearby, then he’d still have to check in every day and then proceed through security (as far as I can tell from this website, all of the lounges at Xi’an Airport are airside).

I’m not a fan of clearing airport security at the best of times. Is it really worth going through all that hassle every day just for a free feed?

And we’re supposed to believe that he got away with this 300 times? Don’t you think the staff at the check-in desk and at the lounge might have started to recognise him long before his three hundredth attempt?

As far as I can tell the story was first reported in the media in Kwong Wah Yit Poh, a Malaysian Chinese newspaper, from there it was picked up by News Limited, and from there, it spread like wildfire, each report gleefully repeating the same information without a moment’s thought to the fact that none of it stands up to even the most basic scrutiny.

I call urban legend. Total and utter made up rubbish.

It. Did. Not. Happen.

(I did eventually manage to find one other website out there calling this one out: this post on Shanghaiist suggesting that someone in China simply made it up…)

Categories
Shoddy Journalism

Lies, Damned Lies, and Sloppy Data Journalism

Flicking through The Age as I chewed on my lunchtime sandwich yesterday, this article, about car thefts in Victoria, caught my eye:

20140203-215654.jpg

It’s more interesting for what it doesn’t say than for what it does. It quickly skips right over what to me would be the most interesting part of the story:

While total thefts hit a 10-year low of 9624 in the 2012-13 financial year, the number of cars fewer than five years old being stolen hit an eight-year high

If ever you wanted an illustration that good news does not sell papers, then here it is.

Who cares about the good news that car thefts are at an all time low, when there’s a scare story about thieves breaking into houses to steal car keys to write instead?

To be fair, the online version of the article does include this graph (not shown by default, but it’s there if you bother to click through to it) showing the downward trend in car thefts over the last ten years:

20140203-220453.jpg

It’s even more significant in real terms if you consider that the total number of vehicles on the road has increased over that time (the ABS recorded an 11% increase in vehicles registered in Victoria since 2008 alone). So at a time when we have more vehicles on the road than ever before, we also have a massive decrease in the numbers of thefts.

This raises some interesting questions: Why has this happened? Has there been a change in police policy? Is it a societal change? Are thieves just stealing other things instead? Are modern cars getting harder to steal (unless you’ve managed to nick the keys)?

But instead of asking any of those questions, the Age chooses to build an article around the fact that in the last twelve months the number of cars under five years old that were stolen rose by… wait for it… 53:

20140203-222050.jpg

While it certainly looks like thefts of newer cars — after falling for a number of years — seem to be trending up again (from 6.6% of all thefts in 2003-04 to 11%) that’s still only a slighter bigger proportion of a much smaller total.

(I did wonder if this could be explained due to a change in the proportion of newer cars out there. The article doesn’t mention it, but these stats are clearly pretty meaningless without that information, but I checked, and according to figures in table nine in this annual report from the ABS, and the corresponding tables from previous years, the number of registered vehicles under five years old looks to have remained pretty constant over the last few years, at about 30% of all registered vehicles.)

On the other hand, elsewhere in the article, we have gems like this:

Thefts of Subarus (390), Hyundais (365), Volkswagens (92), BMWs (166) and Suzukis (82) hit a 10-year high in the 2012-13 financial year, with police data showing late-model Hyundais and Volkswagens were targeted more frequently than earlier models.

Holdens were the most targeted make, with 2295 reported stolen.

The most targeted make? Isn’t it also possible that, as Holden was Australia’s best selling brand of car for many years, there’s simply more of them to steal?

And are late model Hyundais and VWs “targeted more frequently” because more of them have been sold in the last few years?

Well, here’s some more ABS statistics to shed some light on it:

20140203-224600.jpg

I couldn’t find figures for Victoria alone, so we’ll have to make do with these Australia-wide ones, but with a 98% increase in the number of VWs and a 32% increase in Hyundais on the roads over the last five years, it’s hardly surprising that thefts of “late models” are at all time highs. They didn’t sell anywhere near as many of those cars 5 years ago as they do today. There’s many, many more “late models” of those on the roads than older ones.

Look! Here’s a chart that shows how Jaguars are massively more secure cars than Holdens…

20140203-231256.jpg

Just kidding. Of course it doesn’t show that at all, but unless you give me these figures as a proportion of the number of each make that are out in the wild, then the entire chart is just as meaningless.

Only then can we see which ones are “targeted” (if any). For example, I wonder why — based on those Australia wide stats — Toyotas only come in third on the thefts list when there appear to be more of them than any other car?

As it stands, The Age, all you’ve really demonstrated is that broadly speaking if there are more of a particular type of car on the roads, then more of them get stolen.

Next week in The Age’s Data Journalism column, a series of graphs exploring the defecatory habits of large furry mammals, and a companion piece on papal religious persuasion through the ages.

UPDATE (5/02): I was joking about the whole bears/pope thing, but imagine my amusement over lunch today when I found the next article from The Age’s Data Journalism unit. A massive free ad for trendsmap Ground-breaking research across a two page spread revealed that people in Melbourne quite like sport and shopping but hate commuting. Wow. Just wow.

Categories
Apple Technology

9 Things That Annoy Me About My iPhone

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m a big fan of my iPhone and iPad. As anyone who knows me will tell you, one or other of these devices is rarely far from my hands. Who could have imagined even ten years ago that we’d soon be carrying round massively-powerful, pocket-sized, portable computers with access to all the world’s information.

But in the spirit of first world problems that doesn’t mean I think they’re perfect. For the most part, they are extremely well designed, which is perhaps what makes all those slightly dubious design decisions all the more baffling. How could they get so many things so perfectly right and some other things so very wrong?

And because everything on the internet is now legally required to be written in list form, here are nine of my favourites…

The Massive Onscreen Volume Thing

So I’m watching a bit of video and I decide to adjust the volume.

No, that’s fine Apple, I didn’t really want to see what was happening in the middle of the screen anyway. I’m sure that bit’s not important.

20140117-113339.jpg

The Really Obtrusive Battery Warning

You know what would be a good idea when my iPhone is about to run out of battery?

How about a massive modal warning dialog that has to be dismissed before you can do anything else with the phone. It’s ok, I didn’t really want to end that call…

No, Really You Can't End The Call Until You Dismiss The Battery Warning...

They Don’t Even Apply Their Own Design Principles Consistently

Ever tried deleting a single text message in iOS7? In most cases to delete things in lists you are supposed to swipe one way or the other. In Messages for example, you can delete all the messages from a single contact by swiping left on that contact’s messages in the main screen, which reveals a delete button.

So why doesn’t this work for individual text messages? It is literally one screen away and they implemented deleting in an entirely different way. Swiping left when you are looking at individual messages just reveals the message timestamp where the delete button should be. I was so stuck I had to Google to find the answer and it turns out it’s: long hold on the text message; select More from the context menu; check the messages you want to delete; click the trashcan.

Because that’s intuitive.

They Still Haven’t Fixed Maps

Seriously, it’s been well over a year since they unleashed their half baked Maps on the world, and they still haven’t fixed it.

Look. Here’s an entirely fictitious train station that is as of today still apparently located somewhere in the backstreets of Fitzroy…

Fitzroy Train Station Is Real

It wouldn’t matter too much, because you can always use Google Maps. Oh, except…

You Can’t Change Your Default Apps

I know letting users choose how to use something isn’t really the Apple way, but every time I click on a link in Mail and accidentally end up in Safari or click an address and find myself in Apple Maps I wish it wasn’t…

Your Calendar Appointments Can Start At All Of The Minutes

But then on the other hand some features are flexible to the point of being ridiculous. Like the fact that you can schedule a meeting down to the exact minute.

Because people do that.

Just as well we didn’t exclude the all important “my meetings all start at 13:38” use case. It’s not as if catering for an edge case makes it massively more cumbersome for the vast majority of people to pick sensible times from the time picker tool.

(If you really must cater for those exact minute appointments, why not have the time picker default to 5 or 15 minute blocks and add a toggle somewhere to turn on all of the minutes if you really need them?)

You Can Choose All Of The Minutes

You Can’t Delete Their Apps

Stocks. Apple Maps. Game Center. Compass. Weather. Reminders.

I don’t need them. Why can’t I get rid of them?

Where Are The Little X Buttons?

iTunes

It’s not really a design problem with my iPhone, but I couldn’t write this list without mentioning the steaming turd that is iTunes. I’m a simple guy, with pretty simple requirements. I really don’t need it to do much: put files onto my iPhone and take them off again and that’s about it, but somehow it regularly fails to accomplish even this simple task.

And I’m sure there is some magic combination of phone and computer settings for Podcasts that will make it not screw up the apparently simple task of remembering which ones I’ve listened to regardless of which device I listened to them on, but I’ve given up trying to work out what it is. I’ve implemented the workaround of manually deleting anything I’ve already listened to on my phone from the computer before I sync otherwise iTunes just keeps copying it back across…

But If There’s Just One Thing That Gets Me Every Time, It’s This…

When I got my first iPod, almost 10 years ago, it was the attention to detail in the design that won me over. I can’t help thinking that maybe things have changed in that department.

And if there’s one feature that perfectly sums this up, it’s this: iOS 7 added a cute little animated graphic equaliser that identifies the current track.

But you know what? It. Doesn’t. Move. In. Time. With. The. Music.

Steve Jobs Would Never Have Let This Happen

Why would you do this, Apple, why??

Categories
Australia Politics

I’m Not A Tech Head

So in the end this most predictable of federal elections played out just about the way everyone said it would.

I know I live in a bubble of latte-sipping inner city hipsters, and this is a big old country with lots of odd people in it, but at times the election seemed to be taking place in a parallel universe. There was a bit at the start where they just talked about boat people over and over, with both major parties trying to outdo each other in a race to the bottom to see who could have the most inhumane policies. I continue to find it odd that this is such a big topic for debate, when I can’t imagine it directly affects many people’s daily lives in this country (not to mention the fact that many more asylum seekers arrive by plane than boat every day…) Unless people actually think that boat people are responsible for Sydney traffic congestion? I mean that would be just ridiculous, wouldn’t it?

[Also, as a point of interest, I find it rather odd that no one ever really talks about how our new glorious leader arrived in Australia. Clue: it wasn’t by plane. He wasn’t seeking asylum, of course, but still you’d think someone might have pointed out the irony by now…]

At least the new government have a six one no point plan to deal with it though…

And there was a lot of talk about “cost of living” pressures, and the economy. It doesn’t seem to matter that Australia currently has one of the strongest economies in the world, that it avoided a recession when everything went pear shaped in the rest of developed world, kept its AAA credit rating and that the whole cost of living thing is only really a problem if you’re prepared to ignore all the, um, facts. But then what place do facts have in politics, when you can tell people what they want to hear instead?

So despite all the gaffes, the creepy daughter thing, the “sex appeal” comments, Rupert has got what he wanted.

For anyone who doesn’t know our new glorious leader, he’s a ten minute introduction that tells you just about everything you need to know, including the utterly bizarre footage of that time he just sort of nodded for 30 seconds in an interview like a buffering You Tube video (a sign of what to expect from the shiny new Liberal NBN I suppose…)

Categories
Australia Politics Uncategorized

Civic Duty

I just scraped in. Tomorrow I become an Australian citizen and — thanks to the special provisions that allow new citizens to provisionally enrol to vote — on Saturday I’ll get to exercise my civic duty in the 2013 Australian Federal Election.

I’m taking this seriously, even if I might just be in it for the sausages.

I’ve studied the advice from Dennis the Election Koala, I’ve read the only real guide to the election that anyone could ever need, and listened to the months and months of empty rhetoric, lies, half truths, and outright bullsh*t.

So tonight I fired up belowtheline.org.au/editor/melbourne and had my first crack at putting together my ballot paper.

Back home it’s just an X in a box and you’re done, but with preferential voting here in Australia you have to put them all in order. Yes. All of them.

The House of Representatives is reasonably straightforward, because there’s only 16 to choose from, but the Senate vote is for the whole of Victoria. That’s a whopping 97 candidates to put in order. (I mean you *could* vote “above the line” and let someone else choose for you, but where’s the fun in that?)

Some tough decisions to make, though. Given that I fundamentally disagree with the entire platforms of well over half of the senate ballot paper, how am I supposed to decide which ones are least worst? Family First, One Nation, Rise Up Australia… how do I decide which of these utterly objectionable groups goes last last, and which goes least last?

[Rise Up Australia did provide the most obviously ironic candidate, so maybe they should get points for that. This would be the ultra-nationalist, staunchly anti-immigration, anti-multiculturalism party; their candidate for the House of Reps in Melbourne? Joyce Mei Lin Khoo]

Well anyway. I have made my choices, unless I change my mind again, I’ll be the one numbering 113 boxes on Saturday morning…

4th September 2013: Geez That's A Lot Of Boxes

Categories
Australia Media

Schrödinger’s Medicines

So there I was flipping through the paper yesterday when I noticed something a little, um, odd about the massive full page ad on page 6 of The Sunday Age:

Full Page Ad in The Sunday Age

You can’t quite see it from that distance, so lets look a little closer…

Blurry Labels

Yeah. That’s odd. All the labels on those little bottles of Swisse Snake Oil are all blurry. A printing error maybe? Surely not…

I assumed that this would be something to do with the laws in Australia about advertising medicines, but I was curious, so I asked Dr Google. He told me to have a look at the website of the Therapeutic Goods Administration, which confirms that there are of course all sorts of rules and regulations around the advertising of these products in Australia. And the page on Making a complaint about the advertising of a therapeutic product tells me this:

Advertisements for medicines appearing on television or radio, newspapers, consumer magazines, billboards and cinema films are required to be approved before publication.

Advertisements appearing in newspapers and consumer magazines must include the approval number. The approval number is usually in small print and begins with the letters ‘ASMI’ or ‘CHC’ followed by a 5-6 digit number and date code.

Approvals are valid for a 2-year period.

So does our ad have an approval number in small print beginning with the letters ASMI or CHC? Er. No.

Well that’s interesting.

It’s at this point that Dr Google suggests I take a look at the Therapeutic Goods Advertising Code 2007 in ComLaw.

Under section 3, Compliance with, and application of, the Code, we find this:

(3) Advertisements for therapeutic goods appearing in specified and broadcast media must be approved by the appropriate Advertising Services Manager for compliance with the Code (Appendix 3 refers) prior to publication or broadcast, other than:

…

(b) advertisements for those therapeutic goods that may be advertised and which display only name, picture and/or price and /or point of sale, without therapeutic claims; and …

So it appears there is a loophole. You can advertise therapeutic goods without having to get your ad approved, regardless of what dubious therapeutic claims the goods themselves might make, just so long as you don’t repeat those therapeutic claims in your ad.

Presumably these little bottles of wonder pills are some kind of Schrödinger’s Medicine: they simultaneously are therapeutic goods and also aren’t at the same time, depending on what’s on the label. I suppose that’s kind of appropriate, really. Isn’t that how the placebo effect homoeopathy works…

Then again, they haven’t blurred out some of those labels very well. Even I can see that this one says “Clinically Trialled” on the top line and “Omega-3 Antioxidant” on the bottom line, whatever the hell that means:

Clinically Trialled

Although maybe they should go that little bit further with the blurring–you never know what some of these products might be called by the time the consumer gets to the store. As The ABC’s The Checkout pointed out a few months ago, when the Therapeutic Goods Administration cancelled the registration for Swisse’s Ultiboost Appetite Suppressant, they cunningly evaded the ban by simply changing the name on the label…

Categories
Australia

Oi, Oi, Oi

So this morning I popped into the city to sit the Australian Citizenship Test. It turns out there are some, um, interesting sections of the test material.

To prepare for the test, they give you this book to read — Our Common Bond — and can ask you questions on anything featured in the “testable section”.

While the non testable section does at least acknowledge some of the more questionable aspects of Australia’s recent history (such as the White Australia Policy and the stolen generations), the testable part includes frankly astonishing statements like this:

Australians are proud of the fact that their nation did not emerge through revolution or bloodshed

Um. Really? Are you sure about that?

I think I sort of understand what they were going for, but I can’t help thinking this might come as news to the people who were already living here when the white man arrived. Federation might have happened without bloodshed, but I don’t think you can just quietly forget about 1788 – 1901…

My first question on the test itself was this:

Where did the earliest free settlers to Australia come from:
• Europe
• Great Britain and Ireland
• Torres Strait Islands

Hmm. There’s something missing from that list, isn’t there…

Once again, I know what they mean — and what they wanted me to answer — but I can’t help thinking that the first people to settle in Australia freely might be the ones who were already here when the country was renamed around them…

Other sections of the testable content are just amusing. There’s a whole bit on the apparently uniquely Australian concept of mateship, although I’m not sure which roads the authors have been driving on judging by their example:

Mateship

I don’t think I’ll be trying that in rush hour Melbourne…

Oh. And there’s this. The Union Jack? Really?

20130604-200541.jpg

Anyway. I passed. It took me all of 2 1/2 minutes, out of my allotted 45, to answer all my twenty questions correctly…

Think I prefer this test instead, mind. And I still don’t know the answer to the bring your own meat barbie question…

Categories
Wedding

Matt n’ Sally, Annotated

The Royal Mail Hotel, Dunkeld

For our wedding we asked our good friend Jim, who sadly wasn’t able to make it over from the UK, if he might happen to have something we could use as a reading. And he wrote us this rather wonderful poem.

For the benefit of anyone who might not have got all the references (and for everyone who wouldn’t have seen it written down to appreciate its full double acrostic glory), I present Matt n’ Sally, Married — with footnotes.

Matt n’ Sally, Married

by James Peake

You chose London, Sal, and a handsome pom
Looming above the D.F., [1] loitering by the P.A. [2]
Looking back at you. The End. [3] The night you met.
And from that instant spark, that fun-loving start,
Secret garden picnics [4] or Glasto [5] under English sun, [6]
Not a moment wasted, at galleries or plays, down Dr Who caves, [7]
Trading jokes and gossip over cocktails or Corona [8]
Then detouring for a doner. Matt, a Woody Grill. [9]
And daily a photo for your Flickr project or Facebook wall; [10]
Melbourne’s gain London’s loss, but two hemispheres can now toast, Matt n’ Sally.

[1] D.F. The dancefloor. The scene of many of our greatest moments…

[2] I’m not sure if I actually was loitering by the P.A., but I’ll let that one pass…

[3] The End nightclub, in London’s West End, owned by Mr C off of the Shamen, where we met all those years ago.

[4] The Secret Garden, our favourite little hidden spot in Regent’s Park: tucked away down an unmarked passage lies a beautiful little manicured garden that we got to treat as our own when we lived nearby.

[5] Glastonbury Festival. We were there together in 2007, and 2005, and 2004 and an apparently unphotographed 2003…

[6] I assume the idea of English Sun at Glasto must be some kind of joke…

[7] That would be these caves that we day tripped to in 2008.

[8] No explanation needed, but sort of appropriate given our Mexico plans…

[9] The Woody Grill in Camden. Without question my favourite London Kebab shop. A place so good that I once saw a man drop his kebab on the dirty Camden pavement and then pick it right back up again and carry on eating… **

[10] My Photo Of The Day project. Now, unbelievably in its seventh year.

SallyMatt-161

** This was not me. Honest.

Categories
Central America Mexico Travel

Chichen Itza

After two languid days in Valladolid, it is time to move on again. We rise early and eat our breakfast of huevos rancheros under the shade of the trees in the little garden out the back of the shop. Then we hit the speed bump filled road to Chichen Itza, hoping to arrive early enough to beat the crowds of tour groups that descend on the site in the late morning.

There are a handful of tourists wandering around the site when we arrive, but it is quiet enough for us to take photos of the ruins without anyone getting in the way. On the recommendation of Susanna from Coqui Coqui, we hire a guide to show us around. Most of what he tells us, we later discover, is nonsense, but it is entertaining nonetheless.

3rd March 2013: Chichen Itza

(As a case in point he tells us that the reason that no one is allowed to climb the ruins is because 5 oversized American tourists rolled down to their deaths a few years ago, even though my subsequent internet research proves that this was not exactly what happened. Still, even though he couldn’t get something from 2006 right, I’m sure his comments on things that happened thousands of years ago are just fine…)

After a pleasant few hours wandering the site, we jump back in the car, grab a quick lunch of salbutes in the nearby town of Pisté and hit the road across the Yucatan to the colonial town of Mérida.