Rants – Page 32 – a sibilant intake of breath

Keep your flash in your pants

The other day, I attended some live music at the Umi Cafe on Somerset. Throughout the multi-hour performance, there was a cadre of amateur photographers – some with point and shoot cameras, some with dSLRs – happily snapping away. Almost without exception, every shot was accompanied by a bright white flash. There are two major reasons why photographers should avoid this pattern of behaviour.

Firstly, it produces ugly and unnatural pictures. Using a flash is akin to looking at a scene with a bright white miner’s lamp on your head. This is problematic for several reasons: (a) it lights close things much more than far ones, leading to blinding white foreground objects and black backgrounds; (b) it throws very harsh shadows, leaving a person’s nose looking like a mountain on the moon; (c) the light from the flash is a different colour from incandescent or fluorescent lighting, making the scene look oddly discordant in colour.

Secondly, it really annoys people. While the ‘stadium full of flashes’ effect is a Hollywood cliché, the actual impact of using lots of flashes – especially in a small and intimate environment – is to impose your weird lighting preferences on an entire room full of people, many times a night. Flashes are distracting and rude, and should only be deployed when really necessary.

There are easy ways to avoid using the flash. First and foremost, don’t use your camera in full auto mode. With no guidance, it will usually decide that the pop-up flash is the safest way to get a usable photo. With just a bit of thinking, you can usually do better.

The first way is to increase the ISO setting on your camera. This basically makes it more sensitive to light. While doing so will make your pictures grainier, they will look a lot more natural than ‘headlamp effect’ flash shots. If you don’t know how to do this, check your manual or search online. With most point and shoot cameras, and all dSLRs, it is a fairly simple procedure. Many cameras even have a dedicated button for it. On a point and shoot camera, try cranking it up to 400 or so. On a dSLR, don’t feel shy about using 1600 ISO, or even faster. Here is an example of a high ISO photo taken with a cheap P&S camera. A flash photo of the same scene would have been infinitely worse.

The second way is to brace your camera somehow. If you have a two-second timer, this can be easily achived. Just frame the shot, with the camera sitting on the edge of a table, wall, or solid object. Then, press the shutter and then leave the camera still to take a photo. Anything moving will probably show some motion blur, but you are once again likely to produce a nicer and more natural image than you would with a flash. Tripods are also an excellent idea, and there are tiny little tabletop ones that can be easily carried around and used with a point and shoot camera. I used the combination of a $180 Canon P&S camera and a $5 tripod to take these photos: Montreal, Ottawa, Morocco, Paris, Istanbul. A great trick for churches and other buildings with interesting ceilings is to put your camera flat on the ground with a timer set, press the shutter, and step back. I used that trick to take these: Oxford, Istanbul.

People think about photographs as something you ‘take’ by pointing a camera at something and pressing the shutter. In fact, it makes more sense to think about photos as something you ‘make’ using a combination of light, gear, and intelligence. By putting some thought and effort into things, you can produce more natural photos in intimate settings, without temporarily blinding and annoying everyone around you.

Unimpressed with humanity

I am increasingly of the sense that humanity doesn’t have what it takes to deal with climate change. We are apparently lacking not only in scientific understanding, but also in empathy and skill in managing risk. We are easily overpowered by those who use weak arguments forcefully, and slow to rally to the defence of even the most well-established of scientific facts.

These comments strike me as an especially poignant example of muddled thinking. The basic message is: “Let’s not argue about what causes climate change, because that is contentious and conflict makes me uncomfortable. Instead, let’s agree to disagree about what’s happening, but begin cutting carbon emissions anyhow.” With such thin soup on offer from those who believe we should take action, it’s not too surprising that more and more people apparently see the climate threat as overblown. People put politeness ahead of rigorous thinking and rely far too much on simple heuristic crutches (past warnings about other things have proved exaggerated, technology will save us, etc). None of this suggests that people have the will and understanding necessary to build a zero-carbon global society in time to prevent catastrophic climate change.

Of course, there is extremely strong scientific evidence that greenhouse gas emissions cause the climate to warm, along with additional consequences like charged precipitation patterns and ocean acidity. Arguably, some of these effects are already rather serious, particularly in the Arctic. We are on track to raise atmospheric concentrations of CO2 from about 383 parts per million (ppm) to over 1000 ppm by the end of the century. Decisive action is required, but politicians have correctly sensed that they are better off dithering: using rhetoric to convince the public at large that they are ‘balancing the environment and the economy‘ while privately kowtowing to special interests. These include both the old smoke-belchers (coal-fired electricity worst among them) and up-and-coming lobbies like corn ethanol producers. The politicians see quite clearly that their political futures do not depend on the habitability of the Earth in fifty years time, and they think and vote accordingly.

I certainly wouldn’t feel confident about having or raising children right now. The world continues to walk straight towards the edge of the precipice – ignoring the feedbacks and lag times that delay the impact of our emissions on the state of the climate – while patently failing to grasp the seriousness of our situation. If those alive and blogging now don’t live to see the worst consequences of that inaction, it seems highly likely that their children and grandchildren will start to, and that those consequences will be felt for thousands of years.

Right about obstacles, wrong about consequences

I was recently reminded of a common but worrisome mental phenomenon, when it comes to how people react psychologically to the challenge of climate change. They have a strong understanding of the basic political dynamics at work – short term versus long term, special interests versus the general interest, money talks, etc – but lack an appreciation for just how bad unmitigated climate change would be. They are cynical about the prospects for an appropriate political response, but not seized with the importance of producing one despite the difficulties.

As mentioned before, the business-as-usual case is 5.5°C to 7.1°C of temperature increase by 2100, with more to follow. Accompanying this would be ocean acidification, changes in precipitation patterns, and other impacts. This is a more significant difference than exists between our present climate and that of the last ice age, when much of North America was covered with kilometres of ice. In the somewhat understated language typical of scientists, the head of the Met Office has said that warming of this scale would “lead to significant risks of severe and irreversible impacts.” That isn’t a worst-case scenario, but rather their best guess about where we will end up unless we change course. It should also be noted that there are positive feedbacks not incorporated into models such as that of the Hadley Centre: notable among them methane from permafrost. With such feedbacks factored in, a significantly worse business-as-usual warming profile is possible.

In practical terms, it is challenging to converse with people who have this pair of outlooks. Their cynicism about politics is largely justified, and they are right to see climate change as a problem of unprecedented complexity and difficulty. Trying to make them aware of just how dangerous climate change could be is challenging, because it is easy to come off sounding like you are exaggerating things. People just aren’t psychologically prepared to accept what 5°C of warming could plausible do to human civilization, even within what are now rich states.

What communication strategies have the most promise for getting people to accept the dangerousness of climate change, and subsequently the need to push hard against the political status quo, so as to produce timely change? This isn’t an issue where we can roll over and let special interest politics win. The future of the human race is quite literally at stake.

Why not an election?

It annoys and perplexes me a little when newspapers report the apparent strong unwillingness of Canadians to have an election this fall. Really, having one isn’t such a big burden. For most people, voting takes about half an hour, total. Furthermore, having an election seems far from meaningless when the country is (a) closely balanced in support for the two main parties and (b) designed such that small advantages in voting outcomes can lead to larger disparities in representation, in Parliament. Minorities are unstable things, so it’s not surprising that they might tilt from one side to the other, and it doesn’t seem inappropriate to ask voters if they want that.

Of course, a coalition would be more desirable, in many ways. If Canada’s political system can no longer produce majorities, it is going to need to learn an alternative way of governing.

“Write for yourself, edit for your readers”

This great bit of advice comes from Copyblogger. When it comes to the proper use of language in online communication, I think the key issue is one of respect. Being respectful of your readers means taking care to express yourself well, as well as avoid spelling and grammatical mistakes. Taking a slapdash approach to editing suggests that you value a few seconds of your own time more than the time of everyone who will subsequently read whatever you are producing. From my perspective, that is rather rude.

Other good resources include George Orwell’s 1946 essay “Politics and the English Language.” This includes concise and excellent advice on how to improve prose (apologies for the inappropriately gendered language):

A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus:

What am I trying to say?

What words will express it?

What image or idiom will make it clearer?

Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?

And he will probably ask himself two more:

Could I put it more shortly?

Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly?

These basic ideas can also be reformulated as six ‘rules:’

Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.

Never use a long word where a short one will do.

If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.

Never use the passive where you can use the active.

Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.

Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

These apply just as much to corporate, government, and academic documents as they do to blog posts or personal letters.

Rejecting solar in California

In another example of the renewable energy NIMBY phenomenon, various groups are opposing the 850 megawatt Calico solar farm under consideration in California.

I think the seriousness of climate change makes such opposition wrongheaded. Yes, there will be some negative environmental impacts associated with installing 34,000 solar dishes in the Mojave Desert. That being said, the negative impacts associated with failing to reform our enery system – and thus provoking catastrophic climate change – are far worse.

If we are willing to tolerate mountaintop removal mining and the oil sands, we should certainly be willing to see solar facilities installed in the most promising areas for them.

Preliminary review: smartphones and the Nokia E71

Since the E71 is my first smartphone, I am inevitably responding to both the general medium and the specific device. So far, my experience has been mixed. The phone doesn’t do anything as well as a real computer does – obviously – nor as well as I was hoping when I purchased it. While usable, the keyboard is awkward. The OS is a bit finicky and annoying. The web browser lacks capability and fluidity of use, and even voice calls seem to be of a worse quality than on my cheap old Nokia 6275i.

All that being said, the E71 has the considerable advantage that it puts the internet into a form that fits in a pocket and can be accessed from anywhere. The email and messaging features are those I use and appreciate most, with web browsing and maps following next. The media features are very basic, and I never use them. Coupled with a bluetooth keyboard, the phone is extremely capable for email, texting, and instant messaging. Even without, you can maintain one conversation at a reasonable pace, without needing to strain yourself excessively. Another feature that is surprisingly good is the speakerphone, which can be used quite effectively while cooking or sitting at a desk. The battery life is also good: enough to cover about eight hours of very active internet use. The built-in email app is ok, but limited. Annoyingly, the installable GMail application is only a bit more capable. It cannot, for instance, apply labels to messages. As such, they clutter up my inbox instead of being slotted away into appropriate places. Managing multiple streams of emails is far less intuitive with this interface than with GMail’s excellent online version (not fully usable with the E71 browser). Thankfully, Microsoft’s Mail for Exchange application allows perfect syncing of contacts and calendar items between GMail and the native Nokia apps. Never mind the oddity of using Microsoft software to help Nokia hardware and Google software work well together.

My specific complaints about the E71 include:

Annoyingly often, you need to tell the phone to connect to the internet, then using what protocol. For me, the answer is always ‘yes’ and the network is WiFi if available, GPRS otherwise. I dearly wish I could just lock those choices into the whole OS, rather than being forced to enter them literally every five minutes of use.
The keyboard is annoyingly small, though that comes part and parcel with a device smaller than an iPhone.
Copying and pasting requires an acrobatic manoeuvre: pressing three keys simultaneously, releasing, and then pressing three more.
The web browser doesn’t work with a lot of the menus at the back end of WordPress and can be very finicky about posting comments. It also has a viewpoint that lurches around violently as new portions of pages get loaded: super annoying if you are filling in a number of fields.
Even with a WordPress-specific app, the phone is not adequate for posting to the blog. For instance, it cannot interact with the WordPress media library, so as to include images in posts.
The device won’t download the full content of even small text-only emails. Each time you open one, it goes to a ‘retrieving’ screen that lasts 5-20 seconds.
Unlocking the keypad requires pressing two small keys in order. A dedicated lock switch would be better.
The camera is rotten, and the video recording is even worse.
Bluetooth connections go idle after an absurdly short period of time: maybe 60 seconds. There is no option to alter this.
There is no way to use the built-in read LED as a flashlight, as you can on the 6275i.
It lacks the super-useful automatic calling card dialler from the 6275i.
The voice quality isn’t great. If often sounds a bit like a VoIP phone without enough bandwidth.
Both applications and the whole OS crash pretty often, even when you are running programs one at a time. Sometimes, the only way to resolve it is to turn off the device and turn it back on.
For some reason, my unlocked E71 can only find a handful of applications in Nokia’s ‘Download!’ area.

Given how well reviewed the E71 is among smartphones, I can only guess that others have even bigger problems. I will admit to wondering whether the iPhone would have been a better choice. For web browsing and media, I would say ‘certainly yes’ since the demo iPhones I have tried are enormously better than the Nokia in both regards. In terms of messaging – which is my number one use – I still think that even a cramped physical keyboard is better than no keyboard at all.

At this stage, about two weeks in, I am less impressed than I expected to be with both smartphones and the E71. That said, it is a useful thing to have when computers are not readily available, and I may grow more accustomed to it as more time passes. One thing I mean to try but haven’t yet is tethering it with my G4 iBook.

Consequences of fear and unchecked state power

A recent editorial on America’s sex crime laws is a nice demonstration of how the protection of the individual from the unjust application of power by the state is one of the most important kinds of human security. Pursuing criminal charges against teenagers who have sex with other teenagers – and even those who send explicit images of themselves to one another – is a lunatic way for the state to apply the law. Rather than protecting anyone, such a petty act of over-enforcement can seriously wreck the lives of those the law was intended to protect: especially when they end up on life-long public sex offender registries that do not specify what led to their initial arrest. All this becomes even more dangerous as the state gets more and more power to observe the lives of its citizens, shrinking the extent of formally private spheres (such as correspondence) where it would not previously have been watching.

It certainly bears remembering that the state is a beast that walks with a heavy, and sometimes clumsy, step. That’s something that must be borne in mind especially when the population is especially afraid of a nebulous threat, such as sex criminals or terrorists. Failing to appreciate that the application of state power can cause profound harm, as well as protection, to human security is what produces injustices like torture, Guantanamo Bay, the internment of those of Japanese descent during the Second World War, and so forth. When people are afraid, they care little about the rights of those they fear; equally damagingly, they show little appreciation for how harsh new approaches undermine the very systems they are established with the intention of protecting. Set upon the wrong course, the state is a far more dangerous entity than any terrorist organization.

Finally, there is the well-reasoned furour about the RCMP performing its own criminal investigations on officers. In any large organization, most people will act to preserve the interests of the group – even at the expense of committing injustices against outsiders. They will naturally give the benefit of the doubt to their colleagues, and they will also share loyalty with those risking their lives for the same purposes. To have any credibility, investigations into such organizations must be conducted by outsiders with independence and a strong mandate to investigate and expose wrongdoing.

Problems with revocable media

One of the biggest problems with the way information is now distributed is the increasing limitations on how you can use it. With physical media like books and CDs, you had quite a few rights and a lot of security. You could lend the media to friends, use it in any number of ways, and be confident that it would still work decades later. There is much less confidence to be found with new media like music and movies with DRM, games that require a connection to the server to work, mobile phone applications, Kindle books, etc. Companies have shown a disappointing willingness to cripple functionality, or even eliminate it outright, for instance with Amazon deleting books off Kindles. Steven Metalitz, a lawyer representing the RIAA, has stated explicitly that people buying digital media should not expect it to work indefinitely: “We reject the view that copyright owners and their licensees are required to provide consumers with perpetual access to creative works.” Of course, the same people argue that they should be able to maintain their copyrights forever.

The solution to this, I think, is to make it legal for people to break whatever forms of copy protection companies put on their products, as long as the purpose for which they are being broken is fair use. It also wouldn’t hurt to clarify the ownership of such materials in favour of users. A Kindle book should be like a physical book – property of the person that bought it, and not subject to arbitrary modification or revocation by the seller.

Of course, politicians are under more effective pressure from media companies than from ordinary consumers. Perhaps a strong Canadian Pirate Party, asserting the rights of content users over content owners, would be a good thing. Of course, stronger support from mainstream parties that actually hold power would be of much more practical use.

Short-term versus long-term resource economics

The Globe and Mail is reporting on a letter send by former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin to British Columbia Premier Gordon Campbell. It complains about acid mine drainage from the Tulsequah Chief Mine in northwest B.C. Similar problems with the long-term leaching of acid and heavy metal affect many mines in Canada and around the world, including the former copper mine at Britannia, between Vancouver and Whistler.

The general pattern here is one that Frederic Bastiat would have appreciated. People can readily see the apparent economic gains associated with an operating mine, in the form of tax revenues, jobs, foreign exchange earnings, etc. What cannot be clearly seen are the long-term costs associated with all the consequences of that mining. In some cases, these significantly exceed the short-term benefits, meaning the mine has actually been a net destroyer of wealth and human welfare. Jared Diamond’s Collapse also makes this point forcefully, with many examples. Quite possibly, this is the case with fossil fuel industries today, particularly those exploiting unconventional sources of hydrocarbons like the oil sands. By tapping into hydrocarbon reserves that would otherwise remain dormant, they increase the total quantity of greenhouse gasses humanity will add to the atmosphere, increasing the severity of climate change and the probability of abrupt, catastrophic, or runaway warming. Of course, there are also the toxic effects of pollution at the sites of fossil fuel production and use, as well as the destruction of habitat and any associated reclamation costs.

The problem is not one that can be easily solved. Politicians will always be more swayed by apparent and immediate gains and losses than by distant and concealed ones. That being said, we do have the opportunity to counter some of the flawed arguments used to justify harmful practices. Next time someone claims that exports from the oil sands are crucial to Canada’s economic development, consider raising the possibility that their exploitation probably destroys wealth in the bigger picture.