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I know a little bit about Mormons.  Do you?  Did you know that if you play your cards right, Mormons will shovel your driveway for free?  In the middle of a snow storm?  Let me tell you a little story. So, today is my day off of work.  I decide since it is snowing a lot, I should probably shovel my driveway.   So, I don't know, it's probably around 11:30 and I get all ready and go out and to shovel.  I see two girls across the street and I figure they are probably are selling something.  And, I am cool with that since I used to have to do that crap for band when I was in high school.  So, anyway, I am prepared to buy a band card or whatever magazines they are selling.  I can see that I am in their targets as they make a beeline across the street to where I am dutifully shoveling my driveway and sidewalk that I share with my neighbor (I live in townhouses).  By the time I realize it, I am too late. These girls don't appear to be Mormons, which was my first mistake.  I mean, these girls are attractive, one would say cute.  I didn't know what Mormons looked like before today, but now I know for future reference.  They are going to send out the best looking of their flock to bombard potential brainwashees.  I don't' know what I thought Mormons were supposed to look like, but they aren't supposed to be that attractive.  It's really a good selling point when you think about it. Anyway, I digress. Here I was, prepared to buy a stupid magazine I didn't want when I heard these girls say, "Hey, can we shovel your driveway?"  I felt the fear and I knew there had to be a catch.  I look up, and these were not girl scouts trying to earn a new badge.  I immediately saw the name tags.  The names, I will change for protecting the innocent Mormons or maybe because I already forgot them, were bold on their black name tags surrounded by the bold lettering stating 'Church of Jesus Christ of Latterday Saints'.  I was confronted by Sister Wayland and Sister Jehosaphat. Before I could run, Sister Jehosaphat takes the shovel from my hand, hands me her Book of Mormon and begins to shovel. I was not prepared for their onslaught.  They had used their magical Mormon powers to stun me into a stupor whilst I listened with most of my attention to Sister Wayland's story of how great the church was and how great God is and how great life is.  I am pretty sure she was telling me that everything is great, which is, of course, a lie, but they make it seem so easy and appealing.  I mean, I want everything to be great.  I really do, so when she tells me I can have it that way, I want to believe her. And she is cute.  I mean, it's really hard to say no to a cute girl.  You know what I mean?  So, here I am, listening to her and she just keeps talking and I just keep listening. So, here is how the conversation goes: Sister Wayland: Hi, can we shovel your driveway for you? Me: Um...what? (as sister Jehosefat takes the shovel from me) Ah, okay, sure. SW: We really like to do nice things for other people.  Can I talk to you for a minute? Me: (now, how can i turn her down when they are shoveling my driveway?) Ah, sure... SW: Have you heard of the book of Mormon? Me: Yeah. SW: Oh, really? (she is surprised here, like, Mormons are rare mythical creatures that I would never have seen before) Have you read it? Me: No. SW: Oh?  It's great.  I read from it everyday.  It's very inspirational.  Have you heard of the bible? Me: Yeah (seriously?) SW: So, you know about the book of Mormon?  How have you heard of it? Me: I have seen other members of your congregation when I lived at my old apartment in Akron. SW: Is that in Ohio? I am not from here.  In fact, I have only been here for five days.  (for those of you who don't know where Akron is, it IS infact in Ohio.  In reality, it's only a half hr drive from where I currently reside, as well) Me: Yeah. Only for five days? Where are you from? SW: Utah.  (this really explains a lot, being the Mormon capital of the world) I mean, this goes on for a while.  While this is all going on, it is soooo cold outside, her nose is running down her cute little face.  I am feeling kinda bad for her, so I interrupt her very exciting description of how great god is and everything and ask her if she would like some Kleenex.  Unfortunately , I am out of Kleenex since I myself was sick all week, and so all i have to offer her is toilet paper.  How silly.   I was just trying to be nice. We then go back to the description, and then she wants to know if she can come back.  I say "of course" because I just can't be mean to such nice and pretty girls.  I mean, they are soo nice and soo pretty.  What was I supposed to do?  And now she has my address and my name and my phone number.  So, today I made friends with a Morman. After all is said and done, I realize that the Sister Jehosefat has shoveled not mine but my neighbor's driveway.  Well, I think the moral of this story is that you should really specify which driveway belongs to you when you sell your worldly  soul to members of the Church of Latterday Saints.  They did leave me with some very motivational reading material and plan on calling me for another information session.  I wonder what household chores I can get them to do for me next time they come calling.

I saw this mentioned in ScienceBlogs and had to share. We've talked about the War on Christmas before, but really that war is part of a larger issue: how do you cope when you are part of an over-represented majority? When the majority of Americans share your faith, and your religion dominates the culture and all three branches of government, it's doesn't leave you much to complain about. Now, that doesn't mean you shouldn't complain. Instead, the few things left should be complained about ad nauseum. So when the Faith & Values section of the Columbus Dispatch wrote a few stories about Islam and Buddhism, they got letters from unhappy readers:

A couple of critics wanted to know why we were wasting ink on these "false" beliefs when Christ is the only path to salvation. Another caller said he was tired of having "that Islam religion … shoved in my face."

Mark Fisher, editor of that section, decided to take a look at their coverage. He tallied up the subjects of all the front page articles and compared it to the demographics of their readership. It turns out that one group was being left out, but it wasn't the Christians:

Although Faith & Values isn’t ignoring Christians, my tally does suggest that we are giving nonreligious people less attention than they deserve. We’re already taking steps to correct that.

Looking at the actual percentage of coverage and comparing it to the demographics of their readership is a really interesting idea, but I don't think they will win any converts (so to speak) with an empirical approach. I don't think Dispatch readers were complaining that Christianity was being under-represented statistically. I think they were complaining that any view, other than their own, was given any exposure what-so-ever. There are many people curious enough in their lives and mature enough in their faith to be interested in what others believe, but I fear they are the minority. In my experience, many, many people have the sort of faith that requires putting their fingers in their ears and singing "I can't hear you." Unfortunately, these are often the most vociferous members of any faith. So I applaud Fisher's approach, and I agree with his conclusion - agnostics and atheists probably do get too little coverage in the news. But I don't think the Dispatch have much success. Even if the Dispatch went the other direction and had 99 percent Christian coverage, they would probably still be accused of fueling the "War on Christmas" or some other such nonsense because of that one percent. So good luck.

Super heroes. We see them in movies, watch them on TV, and if you're a nerd, read about them in comics books. The Internet is home to countless arguments over which super hero has the best powers, whom could beat up whom, and what would happen if Lois Lane and Superman finally did hook up. It used to be that the life of a super hero was predictably unrealistic. Most super heroes are more likely to travel through time and fight dinosaurs than run out of toilet paper. In the past decade there have been a number of comic books that took on this dichotomy and tried to depict what life would really be like if you were invincible, but otherwise just a normal guy. This hasn't really filtered down to popular television and movies, with the possible exception of the TV show Heroes and to some extent the Spider-Man movies. That's why today, we're going to look at some of the rare depictions of the real life of super heroes. There is nothing more real than the Real World, so we need look no further than Real World: Metropolis: [youtube]C1Ic1eaUVOE&NR[/youtube] At the end of the last X-Men movie, Magneto found himself powerless, but even worse, out of a job. Luckily, Starbucks is always hiring: [youtube]4y8v7kkpQm4&NR[/youtube] Super heroes, like rock stars, travel the country and get all the chicks. So how do they come to terms with their illegitimate children? [youtube]gkhaCLx6vys[/youtube] Some super heroes have indomitable will power, but that doesn't mean they always bring their A-game to the softball match against the Legion of Doom: [youtube]4yal8GOOXlU[/youtube] Here's the part where I was going to put clips from The State and Robot Chicken, but Viacom in their faceless, corporate wisdom has pulled those videos from YouTube. Good move Viacom! I bet now instead of seeing free advertising, all our readers are running out to buy your DVDs. Finally, although none of us have had to dig ourselves out of our own grave (having been drugged and put there by Kraven the Hunter), pretty much everyone has had to outdance a cow. How will Spider-Man handle that situation? [youtube]ijc_0Hk_8Zo[/youtube]

Steve Jobs is right again. In a post on the Apple web site he reacts to calls for Apple to open their Fairplay DRM system to licensing with an interesting (and insightful) proposal:

"The third alternative is to abolish DRMs entirely. Imagine a world where every online store sells DRM-free music encoded in open licensable formats. In such a world, any player can play music purchased from any store, and any store can sell music which is playable on all players. This is clearly the best alternative for consumers, and Apple would embrace it in a heartbeat."

This has gotten a lot of coverage today, from Business Week to the New York Times. Jobs' post was prompted by a number of European countries examining (and in some cases declaring illegal) the digital rights management (DRM) system that Apple uses with the iTunes music store and the iPod. The system is there to make sure that if you cough up $.99 for a song, you don't spread it around the internet for free. These countries say the effect is to lock customers in to iPods and iTunes so they can't buy another player without forfeiting their music. Jobs' response? He never wanted to have a DRM system in the first place. He would gladly dump the whole thing, and let you buy music anywhere you wanted and use any player you wanted - but it's not up to Apple. Although you might buy your Ben Folds from iTunes, Apple doesn't have any of the rights to that music - the vast majority of the time, the rights are owned by a major record label, with just four labels dominating the market. They require DRM. That said, why wouldn't Apple like the idea of DRM? A naive observer (or record company executive) would say it's good for Apple, too, since it means iPod buyers will use the iTunes store and vice-versa, and it forces people to buy songs instead of pirating them. This is why Steve Jobs has been so successful. He thinks more people will pay for free music than music tied up in the rules and inconvenience of DRM. And he's right. To understand why, you need a little history. Starting in the mid 90s but really picking up around 1997, MP3s started popping up here and there on web sites. At first it seemed like most MP3s were available from fan sites for particular bands or genres, but soon mass-popularity mp3 sites started popping up and getting a lot of traffic. Pretty soon most of them were filled with banner ads and made useless by spam. But no matter, because in 1999 Napster came out, allowing peer-to-peer sharing of music files. Millions of people used Napster to download songs. The record companies, represented by their organization the RIAA, took them to court. Napster, they said, was providing the means for the outright theft of millions of songs, and should be shut down. And it was, in 2001. But here's where Jobs (along with many other commentators who don't have billion-dollar companies behind them) saw something the record companies did not - people were downloading songs without paying, sure, but if you wanted to download music there was no way to pay for it. Clearly there was a demand, and where there is a demand, there is a market, but the labels were not interested in it at all. They said these millions of people were just theives, that no one would ever pay for a download. Nothing useful happened until 2003 when Apple opened the iTunes music store, and Jobs proved them wrong. I don't think it took a singular genius to do so, since a lot of people at the time were all saying the same thing: give us a way to pay for downloads, and we will. But he had the opportunity and the ability to convince record labels to try it out. And it worked. Downloads have not replaced CD sales, but they have been growing very, very quickly considering the labels said they would never work and they still compete with free downloads. Why haven't downloads replaced CD sales? They are different media, and in some ways will always be different - some people like the phsyical object, CDs make a better gift, etc. But a big part of the reason is that downloads are made artificially into an inferior good because of DRM restrictions. Here's an example of how DRM removes value. CDs are generally not restricted, but once in a while a label will try to restrict them in some way. On one of the very rare occasions we were listening to commercial radio, my wife and I heard a song by Kasabian that we liked. We went out and got the CD. The first thing we did after listening to it in the car was put it in my computer to rip the songs to MP3. I spend a lot of time at my desk so I listen to music at my computer more than anywhere else, so I generally rip all my CDs and listen to my large music library. The CD had some copy-protection scheme that caused the tracks to skip and become garbled. Like all DRM, there's a way around it, but the damage was done - I was too lazy to re-rip, and now I don't hear Kasabian tracks when working on projects or surfing the web and they have fallen off my list of bands to look for when buying music. Further, it felt to me personally like an attack on my computer. All my other CDs worked just fine, but this one didn't-taking something that works and making it not work is usually called "breaking it," and it seemed to me that the record label was trying to break my CD and my computer. I've never been one to take pride in having obscure tastes, but this no doubt contributed to my steady loss of interest in buying new mainstream music. Lately I've been sampling (often free) stuff from indies instead. The value of that CD was much, much less to me than others I had purchased because of DRM, and the DRM had the long-term effect of shrinking the music market, if only just a little bit (my personal spending). I spend much of my time as a programmer, and programmers tend to be logical, realistic people. We tend to think things like DRM are ultimately unworkable because we know there is no such thing as a perfectly secure solution. We also get annoyed when it is difficult to move data from one format to another, whether it's because the libraries are buggy or because of purposeful restrictions. We also don't take kindly to the ridiculousness surrounding the enforcement in the legal system - evidence that only works in court because judges don't understand the technology, penalties in the thousands of dollars per song, etc. So maybe I am biased against DRM. But if I could buy songs from iTunes (or wherever) without DRM, and play them on whatever device I want, I would. I don't think I'm the only one. And Jobs has been trying to make this point for a long time. In a Rolling Stone interview from 2003 (thanks to Guillaume Laurent’s tech blog for reminding me of the reference) he explains:

"When we first went to talk to these record companies -- you know, it was a while ago. It took us 18 months. And at first we said: None of this technology that you're talking about's gonna work. We have Ph.D.'s here, that know the stuff cold, and we don't believe it's possible to protect digital content. ... What's new is this amazingly efficient distribution system for stolen property called the Internet -- and no one's gonna shut down the Internet. And it only takes one stolen copy to be on the Internet. And the way we expressed it to them is: Pick one lock -- open every door. It only takes one person to pick a lock. Worst case: Somebody just takes the analog outputs of their CD player and rerecords it -- puts it on the Internet. You'll never stop that. So what you have to do is compete with it."

Some say this is just a ploy to deflect criticism from Apple to the music industry. It seems to me that if Jobs just wanted to deflect critism, he would just start licensing Fairplay. If he wanted to deflect criticism and maintain a competitive advantage, he would license Fairplay at a high engouh cost that, when coupled witht he demands of music publishers, would make competition with iTunes very difficult. He could decide to to it today and have to first licensee up and running in a week. But that's not the point - the point is expanding the market as a whole. And the best way to do that is to make the product more valuable to the consumer, and one very quick, very easy way to increase the value is to dump the DRM.

In July 2006, the Washington State Supreme Court upheld a ban on gay marriage in part because

limiting marriage to opposite-sex couples furthers procreation, essential to survival of the human race.... Allowing same-sex couples to marry does not, in the legislature’s view, further these purposes....

and

...DOMA [Defense of Marriage Act] bears a reasonable relationship to legitimate state interests—procreation and child-rearing.

I just read in the Slog that the Washington Defense of Marriage Alliance (WA-DOMA) is seeking signatures for Initiative 957, the Defense of Marriage Initiative. If I-957 passes, married couples in Washington would be required to file proof of procreation within three years of their date of marriage or have the marriage annulled. Of course, WA-DOMA doesn't really expect I-957 to pass, and if it somehow does, the Supreme Court would no doubt strike it down as unconstitutional immediately. But I really hope this initiative passes.