It would be the f-word, "HDCP," and then a paragraph's worth of the f-word being used in its adjectival, nominal, adverbial, and verb forms to describe the technology, its creators, its implementors, and its shortcomings.

HDCP has bitten me in the metaphorical ass numerous times, both at home and at work, and only while trying to do stuff that was utterly non-infringing: I don't get bit by HDCP when I'm trying to copy protected content, I get bit by it, repeatedly, while trying to play HDCP sources in boring ways that were non-issues in the Analog Era. It has cost me (and thanks to my professional capacity, taxpayers) a disturbing amount of time, energy and money.

HDCP has done a tremendous amount to poison my previous good feelings about Blu-ray, content creators, HDMI, digital video, and just about every element of the A/V industry that went along with this nonsense. Thanks for screwing me, your loyal customer, professional specialist, and recreational enthusiast over for trying to use your award-winning* garbage. Meanwhile, I suspect that HDCP set back the entire video-piracy industry about 15 minutes.

*HDMI's 2008 Engineering Emmy was given to the many companies that contributed to that technology. One of those key technology contributions, mostly by Intel, was HDCP itself.

In January, TLO bought us a car, as we finally surrendered to the reality that our semi-beloved New Beetle was not reliable, and between me and our mechanic, we had neither the will nor the wit to make it right. The Versa has been a quiet charmer: surprisingly comfy seating for four; flip the rear seat, and it eats bikes with no wheels off, no bad habits, driving-wise, and the cupholders can actually hold cups, unlike the comical VW cupholder parodies. (We also sold the Beetle, of course).

In May, my parents invited us to join them for a four-day cruise, which was a first for TLO and I. It was something we will do again.

In June, I went to Orlando for a major AV conference, and it was there, in a bar in the bowels of the Hard Rock Cafe (courtesy a vendor-sponsored party), that I saw the Canucks utterly fail to win Game 7 of the Stanley Cup, confirming my belief that it's the The President's Trophy that really matters.

I wrote a comprehensive guide to bicycle commuting for my workplace, as an interesting side job, along with a extra-nerdy appendix. I was proud of the effort, and I hope it drives a few people onto their bicycles.

I wrote an Essay in Favour of Plausible Events. This could go places.

TLO and I did our now-usual trip to Greece, this time in the Fall, and it was our best vacation ever. There were many delights large and small.

On a pet front, we adopted a cute Jack Russell Terrier cross named Abe. He is not perfect, but he is a delight, and even with the the usual biases accounted for, my favourite pet ever. The addition of a loach to our fish tank turned it into a Death Tank for all the other poor fish, but we have now converted the tank to all mean fish, and they, um, don't try to kill each other.

Bike racing was something I took a little more seriously this year, albeit in fits and starts. I've had a tremendous amount of fun, and I've picked my spots in terms of the kind of events I'm doing, often quite novel. As for the results, I didn't always cover myself in glory (fun notwithstanding), but I had my moments.

And really, track cycling deserves its own paragraph: I joined the Burnaby Velodrome Club this year, and am so glad I did. Aside from flattering my particular gifts as a rider, it has proven to be enormously entertaining, and I've even seen friends and family come out and have fun watching me tear up the track. This is all low-category beer-league nonsense, to be sure, but lots of fun.

Here were last year's resolutions, with scoring:

-Drink less, Internet less, eat less, ride more.
I drank about the same. I Internetted about the same. I ate the same, maybe slightly better. I rode more, though, getting close to my desired level of training.

-Learn some things. Greek or Objective-C, or project management, or personnel management. Any two would be great.
I learned a bit of Greek, and it was very good. Obj-C? Nothing. PM and PM? I learned on the job, but I feel like my project and personnel skill are slightly better than last year. I hope for a big breakthrough on projects in 2012, thanks to some tools, notably Basecamp, that I have started using habitually. Personnel skills? I've...gained a lot of experience.

-Learn or improve or regularly use a technique for making things with my hands. Brazing, whittling, circuit assembly. Something. Could even be more bike building, I guess.
Not much on this front. I did some random crafting, though, including sorting out a new camera strap (prototype here) that involved a bit of design and a bit of scrounging and a bit of sewing. It was interesting.

-re-exhibit the History of Video Games.
Watch this space.

-divest a considerable amount of my under-used bike gear. I have too many bikes, too many frames, too many parts. Time to tidy up.
With TLO's encouragement, I sold a lot of accumulated stuff, mostly not bike gear (car tires, roof racks, a dishwasher). This is still in the plans, but I may start fire-saling gear. What is good is that I didn't gain too much bike junk, and I did divest of old clothes, random junk, and unloved books in a fairly ruthless fashion.

-Some personal resolutions that are none of your business.
I can't remember exactly, so they probably only went so-so.

So here's some resolutions for next year, once again with lots of recycling:
Drink less, Internet less, eat less, train smart: not "ride more," as I think I've got enough riding in my schedule, so it's a matter of doing things correctly, so my weight goes down and my speed goes up, I do the valuable non-bike workouts that make me stronger and faster, and I plan around peak performances during goal events.

Learn Greek, start an Objective-C project (I actually have a project in mind this time), be better at my job.

Learn to use TLO's new sewing machine for minor alterations and a mini project. That will be my "use my hands" resolution, but I'm not giving up on getting a MAPP torch and some brazing wire.

Acquire a Computer Space arcade machine. Or maybe a Pong.

Sell some surplus bike frames.

Some personal resolutions that are none of your business.

Published authorship is a star system, and it sounds like cynical craziness, but widespread literacy means a lot of people have the basic tools to become a writer, which means supply swamps demand at the non-superstar end of the market (think of pro sports, in terms of the rewards at the top, the relative lack of depth in the middle, and the total lack of demand for mediocre athletes) except with a less-clear system for detecting and recruiting superstar talent.

All I can suggest if you really desire to write, as the distilled advice that writers usually give on how to write, and the experience of people I know who write for a living, is this:

1) probably don't do it
2) if you must, write lots
3) periodicals of all kinds are great opportunities to work up your writing chops in a paid way, as well as working on essays that might become books. It's surprising how far you can get with a few well-targeted query letters.

I think a fourth element is blogging, in that I see a lot of star bloggers who just reflexively emit books after a while, and the nice cycle there is that the blog acts as both a creator of the book's audience, a promotional tool for the book at the end, and a way to practice the craft of writing and test the ideas you are writing about. The pay is quite bad, of course, and the difficult part is the bit where you become a star blogger.

So here's Alex running for a job as a public servant, and where the decisions are important and have deep consequences*, in a community where transportation is a major civic issue.

I assure you, he's the right man for the job.

Alex Gives Back

Ever since I've known Alex, he's been helping out with things he wants to make better. We met as fellow members of a cycling club that requires members to volunteer in support of races. And Alex did, putting in as needed, at every level of the sport from laying out traffic cones before a race to sitting on the board of Cycling BC.

Did I mention he's got a lovely family, too? He's doing something right.

Alex is Wise

I have an easy affinity for anyone with a computing science background, since I regard the essence of that field as pragmatic analysis of problems, followed by constructing a solution.

Civic politics presents fuzzier problems than programming a computer, but the basic desire is for someone who can analyze issues and pick solutions. Alex is such a man, and he's got a lot of experience in problem-solving, the minutiae of governing large organizations, and the small-scale diplomacy of a board meeting, so similar to that of most town councils. He's smart, but more importantly, he's wise.

Alex Knows Transportation

It's easy to paint Alex as a one-note cycling nut (just as it is with me), but like me, Alex is a guy who has a car, isn't afraid to use it, and understands both the benefits and limitations of cars, bikes, and everything in between.

Like a lot of Metro Vancouver communities, transportation issues are a huge part of what it means to live in Maple Ridge. Alex does not have a narrow view of these issues, and I believe he is very aware of the current best-and-brightest thinking on how transportation infrastructure affects communities.

That thinking would presently push a place like Maple Ridge towards a greater focus on making it easy to ride your bike around the city. This doesn't just benefit cyclists: every bike moving around is one less car adding to the traffic jam. The same principle applies to transit use.

The freedom to move is an incredible thing, and transportation reaches deeply into things as wide-ranging as town planning (everything from the aesthetics and land requirements imposed by parking accommodations to how walkable a street-level retail strip is) to childhood obesity levels (which seem to have risen in an eerie coincidence as walking and cycling became abnormal ways to get to school).

Conclusion: Vote for Alex

In conclusion, vote for Alex.

*I have come to believe that civic government is the level at which the most important decisions are made, in terms of how governments affect the day-to-day lives of the governed. All the glamor is in federal politics, but when your city council goes bankrupt, well, you don't want to become Vallejo, California.

(Many more Serifos photos here, plus a bunch of other Greece and Montreal pictures.

I put together a team. The last member joined up, literally, the day before the race, but in the end I had a full team of 5:

Doug Brons
Aidan "Mocha" Mouellic
Cam "maillot pois"
Dan "Buttercup" Spry
Me

We had our share of excuses (interrupted training, new to pacelines, fat, underfed...), but we were game.

The essence of a Gentleman's Race is something like a team time trial crossed with an alleycat at road race distances. This one started at Spanish Banks, and had two checkpoints, one in Richmond, one on the shore of Indian Arm on the Deep Cove side. (I've made a map with all the checkpoints marked.

We chose to do the Iona checkpoint first, based on the belief that the crosstown ride would be easier in that direction. It was a defensible choice, but the organizers and most of the fast teams disagreed, believing the checkpoints should be done the other way around. We also chose to go to Richmond by going around UBC. Again, arguably defensible, but a choice to take a long detour away from the most direct route (and avoidable by choosing to do Indian Arm first). But we made our choices, and we ween't the only ones to think that way.

The Iona pipeline was a ride I had never done. The Iona Road itself? Yes. The 4 km gravel path? No! And that's 4 km each way. The pipeline is a large, double-barrelled pipe carrying wastewater from a waste treatment plant out into the strait. You can either ride a gravel path beside the pipe, a gravel path straddling the pipes, or a foot-wide strip on the top of each pipe, but which has a steep drop-off down the side of each pipe on one side (your choice: 6-foot drop to gravel, or 2-foot drop to huge, sharp breakwater rocks). And oh yes, periodic obstacles including steel plates with prominent nuts and bolts, perfect for really vicious flat tires.

The team rode fairly well together considering our disparate skills and experiences, at least until we left Richmond (via the Canada Line bridge). After that, the climbs took their toll, but we stayed together. After a stop on Hastings Street just outside Chinatown for provisions, we carried on over the Second Narrows bridge.

The climb in and out of the Indian Arm pier was also new to me, and nearly killed us all. I had to walk one steep section, and I was not the only one on the team.

It was a tough grind, nursing our slow teammates and trying to stay together. Actual pacelining became sporadic as we approached the return to Second Narrows, and then Buttercup cramped badly. He should have used a more potent beverage in his bidons (I recommend the Radler: half beer, half 7-Up).

Seriously shredded, we paced back to Spanish Banks as best we could, everyone feeling pain. Meanwhile, we were being paced by the same 2-man team of unattached riders that had dogged us all day, shadowing nearly the exact route as we did, though punctuated by a few questionable routing choices (Lions Gate Bridge?), and one very good one: after we thought we had stolen a march on them when we met at Cypress and Cornwall, (see map notes) they wisely chose to cut through the shoreline park instead of heading back out to 4th Ave for the final push to Spanish Banks. That was enough for them to beat us by horrible seconds.

They were far from the only ones to defeat us: a team of girls wearing skirts, the Ballistic Velo team, every other team except the presumed-DNF (but hilariously named) "Domestique Abuse" finished faster, despite 5-10 minute handicaps for some of them. But the ride was outstanding good fun, and the post-race BBQ was exquisitely catered (really, they could have served us grass clippings and sea water, and by then it would have tasted good). I am definitely doing this event every time they're willing to put one on.

Item: Oscar Pistorius, the fastest man on no legs, is in the news again because he is on the verge of qualifying for the 2012 Olympics in the 400-metre event. I see this as being parallel to the previous stories of Caster Semenya and Michelle Dumaresq: in the latter two cases, the question was "who gets to compete in women's events?" (and implicitly, it was "what is the purpose of a separate women's category?") In the former case, it's "who gets to compete in men's events?"

Level Playing Fields

I have a glib, pointed answer to the question of why women-only categories and events exist: men are faster and stronger. This is not a case of a universal truism (the number of women cyclists out there who could destroy me in any cycling event is considerable), but more a matter of overlapping bell curves. At the very highest levels of almost all competitions where athletic performance matters, the very best male athletes are considerably better than the very best female athletes.

By the standards which elite performances are measured, these gaps are usually enormous: In 1998, one of the Williams sisters (they were already elite players, but still teenagers and not in their peak years) made a bold claim that they could beat any man outside of the top 200 tennis players in the world. 203-ranked Karsten Braasch took them up on that challenge in a low-key exhibition: he played a set against each sister, destroyed them serially, and credibly claimed he was not playing very hard.

This doesn't make women's tennis (or any other women's sport) bad, or pointless, or not entertaining. All sports are pointless; many are entertaining. The point is that women's sports appeal to our collective sense that it is "fair" (and maybe more importantly, interesting) that women should compete amongst themselves, establishing a "best among women" in each sport. A very similar inspiration leads to many sports having age-grouped categories.

Caster Semenya and Michelle Dumaresq are edge cases in the realm of women's sports. In normal cases, the delineation between male and female is dead simple: visible sexual characteristics, genetic tests, and hormone-level tests all line up, and almost always give an indisputable answer to the question "male or female?" Even psychological testing and writing samples allow better-than-chance assessments of gender (though not as decisive or accurate as the physiological markers). But in rare cases, that alignment is not so decisive.

Semenya, although the reports on her gender determination have not been made public, is probably an edge case because she has apparently female genitalia, but one or more of her genetic or hormonal markers of sex read as male. The problem is that the essence of the male athletic advantage is tied up in the presence of male hormones: they are generated by genetic males, and they tend to cause men to build more muscle and carry less fat (and a few other physical traits) that give them an athletic edge over women. And indeed, I think most observers would say that Semenya looks "mannish," as the norms of the female body are judged. So the question is: does this give her the kind of advantage over more normatively-female athletes, the exact kind of advantage that women-only events try to remove?

Dumaresq is an even more complicated example, in that she was born, undisputably, as a physical, hormonal, and genetic male, but had surgery and drug treatments to become (as much as medically possible) a woman. It is absolutely true that the surgery and hormone treatments she received diminished her athletic prowess, but the question is whether she still gains any advantage from having been born a man (and one who, as a woman, is a substantial outlier in terms of height and build).

I have a simplistic answer to much of this debate: in most sports, there is a women's category, and an open category (rather than a men's category). This can be seen in that most sports, especially pro sports, freely admit women to their most elite competitions: a woman played an NHL exhibition game in goal, and the only real controversy was whether she was an NHL-calibre goalie. Similarly, Annika Sorenstam competed in a PGA event, and while Vijay Singh made derogatory comments about her entry, the biggest point of contention seemed to be whether she was able to play at the PGA level (the result was bemusing: she was far from the worst player in the tournament, but she didn't make the cut, and it was her putting game that was her downfall). So to my mind, the question with athletes like Semenya and Dumaresq is not whether they should be allowed to compete or not, but whether they should be permitted in the women's category, or moved to the open category (and both of these athletes, were they competing against men, would immediately move down the competition scale from national/world-class to regional amateur categories. This would be bad for both of them, in terms of their sporting goals, but I'd like to assure them, as one untalented athlete to another, that there are worse fates).

Inhuman Ability

So along comes Oscar Pistorius, essentially taking my tidy "open class" theory and kicking it hard using inhuman legs.

I stipulate one thing: Pistorius is already running on emasculated prostheses. Even accepting the simple rule that no sporting prosthetic should store energy before the race start (that is, no pre-wound clockwork springs to fire the runner down the track), Pistorius would almost certainly run faster using longer, springier, or otherwise more optimized prostheses. What he is using now is at the limits of of what is allowed in paralympic competition, but at least there his competitors are all racing using the same technology.

Against able-bodied athletes, it's an entirely different question. There is no direct comparison between how Oscar runs and how athletes with muscled calves run. We know that he starts slow and runs fast, compared to able-bodied athletes at these distances. Indeed, the arguments over the legality of Pistorius competing in elite able-bodied competitions skirt around the fact that the advantages and disadvantages of how Pistorius runs are not precisely known, and not precisely knowable, and the honest margin of doubt appears to be greater than the range of performance from record-setter to non-qualifier. As much as we want Oscar to compete on a "level playing field" with able-bodied athletes, the definition of "level" is both debatable and quite fuzzy, and even the current Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) rulings are explicitly contingent on the possibility that better physiological evidence may change their minds in the future. It's a messy story.

We All Want to Be Above Average

And so the third part of my meditation on level playing fields, that of ability-based competition.

Lots of non-elite competitions use ability-based categories, meaning a competitor is sorted into a pool of similar performers, without regard to one or more intrinsic characteristics, like weight, age or gender. The simplest example is a ladder tournament, used everywhere from squash clubs to chess clubs. It works well for one-on-one events that don't work solo. Many other competitions do not use ability-based categories: marathons (at least outside of the very small groups of seeded elite runners) start as much as possible as a single mass group, and each racer tends to care about their individual time from start to finish, and usually compares that time primarily to their own personal best at that distance, rather than to the performance of others who run at a similar speed.

Amateur cycling doesn't work that way. Like a squash match, a typical bike race is substantially defined by the competition, and "personal best time" (except for time trials) is not really meaningful as a measure of personal performance. Also, road cycling is an event where so much depends on both tactical dynamics and on being roughly competitive with those around you, that when you race against people who are either much too strong or much too weak, the event ceases to have the character of a road race (too weak, and you shoot out the back, and are on a solo ride; too strong, and you disappear off the front, and are on a solo ride). For this reason, much amateur racing is based around ability categories, frequently with a modicum of self-seeding.

The dilemma is this: given a collection of ability-based categories, which category should a rider be in? The argument, for entirely different reasons, parallels the problems discussed above: you want "fair" competition, but this time because the event will be (from a utilitarian perspective) most interesting for everyone when the competitors are as evenly matched as possible.

For any individual rider, the most desireable category is probably that in which they are closest to the second-place rider in the pack. In such a case, the rider will be a powerful force in the race, always able to challenge for victory, but not so powerful that every race turns into a time trial off the front (which ultimately, is only fun for time triallists, or when it is a tactical result of a pack not chasing at its full potential, and paying the price).

Unfortunately, not every rider can be above average, so the goal is to ensure that every rider is sorted into whichever group leaves them closest to the average performance of that group.

This is a hard concept to cope with, especially since most ability-based bike racing includes an upgrade system that pushes you from group to group as you accumulate good results. In other words, the natural progression for a rider who does not make it into the upper echelons of the elite category is to go from winning a lower category to...not winning much at all, in the middle of a higher category.

In a word, that sucks for a lot of riders. They're unhappy about suddenly going from what feels like near-ideal racing conditions to a group that is too hard for them to easily influence. But as a mathematical reality, that is the normal experience of most bike racers at most performance levels: bike racing is hard, it hurts a lot, and you won't win very often. Like life, it will feel horribly horribly unfair.

Sports Are Like Life: Unfair

The lesson in all these examples is the same: our sense of what is fair and just for any individual will frequently derange the nature of competition for all. Drawing the bar to competing for athletes like Dumaresq, Semenya, or Pistorius in slightly the wrong place could lead to athletes with their peculiarities coming to dominate competitions not really designed with them in mind: get the argument about allowable prosthetic parameters for the nominally "open" class in athletics, and the future of the 400m run may be nothing but bilateral amputees. Err in terms of determining how "fair" it is to have MTF transsexuals or from-birth hermaphrodites competing against women who are indisputably within the physiological, genetic, and hormonal norms for females, and it is entirely possible that a small inherent disadvantage would allow the best "normal" females to be crowded out of women's competition. Indeed, this arguably already happens: any elite athlete in any competitive sport is essentially a physiological outlier of some sort. Arguably, female athletes with some intersex indications already succeed in women's sports out of proportion to their numbers (that page says no more than 1 in 1500 births are reported as apparently intersex, but that is presumably a low estimate, given that some nominally intersex people would appear normal at birth, with intersex characteristics not obvious until puberty, if ever).

So what is to be done? Rather than touch the more fraught issue of gender distinctions, I'd simply say that a cruel, pointed response to the Pistorius affair would be very simple: mandate prostheses that, against able-bodied runners, indisputably do not give Pistorius a physiological advantage. On the other hand, bilateral amputee running should encourage prostheses, that within some simple limitations (no stored energy, other regulations primarily focused on safety), are given great latitude to go all-out for performance. My attitude is that while paralympic running should still be indisputably human-powered bipedal motion, there is no reason the paralympic record times shouldn't be lower than the "able-bodied" records.

As Aimee Mullins points out in this video, "that's not fair" can cut both ways. (The best part of her story is 7:20-7:59). Expectations of fairness are always going to be confounded by the intractable unfairness of so many things, and sports, of all endeavours, is about attempting to impose fairness on inherently unfair contests.

Regarding his larger points about the decline of TV news, I don't think the arrow of causality points the way Claude thinks it does.

TV news does a very good job at displaying visually compelling news. Not surprisingly, most TV News shows focus on the visually compelling.

TV news is terrible at presenting stories that are not visually compelling. It is very hard (and very time-consuming) to create a coherent, deep explanation of a story that is not telegenic (for example, the federal budget). By comparison, the written word deals with such stories fabulously well: an essay on the budget is likely to pay your attention, on a per-minute basis, with far more information density, and in a form that more easily invites thoughtful perusal and reconsideration.

Adding to the annoyance, TV news is not inherently skippable. Claude mentioned that he worked on a 90 minute news show. Looking through the Globe and Mail cover to cover takes me about 30 minutes if I'm being leisurely. That isn't the time to read every article, but that's the time to look at every headline, skim the interesting-looking ones, and read everything of real interest. Meanwhile, the TV News would be one-third done, and I would have sat through a series of stories that were more likely to annoy me (Harry Potter premiere? Skip. Running of the Bulls? Watch, but seriously, Maximum Exposure covers that event better. Lost hiker in Lions Bay? Unless you tell me about the rescue techniques, I probably don't care) than inform me. Yes, I could watch pre-recorded and use my PVR to jump the bad stories, but I could also just read the newspaper, or go online.

(It's telling that I regularly hit the cbc.ca home page to check news stories, and I search their old stories that way as well. The online news system they've created is quite excellent, even if it's built under a TV news service I never watch).

So TV news is bad at complex stories, and good at visually compelling stories, and the dog didn't die? Try not to learn too much from this.

These things normally start with a Manifesto. But if one is attempting to disavow political trappings, a manifesto is a bad place to start. Also, it does not suit the aesthetic of Wired Cola. Therefore, this thing will start with a Mission Statement:

We Enjoy Implausible Events, and Strive to Create Them

By an "Implausible Event," we mean the unexpected, for whatever reason. It may be a physically unlikely event (miracles, coincidences, low-statistical-probability occurrences in well-modeled systems). Or a socially unlikely event (a flaming phone book as an entree, a carousel horse race, or a racing series for $500 junk cars). Or an unlikely event of a type I cannot easily imagine (Unknown unknowns, if you will).

We "Enjoy" them in the sense that we wish they happened more often. Rather than give a narrow, inevitably dogmatic explanation of why we enjoy them, we invite those attracted to our Mission Statement to either admit no explanation, or to any number of a multitude of explanations, as is simplest for them.

Existentialists may embrace the idea that they must create their own meaning, and implausible events represent an expansion of available distractions or purposes (whatever).

Christians may embrace implausible events as representative of the fullness of God's creation, and so the rejection of sinless but implausible events amounts to a turning away from the fullness of the joy and love available in His creation.

Buddhists may, well...I guess it's all in Nirvana in the end, right?

Marxists may observe that implausible events represent a structural failure of market capitalism which will inevitably lead to the downfall of the hegemony as it is replaced by the glorious socialist future. That's ok too! But no immanentizing the eschaton, okay?

And you may insert your own theologically credible explanation that favors the implausible here. This sample list is neither exhaustive nor representative, and no rational explanation is considered necessary.

We "Strive to Create" implausible events because by the nature of natural events, implausible natural events are not normal. And by the nature of social structures, implausible social events are those which happen rarely, and since we favor them, we would wish they happened more often. It is poor project management to leave the creation of implausible events to those who do not favour them; We will do it ourselves. Distributed striving for implausibility also offers better chances that more of the unknown unknowns will be imagined and created and known.

This mission statement should not be considered either complete or incomplete. If there must be a closing epigram for you to feel better, then you may have this, which I have come to think of as the axiom against apophenia: "try not to learn too much from this."

Tag cloud courtesy TagCrowd

Wait, Wordle may be a better tool...

I really wish TagCrowd's export options worked properly.

Electric-assist Bikes

I don't always keep track of electric bicycle news, because I don't need one. But good-quality electric bikes are a great solution to long commutes, hilly commutes, or cyclists who aren't unusually strong, or cyclists who just can't arrive sweaty. The only bad news is the cheap electric-bike setups are dismal junk, and the good electric-bike setups start around $1500. Those prices have come down a lot in the last few years, and the makers are rapidly moving to lithium batteries (I'd avoid NiMH and lead-acid systems at this point). Typical e-bikes are either normal bicycles with an electric motor and battery added, or electric scooters with pedals and speed limiters to allow them to qualify as electric-assist bicycles. With most of the scooter-type designs, you're not even supposed to pedal, the pedals are there as a legal fig-leaf.

Folding Bikes

I love folding bikes (and currently own three), even though they're mostly useless, and they're inferior bicycles. The best of them are not bad to ride, but unless you need a folder's special abilities, a full-sized bike is preferable.

Most cars can fit a full-sized bicycle one way or another as long as you take the front wheel off. For those cars that won't fit a bike inside, racks are easy: the cheapest ones are garage-sale fodder, and the most expensive racks are about the price of a decent folding bike.

However, there are some edge-case mixed-mode commutes that can benefit from a folder: if you have a Skytrain leg to your commute that is part of the peak-direction no-bicycles rule, a folding bike will pass muster as a not-bicycle. If your bus routinely has both rack spots filled, the folder might help there too. If you carpool part-way, and can get space for a folding bike in the trunk, that's another useful case.

Folding bikes range from cheap junk to expensive overkill. The most beloved folder is surely Brompton with Bike Friday another well-established name, but Dahon is apparently producing some pretty good stuff at bottom of the nice-folder market. For an MSRP of $489, their Speed D7 is about as cheap as good folders get.

I'm not a fan of novelties like the Strida, because they're not good bicycles, but they do fold into a very convenient package. Large-wheel folding bikes have the opposite problem: they don't fold small enough to be advantageous while commuting. The large-wheel "folding" bikes are mainly meant as baggage-fee avoiders for frequent flyers, and the best of them are pretty much no-compromise bikes, but they are not really folders: they can be broken down into a suitcase-sized package given 10-15 minutes and a few tools.

Clipless Pedal Rain Options

If you're using flat pedals, you have your pick of boots that will fend off a bit of rain or cold. If you use clipless pedals, it's a trickier choice.

Lots of cyclists happily use some form of overboot (neoprene, rubber-coated, or other materials) that zips over a regular cycling shoe. The ones I tried all managed to cut off my circulation at the ankle and left me cold, both literally and metaphorically. I have switched to dedicated winter cycling boots. The Exustar model I got from MEC is adequate for my needs, though the sole is a hard plastic that is slippery on hard surfaces. Buy them big enough to fit a thick sock.

Gear Disclosure

Here's what I normally use and pack on my 12 km commute, which is about 35 minutes of riding:
Early-80s Miyata 210 touring bicycle with 27" wheels, canti brakes, fenders, and rack: I upgraded the rear wheel on this bike to a freehub after breaking the original rear axle. The rear wheel doesn't stay true for long, and I think it's a combo of my abusive riding habits and the inherently spindly nature of 27" wheels. This bike cost me $20 and works well, but I dream of setting up an old rigid MTB as my ideal commuter bike: 26" wheels (so I stop kicking the fender due to toe overlap, and because they're naturally stronger), fat slick tires, decent drivetrain, and a nice tough rack. I'd go with flat bars for my short commutes. This would let me retire the Miyata to a more natural role as a dedicated winter training bike: leave the fenders, remove the rack, stop riding it off curbs with 15 kg of luggage on the rack.

Various clothing: after a decade, I have a huge array of cycling clothing (not to mention four pairs of cycling shoes in regular use, and several other pairs in reserve). On any given day I pick from that mess of clothing to suit the conditions, but my core items are a cycling jersey, cycling shorts (I like bibs, but use both bib shorts and regular shorts), cycling jacket, helmet (I leave blinky lights attached to it over the winter), some sort of thermal skullcap, knee warmers, arm warmers, winter gloves, half-finger gloves, thermal socks, athletic socks, cycling shoes. I use cycling pants/tights a lot, but long knee warmers are more versatile.

Saddlebag: the bag (I usually need just one) is a Garneau, replacing a well-worn Serratus. Everything I describe from here on goes inside that bag. On potentially rainy days, vulnerable items are put in a plastic bag; some bags are rainproof enough to not bother. The Garneau bag comes with a separate rain cover which reduces water intrusion. I pack it in the bag and use it when necessary.

Tools: Crank Brothers Mult17, a compact and elegant tool that has given me years of service. It is the smallest tool I have seen that contains a chain tool, not to mention four(!) sizes of spoke wrench. One of my favorite tools. I recommend you designate your road-repair tool for road use only, so the tool faces don't get worn down by routine use. A non-portable set of tools will be cheaper for at-home use and will work a bit better. Topeak Mini-Morph pump, compact and easy to use. A pair of plastic tire levers: Park is the current one, but Pedro's and others in the past: they wear out after a few uses, and I make sure to keep my newest set in the road repair kit. One spare tube. A patch kit (glue, patches, small piece of sandpaper). A master chain link and a few spare links, I could probably get rid of both. One latex glove, one very small rag, one small adjustable wrench, really only needed for bikes with nutted axles. Of these tools, the pump is left loose, the spare tube is packed in a very small nylon bag, and everything else is in a second small nylon bag (with the smallest bits like the glue, patches, and spare chain links tucked into a patch-kit box). When I ride another bike, I need only grab the two bags and the pump, and I have my complete repair kit. My current saddlebag has a side pocket that conveniently fits all of this stuff.

I carry a very light cable lock, solely for the purpose of locking the bike momentarily if I have to do a quick errand somewhere. I don't consider my commuter bike a theft magnet, and I attach little sentimental value to it, but a light lock stops opportunistic theft.

Personal effects and work stuff: lunch, in a lunch bag. Wallet/phone/keys/cards/screwdriver/money, all in an odd Nike man-purse I have. iPad/papers/Leatherman/headphones/iPad cables, all in a very slim padded laptop bag meant for a 13" laptop. Change of clothes: shirt/underwear/dress socks/pants/belt; no shoes because I leave a pair at work. Bottle of body wash. No towel, because we have towel service at the work showers.

You may notice an obsessive modularity in my packing, with bags inside bags, and sometimes boxes inside bags inside bags. This is an organically-derived coping mechanism for my on bad mental habits: I chronically forget things, so I force myself to be quite rigid about setting out my stuff, charging electronics, and packing my bags. This method also means that if I need to take a car or the bus to work, I only have to grab my three essential bags (lunch, iPad, and man-purse) and all my work necessities are with me. the man-purse survived the recent arrival of the iPad bag because the iPad bag has only one side-pouch, while the man-purse separates out my keys, phone, and everything else in separate sections, making it easy to take stuff out and put stuff back.

Bike Routes, Bike Lanes, Vehicular Cycling, and Suicidal Tendencies

After studying the vehement arguments of enthusiastic advocates for vehicular cycling, I don't think it's the best option for most bicycle commuters. In particular, the hostility of most vehicular cycling advocates to most bike lanes (whether separated routes or painted road shoulders) is probably a mistake, if we want to see more cyclists and fewer car-bike crashes.

The best research on bike usage demonstrates that most cyclists are happier with some sort of dedicated cycling accomodation. In Metro Vancouver, this mostly means designated bike routes, which are mostly shared roads optimized for bicycles. There are a few dedicated bike paths or lanes, and some of those are quite good. If I was asked by a new cyclist to help with route planning, I would steer them towards those routes as much as possible, with some discretion.

Having said that, I happily ignore much of this advice on my own commute. At various points on my usual ride, I avoid parallel bike routes, ride on main roads with the cars, and even routinely ride on the sidewalk for a block. You are owed an explanation.

I can ride at 30 km/h on flat roads for hours. I can sprint to 40 km/h on my loaded commuter without much trouble, and peak out near 50 km/h in a racing sprint. These aren't great numbers by bike-racer standards, but they're far above typical-commuter numbers. 30 km/h on congested city roads is like a magic number: at that point I'm traveling at roughly the same average speed as cars over much of my route, and my interactions with them take on a different character. I don't appear as a barely-moving pylon to cars, and I get a bit more space and attention as a result. This lets me blithely choose some very busy routes that I would not recommend to anyone.

Meanwhile, various parts of the region's bike network are profound rubbish. I take a major road in Port Moody instead of the parallel bike route because the parallel bike route goes over a hump that gains and then loses about 50' of elevation in a single block. That's a ridiculous slope. Similarly, there's a hill I climb in the slow lane, because the bike-designated parallel route manages to be both steeper and longer, as well as having problematic access back to the main route at the top and bottom of the hill.

And the sidewalk-riding? When New Westminster put in a very nice separated bike path alongside Columbia Street a few years ago, there was one block where there was no space between the sidewalk and a retaining wall to put in a bike path. The "solution" was to detour the bike route up a block, across, and down a block, an effective 3-block detour to avoid the rarely-used sidewalk. NOT. My excuse is that I conscientiously yield to pedestrians there, normally by riding onto the grass verge while passing them.

That said, I do use bike paths and bike lanes for much of my route, and there are places where I use parallel roads rather than the busy, shoulder-free main road. My basic calculation is whether or not the parallel route is substantially slower, and whether it is reasonable to ride on the main route (shoulder or no, I'll ride almost anything that's signed at 50 km/h or less, but I'm not wont to take the lane if the maximum speed is 70). Again, I don't think my calculations are necessarily reasonable, and almost certainly not reasonable for most cyclists. But you should ride within your abilities and your confidence.

"EGOT", as the link above will inform you, is an acronym for "Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony," and is typically used to refer to the 12 people who have won all four awards.

In theory, you think of such winners as multi-talented threats, but most EGOTs limped into at least one category, sometimes more. Let's examine them in chronological order of EGOT-acquisition.

[a note on research: cataloging performer awards is one place where IMDB is generally ahead of Wikipedia, but they don't always care about Grammys and Tonys, which makes this research somewhat interesting]

Richard Rodgers

Probably the greatest composer of 20th century musical theatre, his work was a huge success on stage and screen. The only surprise may be that he won the Oscar only once (and for the relatively minor State Fair; this may be due to Academy music categories only being open to original music). He didn't concentrate much on TV, though, and so his only Emmy was for music contributions to a Churchill biography.

Helen Hayes

A great actress who had a long career on both the stage and screen, she also did a lot of TV, and while she only won one Emmy, she was nominated several times. As with most of the actors here, it's the Grammy award she backed into, thanks to the "spoken word" category, which she won in 1976 "for her recording of the Bill of Rights."

Rita Moreno

I thought Ms. Moreno would be one of the really defensible EGOTs, since she is the classic example of a Broadway-musical performer who had prolific film and TV careers. I assumed that she had recorded enough pop music to slip an album into the Grammys, but do you know what she won for? the recorded audio from the TV show "The Electric Company", in what can only be described as a category with slack admission criteria (her co-winner Bill Cosby was taking home his second consecutive win in the "Best Recording for Children" category, after scoring with Bill Cosby Talks to Kids about Drugs the previous year).

John Gielgud

Another giant of acting, prolific board-treader, decade-long reign as king of the miniseries, another dubious spoken-word Grammy, right? Well, almost. He was nominated for his spoken-word recordings nine times, and once in the Children's category! If anything, his Oscar is the dubious one, a probable "give it to Gielgud" in the ever-sketchy Supporting Actor category, for playing the valet in Arthur (a movie where you can play "before they were EGOT" with Gielgud and Liza Minelli, trivia buffs).

Audrey Hepburn

I'm not going to say a single mean thing about Audrey Hepburn's EGOT. Not a one. Love her. I'm not going to mention that her posthumous Emmy was for Outstanding Individual Achievement – Informational Programming for an episode of Gardens of the World. Dang.

And as long as I've spoiled it, her Grammy was also posthumous, and was in the category "Best Spoken Word Album for Children".

Audrey's EGOT frankly reeks of honouring the beloved and lately departed.

Marvin Hamlisch

Another musical theatre composer, and prolific as a film scorer, and a writer of pop music. He won a Grammy as the co-composer of "The Way We Were," which won in the big-league "Song of the Year" category in 1975, and two others. There's not much to mock in his collection of four Emmys (all in music categories, of course). If there's a surprise for me, it's that he has won multiples of all the EGOT awards EXCEPT the Tony, his sole win being for A Chorus Line. Hamlisch is arguably the most legit EGOT winner of all.

Jonathan Tunick

Yes, I know, "Jon who?" My reaction too. He's a prolific composer who has done a ton of Broadway work, as well as numerous film scores. He seems more than any other EGOT winner to have squeaked into this club with winning work on dubious projects. He won a 1978 Best Music Oscar for A Little Night Music, a forgotten film adaptation of a Sondheim musical. His 1988 Grammy was in the hotly contested Instrumental Arrangement category, and this theatre-oriented composer had to wait until 1997 to collect a Tony. He bears the dubious distinction of being the only minimalist EGOT: he has won each award once.

Mike Nichols

He won his Oscar for directing The Graduate, a peak in a long and impressive movie career. His brief forays into made-for-TV work scored him four Emmys, two for the brutal but excellent Wit, and two more for Angels In America. He's owned the Tony award for direction, collecting it 7 times (and one more for Best Play). But he had to rely on his early career as a sketch comic to pull in the 1961 Comedy Album Grammy.

Mel Brooks

Would you believe that Mel Brooks, famous man of American film comedy, winner of 3 Tonys, 4 Emmys, and 3 Grammys, has only one Oscar? I know!

Brooks, despite his vast oeuvre, won almost all of his EGOT prizes for either some version of The Producers, or for playing Uncle Phil. It is literally true that he could have won his EGOT solely on the prizes he collected from them. The two exceptional awards were a 1967 Emmy for writing on The Sid Caesar, Imogene Coca, Carl Reiner and Howard Morris Special, and a comedy-album Grammy in 1998, for The 2000 Year Old Man in the Year 2000, the fifth recording of Mr. Brooks' and Carl Reiner's classic sketch.

Whoopi Goldberg

Like most EGOT-watchers, I think Ms. Goldberg is the poster child for the dubiousness of EGOT. Her Grammy? Comedy album, of course. Her Oscar? Supporting Actress, Ghost. I mean, seriously, have you seen that movie? Her Tony award was a producer's prize for Thoroughly Modern Millie, which I will assume was completely legit (15 producers?), And her Emmys were, of course, daytime Emmys. Now, you can say what you want about her work as part of the winning ensemble host-team on The View (heaven knows I do; "rape-rape"?), but that was actually her second Emmy. The one that vaulted her into EGOT status was awarded in 2002, for her work as host of that year's "Outstanding Special Class Special" (an award category I totally did not make up) for a TV documentary on the life of Hattie McDaniel, one which is currently reaping a big 5.1/10 on IMDB

Barbra Streisand

Babs is the first of the two "special class" EGOT winners, since her Tony Award was a "Special Tony Award" in 1970 rather than being in a competitive class. Her EGO prizes are fairly unimpeachable: 9 Grammys, 4 Emmys, 2 Oscars. I can understand why she got a Special Tony, but she earned what is typically a "lifetime achievement" award for a board-treading career that encompassed two roles and less than 6 years.

Liza Minelli

The second of our two special EGOTs, she was gifted a Grammy Legend Award in 1990 to fill out her set. Considering that she scored her first Tony in 1965, and added Oscar (Best Actress for Cabaret) and Emmy (for a concert special) in 1973, it was a long wait. Ironically for a performer best known for her singing abilities, Minelli has released 12 albums in 37 years, and less than half of those albums even charted in the US. I'd compare her career unfavorably with Rita Moreno's, but Ms. Moreno's "real" Grammy is more dubious than Liza's "fake" one.

EGORT?

So there you go, a complete list of quadruple threats in American performing arts. I think we can agree now the EGOT is a mess, and it's not unbelievable that Tracy Jordan could win one if he took a run at Broadway. In the course of researching this, I also noticed that several of the EGOT winners had been nominated for Golden Raspberry Awards, but as far as I can tell, none has won, so there's still a chance to be the first to be the best and the worst.

Future EGOTs

Wikipedia helpfully includes a list of the 3GOTs, people who are one award away from the EGOT, listed by which prize they are missing. This allows us to guess who might be added to the list in the future.

There are a surprising number of living film actors who have won every award except the Oscar: James Earl Jones, John Lithgow, Cynthia Nixon and I wouldn't count out Lily Tomlin. Prolific film composer Marc Shaiman wrote 5 Oscar-nominated film scores in the 1990s, and that's the only award he's missing. He's still active in the field, and he did the musical direction for the 2010 Academy Awards show. So he must be considered a near lock.

The five living "no-Emmy" 3GOTs are all composers or lyricists. Hans Zimmer, Elton John, Andrew Lloyd Webber, and Tim Rice all seem like they could just write a few good TV show theme songs and auto-pilot their way to EGOT. I'd include Stephen Sondheim on the list, but he's 81 and may have better things to do with his time.

The no-Grammy list is a goodly collection of name-brand actors, and if I was Al Pacino, Maggie Smith, or Geoffrey Rush, I'd consider pumping out a lot of spoken-word recordings as a way of grinding to EGOT victory.

The no-Tony list is riddled with more musicians (John Williams, David Byrne and Randy Newman, notably), along with Robin Williams and Cher. But the most interesting case of all the 3GOTs might be Julie Andrews, who is missing only a Tony, but declined a nomination for one in 1996! They left her on the ballot, and she didn't win, but I'm thinking that she would have been the favorite without that grand gesture.

Final Thoughts

So Whoopi's EGOT still looks dubious, but I'd say she's joined in the lowest circle of marginal-EGOTs by Jonathan Tunick and, most surprisingly, Audrey Hepburn. As much as I'd like to rubbish the Special EGOTs of Babs and Liza, the cases for those two being contributors in all four types of performing art are better than Whoopi's, and maybe better than Tunick's and Hepburn's.

The truth about the EGOT is it's the triathlon of performing arts achievements: you win by being fairly good at several things instead of very good at anything.

The first question I have for proponents: "what problem are you trying to solve?" That's not rhetorical. The second question is: "how's your voting system working out where it's been tried?" Also not rhetorical.

Instant-runoff is used in a few countries, most notably Australia. The result is that Oz has a de facto two party system, with major left-of-centre and right-of-centre parties dominating a coalition of lesser parties, and currently there are only four parties with any representation in the lower house (and a fifth in Australia's PR-ish elected Senate).

Proportional representation systems are common in Europe, though Italy's notorious andcomplex system was revised in 2005 to give a "plurality bonus" in order to ensure a working majority for the leading coalition. Meddling by Berlusconi, or a desperate reform of a system more famous for elected porn stars than good governance? (OK, it's unfair to mention a pol who has been out of office for so long. These days, Italy's representatives are perfectly normal.

The other vice of proportional representation is that it increases the primacy of party over individual representatives, as your standing on the party list is what matters, not whether you can appeal to a plurality of voters in a geographical riding. I believe, not always on strong evidence, that geography, community, and the individual representative should matter, and do matter.

Voting systems aside, I have come to an unproven (and possibly unprovable) theory that the great virtue of democracy is the ability to eject leaders before they wish to leave. I don't know that it does a great job of selecting leaders, but it seems good enough. At least it strips away the craziest strivers for power, more or less.

I submit that there's a virtue in giving a tight leadership group a relatively free hand and a reasonably long mandate, the proverbial elected dictatorship that majority-government Westminster parliaments are sometimes accused of being. At the next election, that party stands or falls on their record.

A leader can still be ousted early by losing the confidence of their caucus (just ask Gordon Campbell and Carol James, or Jean Chretien), which acts as another sort of fail-safe on politicians overstaying their welcome, or getting too radical between elections.

Mostly minorities

It's true that without FPTP, Steven Harper would not have a majority today. But less noted is that no party has won a popular-vote majority in the last 20 years. The Liberal majority parliaments in that era were all based on support around the 40% mark. The last leader to receive more than 50% of the popular vote? Brian Mulroney in 1984.

One more zing

My friends to the left do seem to delight in pointing out that turnout is relatively low (at 60%, this election saw turnout slightly higher than historic low of the 2008 election, but far from the historic high in 1958) and that voters tend to skew older and more conservative than non-voters. There seems to be a belief this indicates a general disaffection with the electoral process (and maybe even a certain illegitimacy of the result).

I like to point out that there is may be a turnout crisis, but apparently only among supporters of the left, and why is the left so incompetent at GOTV?

This is why The Room can't have nice things. I was also more diligent about stripping housekeeping messages out of the corpus.