An Open Letter to the United States Congress

It's time to exercise your privilege and responsibility as a citizen of the United States of America. I encourage you to take a few minutes out of your (understandably) busy schedule to protect your Constitutional rights to freedom of speech and freedom of the presses, by opposing SOPA, the Stop Online Piracy Act:

- You can write your own letter, or copy and paste the one I wrote if you like it (see below), but make sure to say something to your representatives in the Senate and the House of Representatives. Remember that in politics, silence is consent!

- You can find out who your representatives are by going to whoismyrepresentative.com.

- If you've got the time, you can read the full text of the bill.

- If you don't have the time, you can watch Hank Green's video, "Top 5 Reasons ████ ██ ██████" which explains exactly why SOPA would be so bad for the internet and freedom of speech. (He talks about the movie "Akira" for the first 28 seconds, but rest assured, it's not irrelevant to the point he's making about SOPA).


Dear Congressman/Congresswoman/Senator,

I’ve been hearing a lot about the Stop Online Piracy Act (a.k.a. “SOPA”, or “H.R. 3261”), and most of what I’m hearing is very negative.

I may not work with the film or music industries, but I do work for Google (through a third-party vendor named Genpact), and I speak with small advertisers and online business-owners every day. I see firsthand how many Americans depend on the internet for their income; whether they have brick-and-mortar stores or are entirely online, the internet is the great equalizer of American commerce, and one of our only economic engines that’s doing well in the current economy.

I feel strongly that the powers which would be granted to large entertainment corporations by the provisions within SOPA are unfair to the aforementioned small businesses, as well as freedom of speech and freedom of the presses. Essentially, SOPA will allow a small group of persons not elected by the people to make themselves a de facto internet censorship bureau, with no forms of oversight, redress, or recall. It would be possible for large companies and entertainment giants to wage legal war on one another for the right to distribute content, but small advertisers (such as the ones I work with every day through Google AdWords™) simply don’t have the resources or the time to do that. They would be forced to allow large corporations to shut them down, and would have no effective means to challenge such decisions. Any content which media giants found offensive or inconvenient, they would be able to remove instantly from public view, without any need for a warrant, and without any form of government oversight.

Over the last few years, acts of so-called piracy have increased dramatically. I myself must admit to occasionally watching movies through YouTube and other video sites, but typically only when the film in question is fairly old or rare, and proves difficult to rent or purchase. With ticket prices as high they are, and the economy as it is, there are few Americans who can afford to take their entire family to the newest 3D blockbuster at $15 per person. When one considers that with the advent of user-generated content, one can find almost limitless entertainment online (and all for free), it’s not hard to understand why the market is less and less willing to bear the cost of traditional, “legitimate” means of purchasing entertainment.

I’m not trying to defend internet piracy. What they do is illegal, and involves the distribution of something they do not own and have no right to distribute, even if it is intangible information. But the free market, America’s vox populi, is trying to tell us something. The market no longer views entertainment as the sole province of content-creating professionals, but a collaborative process in which all people may participate. Our views on entertainment, and how much we are willing to pay to be entertained, are changing, and Hollywood needs to change with them.

Napster® and iTunes® are excellent examples of how big business changes (or fails to change) with the times. Napster showed up in the late nineties, ready to change the very nature of the music business, but rather than embracing a new, more efficient and democratic business model, the media giants chose to gang up and crush Napster® before it could mature. A scant few years later, iTunes® showed up on the scene with the backing of a major corporation, fast and reliable service, and prices which reflected how much people were actually willing to pay for their music. The result has been one of the most widely-used and enjoyed music download services in the world. SOPA seeks to undo the progress which has been made in the ten years since Napster® first pointed out that there might be a better way of doing things.

I don’t object to corporations having the power to protect their interests. I don’t even necessarily object to the large salaries given to powerful CEOs, musicians, and movie stars. What I object to is this attempt by Hollywood to dictate not just how people should spend their money, and how much money they should spend, but what people can and cannot put on the internet. The American government was created with a built-in system of checks and balances (as any grade-schooler can tell you), to allow each branch of government to prevent the abuse of power by another branch.

SOPA will grant corporations and CEOs, who are not elected by the American people, powers which are effectively the same as those possessed by certain branches of the U.S. government, but without any form of oversight, transparency, or accountability. This is an irresistible invitation to bad behavior on the part of those being granted these powers. I, for one, will not support this bill, nor will any Representative who supports it receive my vote in future elections. As a matter of fact, I will not cast my vote for any member of a Congress which allows such a bill to pass. I hate to hold your feet to the fire, but the duty of my Representative is to make my voice heard in Congress and the Senate, and if my current Representative is unable to do so, I will be forced to cast my vote for a Representative who is able to do so.

Furthermore, I feel that if America passes this bill, it will seriously damage our credibility in international politics, while we urge countries like China and Iran to stop censoring the internet in their own countries. If we threaten economic sanctions against these rogue states while simultaneously curtailing freedom of the presses and freedom of speech in our own country, we’re not just sending mixed messages; we’re undermining our own credibility, making it look as if the values we attempt to “impose” on the rest of the world are not even cherished and protected in our own country.

I may be only one citizen, but there are many others who feel the same way as I, but lack the time or the inclination to write such long-form letters as I have written you. Perhaps they don’t know about SOPA. Perhaps they don’t care. But I can say for certain that when small businesses start to go bankrupt because large corporations are blocking their attempts to upload new and original content to the internet, their ire will turn on those who signed into law the bill which allows those corporations to thwart their efforts to carve themselves a slice of the American Dream.

Sincerely,
David F.K. Wurtsmith

NaNoWriMo: The Aftermath

November was pretty crazy, as you can tell by the fact that we're more than halfway through December before I got around to posting this. I barely had time to see Brianna on a regular basis, let alone anyone else. It was a long slog, and there were more than a few points where I felt like giving up. Most of these moments occurred in the second week, though when I logged in the day after Black Friday and saw the 5,000-word deficit in my word count... well, that was the bleakest moment of my November, let me tell you.

But, against all reason and my own inclination, I persisted. I smashed my own maximum daily output records on two consecutive days. On the November 25th, I more than doubled the largest number of words I'd ever written in a single day. The next day I surpassed even my own newly-set record, and this time without the help of pre-written material in my notebook that I could simply transcribe.

I think that this remarkable increase in productivity would not have been possible without a marvelous pep-talk from Brandon Sanderson. All the other pep-talks this month were by professional writers, but Sanderson I knew by name. He's finishing the Wheel of Time books after the untimely death of their author, Robert Jordan. In his pep talk, Sanderson confided in us that even he, a professional and fairly successful writer, had never completed an attempt at NaNoWriMo, despite doing it for many years. Perversely, it was the knowledge that it would be okay to fall short, and that I would be in good company if I did, that gave me the strength to pull ahead and cross the finish line.

The last days were full of anticipation, and eagerness to regain the alluring jewel known as "Having Free-Time." After a month, its absence was sorely missed from my life.

I at about 10pm EST on November 30th, the final day of NaNoWriMo. My reward was small: an eight-second video of congratulations from the Office of Letters and Light staff, and a full-color printout certificate of victory. I did a little booty-shaking victory dance for Brianna's amusement, printed out two copies of my certificate (one for home and one for work), and promptly went to bed.


The next day, I posted online that I'd won. A few people congratulated me, but otherwise, life went on much as it had before (and during) NaNoWriMo.

Except it wasn't the same. I had become that rarest of rare birds: the Novelist. I had completed NaNoWriMo once before, in 2007, but the draft was utter crap, and it never went anywhere. This year's attempt was different. I wasn't just writing for the sake of overcoming a challenge or winning a wager with myself: I had a story to tell, a story that I believed in, a story that I needed to tell, no matter the cost.

On the Inevitability of Godwin's Law

It seems that not everyone is aware of the "rules of engagement" for debate and intelligent discourse, so allow me to clarify a point of order which I feel is frequently disregarded in the fields of debate and comparison:

If you compare anything, anything at all, to Hitler or Nazis, then you are a goddamn idiot.

It's not that there aren't valid comparisons to the Third Reich. There absolutely are. Mussolini, Hirohito, and Franco are all great places to start. And there are certainly analogues to the Holocaust in world history: the Spanish Inquisition, of course, but also the reign of the Khmer Rouge, the Rwandan genocide of the early 1990's, and even what's going on right now in Darfur all bear marked similarities to the Holocaust. But bringing up these other genocides would at least be a sign that you'd done your homework. Everyone knows about the Holocaust; the fact that you can make a comparison between some event or practice and the systematic extermination of approximately 14 million human lives is not impressive, and most likely it is a grossly inappropriate comparison.


It makes you look like this.
Comparing something to Hitler or Nazis is such a problem in rhetoric that there's actually a theorem called Godwin's Law which states that "As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one." Eventually, someone is going to make the comparison, and the discussion is essentially over at that point.

Once the subject of a debate has been compared to Nazism, there's no hope for the continuation of cool, rational debate. Nazism is evil, and no one can save face while appearing to defend it, or anything associated with it. The subject so tagged has now gone beyond the field of debate and into metaphysics, perhaps even theology, judging by how fiercely people defend against their pet ideologies being compared with National Socialism. Essentially, the person who proves Godwin right has effectively declared that "viewpoint X is evil, all who espouse it are evil, and any attempt to defend viewpoint X is the equivalent of a hate crime." Once somebody's tossed out an ultimatum like that, it's no wonder that the conversation has nowhere to go but down.

But the most important reason to avoid comparing anything to Hitler or Nazis is that it makes you sound like an idiot. It really does. Even if you're making a totally legitimate comparison between the practices and propaganda of the Third Reich with some equally villainous organization (for example, the Taliban), the act of comparing anything with das Vaterland is so tainted by its association with spluttering, indignant maniacs that even legitimate comparisons suffer for it. Even if the comparison is valid, well-considered, and backed up by data and historical evidence, anyone listening is likely to be on their guard against such comparisons, will assume that such comparison is being made falsely, and will react just as one might predict. Mentioning Nazis chenges the whole tenor of a debate from an attempt to arrive at truth to a desperate struggle to crush the forces of evil under a merciless barrage of logic and namecalling.

In debate as well as in life, just stay away from Nazis. Nothing good can come of inviting them to come in.

NaNoWriMo

As some of you might already know, November is National Novel-Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo for short. In this month of dismal weather and nationwide turkey-murdering, crazy people with literary aspirations across the country will allow their lives to be dominated by the pursuit of a goal which is certifiably insane: to draft an entire 50,000-word novel (about 175 pages) in the space of a single 30-day calendar month.

It's insane, yes. Absolutely. Nobody's denying that. But impossible? Not at all: Thousands of people cross that finish-line every year before 11:59:59 on November 30th. I did it myself in 2007, though I've yet to duplicate the feat. This year, things are a little more stable, my wallet is a little fuller, and I expect and intend to make it through again.

And really, there's no other way to approach it. Everyone (and I do mean everyone in the entire world) has a Great Idea for a novel, a movie script, a video game, a poetry collection, a graphic novel, or whatever floats your particular literary boat. And every one of those selfsame people knows that they are far too busy right now to even consider starting another project on the side. Better to wait until you're retired, and have all the wisdom and free time you'll need to accomplish such a Serious Literary Endeavor.

But that's never going to happen. You'll never have free time, and you're never going to feel wise enough for something so serious and weighty. You'll keep putting it off, becoming more and more afraid of screwing up your Great Idea, and it'll never get done. It'll never even get started.

So the solution is to do it now. As in, right now. Like, starting November 1st, 2011, and committing yourself to getting the first rough draft down on paper by midnight on November 30th, 2011. No backsliding, no procrastination, and no weaseling out. Just sit down at your computer, slap on your word-wranglin' boots, and join the other thousands of like-minded whackos who have similarly committed themselves to such a poorly-planned assault on the ivory tower of Serious Literature.

If such a mad assault appeals to you, you can sign up to join us at NaNoWriMo's website. It's free to sign up, and free to participate. You have nothing to loose but your own self-doubt.


Hoping to see you on the other side of the literary finish-line,
D.F.K. Wurtsmith. Esq.


P.S. If you're interested, but don't feel like signing up, then you can to check up on my progress during the month of November at http://nanowrimo.org/en/participants/super-dave. Please, feel free to mock me mercilessly if I fall behind my self-imposed word-count goal.

"Please To Be Removing Your Shoes"

I don't normally blog about work, but for a few years I've had a feeling that we (i.e., Westerners) were doing something wrong, and my time cleaning carpets for Stanley Steemer has only confirmed my initial suspicion.

ATTENTION, ALL OF WESTERN SOCIETY! The multitudinous peoples of Asia have it right: We should be taking our shoes off before coming indoors.

Seriously.

In the four months I've been with Stanley Steemer (which are among the busiest of the whole carpet-cleaning calendar), I have cleaned carpets in probably a thousand homes. Maybe more, maybe slightly less. But in all that time, I can only recall doing one job in an Asian person's house. Maybe two, if you count Indian people as Asian.

I'll admit, part of the reason for the disparity is due to the fact that outside of Ann Arbor, there aren't a great number of Asian-Americans in southeast Michigan. But demographics alone cannot account for a difference so massive. In my professional opinion, I feel that the reason Asian people need their carpets cleaned so rarely is simply because they don't wear their dirty shoes around the house. They either wear slippers or they go barefoot.

Really, there is no good reason to wear your shoes indoors. It's slightly more hassle to take 'em off, but in the long run, you'll have to pay for carpet-cleaning much less often. Asides from being cleaner, your carpets will look better in the meantime, since slippers and bare feet are far less abrasive than rubber soles.

Taking off your shoes before entering a home just makes sense. In fact, it makes sense for entering just about any building. Think back to your days in the public schools (assuming you even need to think back at all, in the case of younger readers). Remember how, in winter, the soundtrack of the entire day was "wet shoes squeaking on tile floors"? Even if you weren't trying to make noise, the simple act of shifting your weight in your chair could set off a loud, grating squeal in an otherwise quiet classroom. Some kids liked to make those noises on purpose, all day long, thinking they were being clever or subversive. For months at a time, the entire floor of the main entrance to your school would be submerged under a shallow lake of cold and dirty water, no matter how much time the janitor spent mopping it up.

But that never happens in Japanese schools. You know why? Because all students stash their gross, wet, smelly, dirty, worn-down, black-rubber-soled, dog-poop-encrusted outdoor shoes in little cubbyholes near the entrance at the beginning of each day, and immediately put on a clean pair of shoes which are only ever worn indoors. The end result is that the floors in Japanese schools are never wet, an no-one has to worry about accidentally setting their books or papers down in a puddle of melting snow, or slipping and falling into dirty foot-water.

Really, there's no reason not to take your shoes off when coming indoors. I'm not suggesting that you should always carry a set of "indoor shoes" with you; if no one else is doing it, your indoor shoes will wind up just as dirty as your outdoor ones. But honestly, we as a society should change this cultural habit. It costs us extra time and money to clean our floors more often, and that's time and money that could be put to better use. The change will be slow, and not many people will go for it right away, but as the saying goes, "Change starts at home."

So make a change, and save yourself a little money!

Trust me on this one. I'm a professional.

The Last Battle

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 was, in my opinion, a fitting capstone to one of the greatest book-to-film adaptations of our time. Over the past decade, the Harry Potter movies have been more than a cultural phenomenon: it's a cultural force in its own right. Most often, when popular books make it to the big screen, the film becomes a point of origin for a line that divides the fanbase into "true fans" and those who just saw the movie. But I feel that this isn't the case with Harry Potter. Sure, there are plenty of fans who insist that you're not a true fan if you haven't read the books (and I'll admit that's a position I've taken myself, on days I'm not feeling particularly generous), but I feel that those who truly understand the spirit of the Wizarding World can accept that the movies are not necessarily a lesser experience than the books, simply a different one.

And let's be honest, if you've only seen the movies, then at least that's a step in the right direction. These films are some of the finest big-budget blockbusters crafted in our lifetimes, and they feature the cream of the crop of British actors. Any film series which manages to include the likes of Richard Harris, Maggie Smith, Emma Thompson, Robbie Coltrane, Gary Oldman, David Thewlis, Ralph Fiennes, Julie Walters, Brendan Gleeson, and the incomparable Alan Rickman deserves... well... I don't know what. Something big, anyway! Maybe their prize is just the chance to be connected with something so huge, so international, so important to so many people all over the world, both children and adults.

Difference is key. If the movies were exactly like the books in every respect, they wouldn't be nearly as much fun to watch. If I want to see Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone precisely as the author wrote it, then I can just reread the book. I've read that dialogue (and listened to Jim Dale read it) before; I don't need to pay ten bucks a head to see an actor read me a book that's already sitting on my shelf at home.

As always, John Green has interesting thoughts on book-to-movie translations, and the relative merits (and demerits) of remaining slavishly faithful to the source material. And hey, he conveniently agrees with me! What a crazy random happenstance!

We Potterites should be thankful for what we've gotten: eight amazing films, populated by the crème de la crème of British actors, and helmed by some of the best directors in the world, which not only bring our imaginations to the big screen, but allow us that most precious of all gifts: another glimpse, from an excitingly different vantage point, into the the enchanting, alluring, magical world of the Boy Who Lived.

To paraphrase Dumbledore: Don't pity the dead; pity the living. And most especially, pity those who go through life with only a single glimpse of Harry Potter.

Cracked.com: The Single Greatest History Teacher of All Time Ever

Cracked.com, much like its namesake, is a highly addictive substance. Though I love the site dearly, and enjoy reading just about everything they produce, I find it necessary to remove it from my bookmarks list if I ever want to get some work done ever again in my life.

Part of their power comes from the site's format: lots of links, articles on intriguing subjects, titles that pique the reader's interest, and a complete and utter lack of pretentiousness. But I think the biggest factors accounting for the site's popularity and effectiveness at spreading information are: 1)the content of the articles themselves, and 2) the irrepressible sense of amazement and wonder that the writers bring to the table.


Every article that graces the "pages" of this digital humor publication is practically bubbling over with enthusiasm. Reading their material, one almost can't help but get excited about... umm... well, whatever the article that you're reading happens to be about! They just make it so much fun to learn about the world!

Wait, did I just use the words "fun" and "learning" in the same sentence? Yes, that's right: Cracked.com doesn't just make it fun to learn about the world as it was, is, and yet might be; it actually makes you want to learn more!!!

If you're like most people (particularly Americans), you probably thought that History was one of the most boring classes you were ever forced to take. It consisted mainly of watching a mustachioed, middle-aged man in a geeky sweater drone on for 45 minutes about stuff that happened way before you were born, when people were stupid and dressed all funny and didn't shower.


But imagine if, instead of starting off the semester with a coma-inducing PowerPoint presentation, your History teacher walked into the room on the first morning of class and announced that you were going to start with a discussion of the The 6 Most Insane Underdog Stories in the History of Battle? Or a lesson about great modern inventions that have their roots in unbelievably gruesome tragedy? Don't you think you and your classmates might have leaned forward a little in your seats? Just a bit?

All of Cracked.com has that effect on people.

Detractors complain about its poor academic standards, its haphazard research, and its noted tendency to exaggerate the "awesome factor" in its stories. And you know what? I don't give a rat's ass. Anything, anything at all, that can convince a kid to go online and willingly read something about the past is, by definition, a good thing!

Even in America (allegedly the "greatest country on Earth"), there are a truly horrifying number of people who graduate high school without even so much as a basic grasp of historical perspective. So what if what they're reading is more fluff than substance? At least it gets them off their asses (so to speak) and makes them hunger for more. It forces people to appreciate just how weird, wild, cool, mixed-up, crazy and friggin' unbelievable the world is.

Cracked.com is not content to sit by and say "You should know more about history," or "This is important, kids!" It physically reaches out of your screen, slaps you across the face, and shouts "PAY ATTENTION! THE WORLD IS AN AMAZING PLACE!"



People need to be forced to confront the world they live in. In a democratic system (which I believe the planet is heading towards, albeit slowly), the people generally get what they deserve, in terms of their government. An uninformed populace, one which cannot recognize the repeating patterns of history, will condemn itself to being governed by those who, like so many before them, do not have the best interests of the people at heart.