Starstruck

Posted on April 11, 2012 by Tito

Comparison between North and South Korea by night

Why is this image so frequently shared? I think to most people, it shows a certain failure in North Korea. One can go on to attribute this failure to communism, or probably some other political fact that distinguishes the DPRK from the ROK, but for most people the lack of man made lighting is a failure.

Darkness is essentially inhospitable. Light is required for sight, and without sight  humans are at the mercy of nature. We can’t defend ourselves from predators or assailants, we can’t read, hunt, or grow food. For much of human existence our ability to be productive or enjoy ourselves was contingent on it being the day time. Yet now, we can work long into the night, we can navigate city streets safely, we can spend the evenings reading, in galleries, or watching plays. Artificial light is often used as a symbol of civilisation itself, because its impact is so enormous. Artificial light makes the achievement of human values possible, and has been made so cheap, by an abundant energy supply and an efficient manufacturing process, that we can afford to flood the streets and our homes with it.

This probably seems indisputably awesome. Unless, of course, you speak for the “Campaign for Dark Skies”, which laments the loss of our ability to see the pretty stars, and actively campaigns to have lights switched off.

Bob Mizon of the CfDS believes light pollution is a disaster for anyone trying to study the stars.

“It’s like a veil of light is being drawn across the night sky, denying many people the beauty of a truly starry night.

“Many children growing up today will never see the Milky Way; never see the unimaginable glory of billions of visible stars shining above them,” he said.

Bob Mizon should look closer to Earth if he wants to be impressed. Even if it was really true that people could never see the stars by travelling somewhere dark and uninhabited, he drops the context of why it is we so willingly gave up these views. The fact is that many children growing up today will enjoy another “unimaginable glory”: They will never have to put a book down because it is past 6pm, they won’t have to worry about thieves and rapists taking advantage of darkened streets, they will enjoy all of the fruits of an economic infrastructure able to operate through the night.

Kim Jong Il

The Avid Stargazer

A common joke in online communities is to take a minor inconvenience that we face because of our enormous industrial infrastructure and label it a “first world problem“, while dropping the context of how much worse things would be without the thing that lead to the inconvenience. Tonight, the people of Pyongyang will no doubt gaze in awe at the night sky and say: “How terrible it must be to be Bob Mizon”.

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Altruistic Xmas Lights

Posted on March 28, 2012 by Tito

More images at Passive Aggressive Notes.

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Yaron Brook on Capitalism

Posted on March 13, 2012 by Tito

Yaron Brook answers: What is capitalism? Why is it moral?

 

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Coalition for Marriage – Professor Ken Walters

Posted on March 11, 2012 by Tito

The Coalition for Marriage is a strange institution. It pushes arguments that have been directly imported from the American religious right, arguments that I have never come across when speaking to British people.

It can be characterised in two ways. The first is mysticism: the claim that marriage ought to be the exclusive domain between one man and one woman amounts to the claim that the church has the exclusive prerogative to define the way the state treats marriage. The campaign lists religious leaders last in its list of supporters: “The Coalition is backed by politicians, lawyers, academics and religious leaders”, but it is clear that the religious are its primary support base, as a quick look at the list of its famous signatories will confirm. When somebody advances this opinion in the media, it will be somebody like the loathsome Archbishop Peter Smith, not an academic or a lawyer. A religious leader is the only type of high profile person who could get away with publicly advocating that innocent people be excluded from contract formation because “might makes right”, and because their imaginary friend told them so.

Secondly, it can be characterised by homophobia: it seeks to single out a category of marriage (a legal union between consenting adults) for legal exclusion, and that category is homosexuals. This doesn’t mean that its members hate gay people, I would be extremely surprised if they were not entirely cordial and decent in their dealings with gay people, if perhaps a little uncomfortable. It does mean, however, that they misunderstand  it to the degree that they are unwilling to grant them equal recognition before the law. Quite literally, they are scared of the advancement of gay people into a particular part of society, and that isn’t acceptable. Having a strong emotional attachment to a concept is not a good reason to impose prejudicial beliefs on the way other people see it.

The simple fact is that there is no “too far” when it comes to the legal equality of humans.  Each and every institution of the state must make no restrictions on the way it treats its citizens because of character traits irrelevant to their capacity. There is nothing exclusively heterosexual about marriage: combining property rights through mutual, contractual consent is not related to penile penetration of the vagina, any more than it is related to wearing a top hat or singing La Marseillaise. Note that this is not a campaign to stop private churches from performing gay marriages, that is not part of the bill, but rather to stop gay marriage happening in any institution, secular or otherwise.

Given this, it is regrettable to see Professor Ken Walters, of my own university (Aberystwyth), assuming that the published list is accurate, adding his name to the public list of the campaign’s supporters. The movement is anti-intellectual, in its advocacy of might makes right and religious law, and discriminatory, in its intention to exclude homosexuals from the same legal rights enjoyed by the rest of the population.

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Sharaabtoon

Posted on February 13, 2012 by Tito

For an accessible overview of the merger between al Shabaab and al Qaeda, go and read the first post (of what I hope will be many) at Sharaabtoon.

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One Password: Confusing Ad Copy

Posted on January 21, 2012 by Tito

Advert reads: "A single password for all online accounts is not safe, but it's painful to remember different passwords. Try One Password!"

This advert, spotted on Facebook, is confusing.

The last sentence is a three word sentence that starts with “Try” which I automatically skipped over on my first read, probably because I am so used to seeing short actionable sentences as a way of ending adverts (“Drink X”, “Try Y”, “Visit Z”.)

This means that the only parts of the advert that I consciously evaluated were the title and the first sentence. The title establishes that the subject is “One Password“, but the next sentence says “A single password for all online accounts is not safe” [Bold mine]. The emboldened parts mean exactly the same thing to me, so when I first read the text I thought it was weighing up the pros and cons of having a single password to access everything. I initially thought that the advert was trying to say: “Our product might not be safe, but at least it’s convenient!”

It was only after a few re-reads that I realised, from deliberately reading the last sentence and noticing the capitalisation on the phrase “One Password”, that the product was called “One Password”, and that in order for the advert to make sense I had to think of “One Password” as a brand name, and “single password” as the practice they are trying to discourage. I couldn’t immediately figure out the brand name, and so the text made no sense.

After realising this, I considered the possibility that I had made a poor job of skim-reading the advert, given that the brand name is written in capitalised bold text at the very top. Yet on reflection – there is no massive precedent to do this on side column web ads. Often the title contains a general statement about the thing being advertised rather than the brand name, these are the other ads on the very same page:

The first advert doesn’t even mention the company name, and the second gives it away only through the URL and the thumbnail image.

It’s easy to see why One Password made this mistake: the phrase “One Password” means something very different to the people working there. If the text was written by employees, it was written by people who use this phrase all day on the phone, who sign their emails with it and who see it on top of every letter – if you say the phrase “One Password” to a One Password employee, they will immediately connect the phrase to their company brand. Even if it was written by marketing contractors, they will have been working on the account for a while, might have been negotiating with the client prior to taking on the work and discussing it amongst themselves internally. If One Password is a one-man operation, then it was written by somebody who has consumed themselves in building a product and a brand. All of these people will immediately mentally map the phrase “One Password” to this particular product.

To everybody else, “One Password” means: “one instance of a password”. A quick swap of words fixes the problem. If instead the advert had read:

“Using the same password for all online accounts is not safe, but it’s painful to remember many different passwords. Try One Password”

The advert would have been much more clear.

Minor details in text are important (seemingly superficial word choices can hugely affect the way your users read your copy), and they are contextual (if your users haven’t established a mental precedent of taking the brand name from the title of a side bar advert, they are not guaranteed to do that).

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City Link, How to create a bad customer experience

Posted on January 14, 2012 by Tito

Update: 15/01/2012
It seems that the higher ups at Parcel2Go agree with our suggestions. George from Parcel2Go left a comment (below) offering to look into the matter.
* * *

Update: 17/01/2012
Parcel2Go have agreed to redeliver the books with a premium service, and provide some free account credit too – London shall have its books after all! This is a great response :)
***

Update: 20/01/2012
The books arrived! They came via TNTs overnight service. It looks like this must be an exception to Parcel2Go’s service, because they sorted the issue brilliantly.
***

Why is it so difficult to find a delivery company who give you something that resembles acceptable service?

I recently sent a box of Prometheus Initiative books from one house to another, with the intention of giving them away somewhere in London. I sent it over the Xmas period, and so I wasn’t too surprised when a couple of weeks later they hadn’t arrived (it was also a slow-but-cheap service, which took a few weeks to deliver when I’ve used it in the past.)

So I was surprised when two weeks later, the parcel turned up… at the address I sent it from. According to their website, they had tried to deliver it twice and “left a card” for me. No cards had ever been left. After speaking to City Link, they told me that the driver had probably run out of cards twice in a row, and left, like a ninja, without a trace.

That’s a dumb enough mistake to make. Little scraps of paper don’t take up much space in a van, so you might think they have the foresight to have at least as many scraps of paper as they do parcels to deliver. It gets worse though: after speaking to City Link, they told me I had to contact Parcel2Go, who are some sort of reseller of delivery services whom I paid for the City Link delivery. Parcel2Go told me that City Link intentionally understock the delivery cards, by only giving the driver a certain amount per day. They do this because their customers have nothing better to do than visit a tracking page every day for each parcel they are expecting. This is my conversation with Parcel2Go:

Samantha: Welcome to Parcel2go.com online. How may I help you today?

Roberto Sarrionandia: Hello. I booked a parcel through citylink with you, and they didn’t deliver it. They said that they tried a few times, but that every time they tried the driver must have run out of cards!

Roberto Sarrionandia: The parcel has been returned to the address I sent it from, and they seem unwilling to redeliver it. They said I have to go through you guys to get it sorted

Samantha: Do you have your order reference number to hand? It will begin with P2G and be followed by 7 digits. For example, P2G1234567. It can be found on the confirmation e-mail.

Roberto Sarrionandia: P2G*******

Samantha: Thank you

Samantha: Okay the delivery was attempted twice and held for 7days before being returned

Roberto Sarrionandia: That’s right, but I didn’t know anything about it because they didn’t ever leave a card

Samantha: Okay we have a photograph of the door

Samantha: For this to be sent out a new delivery will have to be made

Roberto Sarrionandia: Yeah they told me that. What is the significance of a photo of the door?

Samantha: This is just to show they have been to the address

Roberto Sarrionandia: That’s right, I know they were there, but the person from Citylink told me they ran out of cards each time and so they didn’t leave one.

Roberto Sarrionandia: This means that I didn’t know they were trying to deliver it

Samantha: Unfortunately to have this redelivered a new booking will have to be made

Roberto Sarrionandia: Do you understand my issue with this approach? I’ve paid for something to be delivered, and the courier didn’t fulfill that service.

Samantha: Yes but this was held for 7 days without any contact and this is the reason we provide tracking numbers for customers

Roberto Sarrionandia: The delivery process is fairly straightforward, they come to the house and if they aren’t able to deliver, they leave a card so that you know to arrange redelivery. It doesn’t usually involve checking a website every day on the off chance that the driver would fail to do it multiple times in a row.

Samantha: Yes but unfortunately if the courier has run out of cards they are unable to leave one I am afraid

Roberto Sarrionandia: That much is clear. The issue is that they shouldn’t run out of cards, it’s a pretty ridiculous mistake to make, multiple times, right?

Samantha: Unfortunately they are only given a set amount a day I am afraid

Roberto Sarrionandia: And that set amount doesn’t match the number of parcels they have to deliver?

Samantha: And we do provide tracking numbers for you to contact us

Roberto Sarrionandia: So they *intentionally* don’t bring enough cards?

Samantha: They attempted twice and this was shown on tracking and also held

Roberto Sarrionandia: I don’t think we’re getting anywhere here. My issue is this: I paid for it to be delivered, not to have to chase up the courier every day just in case they have a policy of deliberately under-stocking cards.

Samantha: I do apologise but unfortunately to have this recollected a new booking will need to be made

This seems implausible – paper isn’t in short supply, and I’ve never before found it necessary to know I’m expecting a parcel in order to receive one – but the outcome is that I’ll have to pay for the delivery service again, and refresh the tracking page for a few weeks on the off chance that the courier company can’t count scraps of paper.

As annoying as this is, even though it is a small amount of money, it’s a nice opportunity to reflect on what can go wrong when businesses interact with customers. Some take home points:

  • Show empathy: If the customer walks away feeling like you were never really concerned about their situation, you have irrevocably damaged your relationship.
  • Don’t be a robot: As tempting as it is to be uncontroversial, repeating facts or policies which are ultimately irrelevant to the customers situation doesn’t really convey any useful information. If you’re unable to explain why you hold a particular policy, don’t use it as a justification for doing something the customer doesn’t like.
  • Don’t try to bamboozle: Saying things like “We have a photo of the door” isn’t going to fool anybody. It isn’t evidence of anything except your unwillingness to help.
  • Always try to correct bad processes: There is nothing more annoying than a broken system that isn’t being fixed. Under stocking delivery cards is such an easy mistake to correct, but nobody from City Link or Parcel2Go were in the slightest bit concerned about correcting it.
  • Use mistakes as opportunities: When the display on my Amazon Kindle broke the returns process was so fantastic that Amazon cemented themselves as my favourite retailer for electronics by a long margin. When my Macbook developed a defect, the repair experience from Apple was so efficient that next time I buy a product from them, I won’t think twice before taking out Apple Care again. Both Amazon and Apple managed to turn a bad experience into a selling point.
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Burgled

Posted on December 29, 2011 by Tito

I came home to London after Christmas to find lots of things missing from the house, and this:

It’s time to get out the Batsuit.

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The Communists

Posted on December 19, 2011 by Tito

One down…

Portrait of Kim Jong-il

One to go

Portrait of Fidel Castro

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Return to Christian Values?

Posted on December 18, 2011 by Tito

David Cameron seems to think it’s a good idea it might be nice to appease the tiny, ever shrinking, highly irrelevant clique of loons who still care about the values of the Church of England.

However emphatic he was about the importance of Christianity to Britain, he was less insistent about its place in his personal life.

As with previous declarations of his belief – once likening it to the patchy reception of a radio station – he told his audience he was a “committed but vaguely practising Church of England Christian” who, while he would stand up for the values and principles” of his faith, was “full of doubts and, like many, constantly grappling with the difficult questions when it comes to some of the big theological issues”.

If the Prime Minister can’t defend Christianity without acknowledging that the only way to do so and retain credibility is to admit that you have severe doubts about the whole thing, it seems like a little bit of a stretch to say that the UK is a Christian country. “Christianity”, in the UK, means to attend tea parties, help organise a village fete and maybe, at a push, show your face at church around Christmas time. It has nothing to do with the “values” of the Church of England, of which there are none, and we are a richer country for it. The Westboro Baptist Church, attacks on abortion clinics, and teaching creationism in schools aren’t issues on our political radar – because we simply don’t have committed Christians here anymore. Despite our lack of formal separation of church and state, we are an essentially secular society, where religion is properly swept under the carpet in the face of just about every competing value. In contrast, the USA with its formal separation allows religion to permeate political life through intelligent design, “personhood” legislation, bans on gay marriage and abstinence-only education – all of which positions are untenable in and unpalatable to the UK.

Even the Christians concede this when they complain that they are an increasingly isolated, marginalised and ignored section of society. They are right, and the reason they are in that position is that nobody cares. Their extraordinary claims, bizarre fantasy and abject hostility to reason (which any degree of faith always represents) are most often met with surprise and incredulousness.

The Prime Minister would also do well to realise that it is precisely because the population, and even the churches, have abandoned Christian values that we are able to enjoy the pluralism and legal tolerance that he is so fast to defend.

“I know and fully respect that many people in this country do not have a religion. And I am also incredibly proud that Britain is home to many different faith communities, who do so much to make our country stronger. But what I am saying is that the Bible has helped to give Britain a set of values and morals which make Britain what it is today.”

It is certainly the case that the willingness to forgo stoning of the apostates is something to be proud of, but it most certainly isn’t a Christian value. Whenever Christianity has been a strong political force, rather than an excuse for tea and biscuits, the results have been bloody, barbaric and shameful. The church recognises pluralism, the individual, and the pursuit of happiness (all profoundly secular ideas) on Earth only because it knows it has to in a society no longer willing to put voodoo above emancipation.

As is always the case with modern day advocates for religion, David Cameron wants to have his cake and eat it too. He wants Christian values back, but not at the expense of the secular values which Christianity makes impossible.

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