Canada Day. Fireworks. Hamilton. Hit Google to find out times and locations. The first link is to the City of Hamilton’s myhamilton.ca web site which tell me that fireworks are scheduled for dusk, at Bayfront Park, on July 1st of.. oh… 2006.

So I went back to the myhamilton.ca home page and looked for information about Canada Day activities. Basically, there’ s nothing.

So I did a search for “fireworks.” Lots of links to things a year or more old, the finally at the seventh position a link to news of free shuttle buses from downtown to the park. Starting at 6 PM. Still no indication what time the fireworks actually begin.

Really has there ever been a web site so ill designed?

Ah, the City of Hamilton, always vague, always incomplete.  Always raising more questions than they answer.

If you’ve seen The Grifters, or even The Sting, you have a vision of scam artists as smart, clever, snappy, and quick witted. The kind of people that plot elaborate schemes to fleece well heeled heels.

Then there’s Craigslist, and the scammers that hang out there. There’s an old expression, “dumb as a bag of hammers.” Sometimes nothing else fits.

From Blog TO – a wonderful comment on our perceptions of aging, and the things that we do to avoid it.

“I’m in my 30s, but I’d rather look like I’m in my 20s”

Sigh……

The always excellent BlogTO reports on the Toronto Transit Commission‘s newest move to eliminate all possible risk in our lives.

You see, for years they’ve had signs on escalators asking that you either Walk Left or Stand Right. Pretty simple and courteous idea – if you’re slow or lazy, keep right, stand still, and let the escalator carry you up. If you’re in big hurry, the left hand side of the escalator is open for you to rush up the steps.

It works remarkably well, and everyone is happy.

Except for The Danger! As it turns out “the TTC escalator was responsible for the hospitalization of 50 people last year alone.”

My God! We must stop this carnage! So the TTC is removing the signs and demanding that everyone stand still while escalating.

Of course the alternative is to ask just how much a of risk this presents to the average commuter.

A quick Google tells me that the TTC carries about 400 million people each year. So you have a one in eight million chance of suffering a TTC escalator injury.

In other words, if you ride the TTC escalators twice a day, five days a week, you would likely go 15,000 years between injuries.

Don’t you feel safer now?

Only the City of Hamilton  could post a sign announcing  the time, place, and purpose of a meeting, but not the date.  The sign is about four months old.

Then again there are the people who “invent” new words. Especially ones that indicate that their eight year old kid is their senior marketing executive.  Actually I don’t know why, but this one feels awfully like something that might come out of Quebec.

From the Download Squad. I too shake my head, but in a post-globalization world where it takes two incomes to support a family, parents are struggling for choices.

It should be perfectly obvious to everyone that the reason there are so many problems in this world is because we’re giving our children way too much love and attention. Luckily, technology is keeping up with our need to communicate more indirectly with our children. Enter PayJr. Because for too long we’ve been treating our kids as family members instead of what they really are: little employees. Now you can keep an online schedule of the chores the kids have to do. You can send details through text messaging, email, or instant messenger. Way more efficient than actually talking to them. Then you can pay them electronically by having the money added to a pre-paid MasterCard, ensuring that you can avoid the personal interaction when settling up.

What intrigues me are the number of ads today for pre-paid credit cards for kids, always described as a way for parents to manage spending by the young ‘uns aged 13 and up. I tend to see them as a logical extension of the “starter” cards handed out like candy at University frosh weeks.

Whatever happened to giving kids an allowance. In cash?

Most cities have free tabloid rags aimed at Seniors. For those who haven’t been keeping track, “Senior” is now generally defined as beginning at age fifty.

You can thank that great American powerhouse the AARP for that definition. Aside from offering great deals to their graying members, the AARP is also a political powerhouse second only to the NRA.

So at 51 I decided to pick up a copy of the optimistically titled Over 50 and loving it!

What exciting activities, events, and topics do they have for me?

• Walking is healthy!
• RBC Seniors Jubillee
• Helping friends in hospital
• Depressed Seniors
• Isolated Seniors
• Macular Degeneration
• Orthotics to prevent Falls and Fractures
• Caring for your Dentures
• Elder Frauds and Scams
• Visiting Lake Michigan
• Visiting National Parks
• Lowering Your Cooling Bill
• Investing for Retirement
• Classical music CDs
• The Ultimate Event – Sinatra, Minelli, and Sammy

What exciting products do their advertisers hope to sell me?

• Retirement and nursing homes – 14
• Burials and Cremations – 1
• Local politicians – 8
• Health services – 7
• Public Service Announcements – 5
• Old people entertainment – 3
• Old people travel – 3
• Home repairs – 2
• Financial services – 2
• Real estate Agents – 1
• Restaurants – 3

Ack! The Who were right. How depressing can life be?

Hitting fifty means nothing but pain, strife, and constant fear. Travel means a cruise, or at best driving around Michigan. The only people who want your attention are scam artists and politicians – because old people vote, and are easily confused.

And what do old people like me do for fun? They go to Sammy Davis tribute shows. They drag their poor tired bones down to the RBC Seniors Jubilee. Lord, you put those two words together and I am quite certain I’d fall asleep. Entertainment that won’t upset your pacemaker.

The Jubilee, which began in 1989, features a two-hour “musical midway” of lobby performers followed by a three-hour music-variety show in the 2500 seat auditorium. … This year’s event drew a capacity audience of over 12,000 and featured more than 200 acts, which included singing, dancing, comedy, magic, cabaret acts and instrumentalists. … Choreographer Pat Hamilton said “People think of seniors as … waiting for their time to die. But seniors of today aren’t the same as the seniors of yesterday. The calibre of talent is just top-notch.”

And of course the goal of every senior is to move into a place where they’ll be surrounded by other old people, and not those scary young kids that they see on the street.

Once again, the message that’s being sent to all of us over fifty is that we cannot afford any risk in our life. We might get robbed. We might get sick. We might keel over and die.

To that I say bullshit!

The people that I know over fifty (or sixty, or seventy) don’t sit around being scared. They’re going out drinking. They get out and do stuff and meet people. They’re off to see the White Stripes, or those old farts the Rolling Stones, or even some young upstart band that just plain rocks.

They’re running, not walking, and rock climbing, and bike riding, and getting the most out of life every minute.

And you know what? Unlike the target market for Over 50 and loving it!, they’re out there spending money.

If you were an advertiser who would you want to reach?

Among the blogs that I read religiously is that of marketing guru Seth Godin. Godin manages to generate a steady string of short, snappy and usually pretty smart suggestions about how to build a successful business in the world that we live in.

One recent post really struck a chord with me. I think it came from Godin, but since I can’t find it don”t quote me.

The premise was that each day in our businesses we start out at the 50-50 point, neither successful nor unsuccessful

If you embrace that view, then your success is measured one customer at a time, with each moving you up to 51 or 52% or down to 49 or 48%.

Actually when I read that I was reminded of Statistics 101, back at Okanagan College. There’s no way I could calculate a Standard Deviation any more, but some essential things stayed with me.

One of those was that in games of chance you begin with all possible outcomes being equally likely. In a coin toss the odds of the coin landing heads or tails is always 50/50. No matter that you’ve just tossed thirty five heads in row, the likelihood of the next coin landing one way or other is still exactly even.

Similarly every time that a number is drawn for the weekly lottery you know that every possible combination of numbers has an equal chance of being selected. This of course means that choosing your special number based on birthdays or numerology or your horoscope is completely pointless.

Thirty years ago you could walk into almost any business and write a personal cheque. In fact, in some small towns you still can do that.

These days even utility companies work very hard to discourage cheques, and much prefer to have either your credit card number, or even better direct access to your bank account.

So what happened?

In 1977 business owners weighed the risks of cheques as follows:

On one hand, some customers will write cheques that bounce. Most of those people will still make good, but a handful will never pay.

On the other hand there are a number of customers who would prefer to write a cheque, and who will walk away from a sale if they need to go to the bank and withdraw cash. And of course, a satisfied customer will return and give you more business in the future.

When viewed that way the few cheques that aren’t honoured are more than balanced by satisfied and repeat customer business.

In 2007 business owners have decided that they are unprepared to accept any risk.

On one hand, some customers will write cheques that bounce. Even though some of those people will still make good, a handful will never pay.

Conclusion: by not accepting personal cheques you eliminate the risk that you will lose money on bounced cheques.

On the other hand there are a number of customers who would prefer to write a cheque, who don’t want or need a credit card, and who will walk away from a sale if they need to go to the bank and withdraw cash.

Conclusion: by not accepting personal cheques you eliminate the risk that you will lose money on bounced cheques. Besides, there are lots of other people to buy your crap. If these people really want what you’re selling they’ll come back with the cash.

I don’t know if anyone has studied this, but I’d bet that a hundred customers who walk out the door cost a lot more in current and future business than the cost of the occasional bad cheque.

You see, the successful businesses are the ones that assess and manage risk, not the ones that alienate customers by insisting that everyone who walks though the door is probably a crook, and is not be trusted.

And yeah, I will not leave my backpack and laptop in the hands of your minimum wage cashier while I shop. If you assume that I’m a shoplifter, then I’m free to assume that your staff will steal my computer.

Following last month’s Deep Wireless Festival (which I blogged for Transom.org) I traded messages with Gregory Whitehead, examining some of the themes that emerged from his presentation. The following is adapted from that exchange.</i>

Gregory,

Thank you again for a wonderful performance yesterday. The Big Sloppy rings true to me.

If the truth were known, very little at radio conferences has thrilled me in recent years.

Some of that no doubt comes from hanging out with the American crowd, who still see This American Life as cutting edge. Even Outfront, which again has been a darling in radio circles, seems often to be doing the same thing over and over.

Little by little I have been putting pieces together, trying to figure out why there is so little on the airwaves which seem to be worth the investment of my time.

After Sunday two important threads emerged.

The first of course came from Heidi Grundmann‘s talk about Co-op Radio in the eighties. I vividly remember those days, and the people who threw caution and convention to the winds and tried whatever looked as if it might be an interesting project. The attitude really was one of “Let’s push the medium as far as we possibly can.”

These were also people that appreciated that they were working very specifically in radio, and that the medium had attributes and an aesthetic which would be and still is different from working in just audio.

(A point which I think is lost on many people still.)

It’s astonishing that she would raise names like Patrick Ready, Hank Bull, and GX Jupitter-Larsen mere days after I had discussed these same people in my inaugural blog post. Whether you call it synchronicity or mere coincidence, it cannot be ignored.

Your comments about “branding” really did hit home. Is that the issue? That so many artists and producers are so busy marketing themselves that they lose sight of the need to keep Art at the forefront?

Thinking back to Deep Wireless, almost every person in that room has a web page, many have blogs, and at least in Toronto the bulk of people seem to have disappeared into Facebook or MySpace.

And yes, people are re-creating themselves as brands. Just as so much radio in the US wants be the next TAL or Prairie Home Companion, many of these people begin their work by asking how they can fit within the narrow confines of what public radio will accept.

You described it as “branding”, but I see it as self censorship, which is one of the things that always fascinates me about the American people. While living in the U.S., especially after 9/11, it amazed me how so many people can simultaneously believe that they are afforded Freedom of Speech, while carefully moderating what they will say on a great many topics.

And increasingly self censorship in radio is wrapped in the need to present yourself in a persona that fits established conventions.

Could these young producers and artists function in an environment like Co-op Radio of the eighties? What would happen if you told them “hereis an hour of airtime each week. There are no rules.” How would they adapt if you placed them in an atmosphere where you were judged solely by your work, not by how you present yourself on the Internet and during sales pitches?

(And yes, I know that not all that was created back at Co-op radio was brilliant or even listenable, and that some of it was downright dull, but that’s the point – you take chances, and trust that some of them will create beauty and insight.)

At the end of the day what I am looking for is radio that shocks, that challenges form, that demands that I sit up and listen. I want to hear people who do more than transmit cools sounds, who play with the essence of the medium, who embrace RF radiation as their instrument.

Thanks once again, and keep reminding people of all of the things thatthey dare not ask themselves, but which they always appreciate after the fact.

Yours,

Barry