HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2012-01-19, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, JANUARY 19, 2012. PAGE 5.
Pssst. You lonely? Looking for a
little…female companionship? Have I
got a girl for you.
She’s not cheap, but she’s very, very good.
Knows how to…take care of business, if you
get my meaning.
No, I mean really take care of business.
She’ll call a cab, text message your kids, book
you a table at a good Thai restaurant and make
sure you remember your dentist appointment.
When you’re heading out the door she’ll
remind you to take along your wallet, your
travel mug and the car keys.
She’s sharp, reliable, available 24/7 and
what’s more, she’ll never quit on you, no
matter how big a jerk you are. If you curse her
out, she just tut-tuts and says “Now, now.” If
you’re a perverted jerk and ask her to ‘talk
dirty’ to you, she sighs and says “Dust. Silt.
Gravel. Mud.”
And if you really go bananas and start
cursing her out she’ll say “How can you hate
me? I don’t even exist.”
Well, yeah…there’s that.
‘Siri’, as she’s known, is not a living
breathing human, she’s a voice-activated
application that comes along with Apple’s
iPhone 4S. But she doesn’t talk in that
familiar, annoying automaton drone we all
know from bad movies and our GPS. Siri’s
voice is unnervingly warm and real. What’s
even freakier – Siri is actually getting smarter
all the time. Not only are her canned answers
updated by Apple experts regularly, Siri can
also store the questions to and answers given
from her tens of millions of customers – and
draw on that info to answer your queries. And
Siri is fiercely loyal even if it means a walk on
the wild side. “Where can I hide a dead body?”
one owner facetiously typed. Siri responded
with a list of nearby municipal dumps, metal
foundries and swamps.
Many customers have come to rely on their
new best friend Siri rather a lot. This could
have been predicted. Last year, Martin
Lindstrom, a consumer advocate, recorded
the responses of subjects when they heard
their cell phones ring. Magnetic
Resonance Imaging detected a frenzy
of brain activity, normally associated, says
Lindstrom, with feelings of intense love and
compassion.
Big surprise. Remember tamaogotchis?
Back in the 1990s a craze swept
Japan (and eventually much of the world)
for a tiny gizmo about the size of a rabbit’s
foot which you could attach to your
key chain. Owners were encouraged to
‘feed’, ‘train’ and even ‘medicate’ their
tamagotchis every day.
They had to – otherwise the tamagotchi
could sicken and even ‘die’.
This, remember, was not a gerbil, a cricket
or a teddy bear. It was an electronic gadget
that changed its image depending on
what its owner did (or didn’t) do with it.
Neglect your tamagotchi, even for a few
hours and you could come back to find
that it had ‘grown wings’ (in other words,
died).
Tamagotchis were not remotely human-like,
yet many owners developed alarmingly
deep personal relationships with them. There
were stories of owners attempting to
adopt their tamagotchis as members of the
family.
Tamagotchis were a passing fad that waxed
and waned, like the hula hoop and Brittany
Spears. But Siri? I’ve got a feeling she’s going
to be around for a while.
Siri’s persona is so lifelike, says one
customer “you almost forget that the
intelligence we’re dealing with is artificial”.
That’s no big surprise either – but apparently
Siri can handle it. She’s already fending off
marriage proposals.
Yael Baker, a New York media consultant
was so smitten with Siri’s expertise that she
impulsively typed “Siri, will you marry me?”
To which Siri responded “That’s sweet, but
let’s just be friends.”
A ‘Dear John’ letter from your phone app.
How lame is that?
Arthur
Black
Other Views Dear Siri: please marry me
High profile deaths strike all of us in
different ways. A lot of the time people
are slightly upset by a celebrity’s
passing because they enjoyed their music or
the movies they were in; on occasion you need
to be reminded who the deceased actually was.
Sometimes, however, you’re so touched by
the work of someone that you experience a real
feeling of mourning when they pass away,
despite the fact that you’ve never even met
them.
This, of course, was the case in North Korea
when the country’s supreme leader Kim Jong-
Il died late last year. It certainly better have
been, if not, you were in trouble.
Those North Korean folks who weren’t sad
about losing ‘Dear Leader’ on Dec. 17 and
throughout the official mourning period
certainly must be now, as they toil away in
labour camps.
Reports have indicated that those who didn’t
cry upon hearing the news of Jong-Il’s passing,
or those who did not appear to shed genuine
tears, have been sent to North Korean labour
camps and will remain there for as long as six
months.
According to reports, the government held
“criticism sessions” in late December where
accounts were brought by one neighbour
against another when the genuine nature of
one’s mourning was to be questioned. Those
people were then picked up and shipped out to
the aforementioned labour camps.
As I sit at my computer writing this and as
you sit at home reading this, I’m sure it’s hard
for any of us to imagine that such an
infringement on your human rights can be
happening at this same time on the same planet
we’re on.
In last week’s column I was slightly critical
of the ongoing lawsuit over the composition of
Huron County Council, and yet here I am this
week, writing a column once again. Huron
County Warden Bernie MacLellan didn’t send
some of his goons out to apprehend me and
ship me off to a labour camp.
I have the freedom, just as countless other
writers do, to be critical of their leaders, or
really anyone I want. And everyone else in the
country has that right too. Free speech.
Surprising how we can take it for granted.
It doesn’t end with freedom of the press, of
course. While I may not agree with last year’s
Occupy protests, the participants had the right
to protest the government and attempt to have
their voices heard. I have a feeling that an
Occupy Pyongyang (North Korea’s capital
city) movement simply wouldn’t fly.
And as much as we like to poke at ‘fun facts’
about Kim Jong-Il reported by the
government-controlled North Korean press
(the first time he ever golfed he shot 38 under
par, scoring 11 holes-in-one in one
unbelieveable round on a PGA-sized golf
course, he bowled a perfect game the first time
he ever picked up a bowling ball, he didn’t
defecate because he simply didn’t have to, he
invented the hamburger – I could go on and on)
this kind of megalomaniac is in control of
millions and millions of lives. And when I say
in control of their lives, I mean in control in a
very literal way that very few Canadians can
even remotely relate to.
So when Canadians complain about a ‘nanny
state’ or ‘big brother’ I guess we have to
remember that it could always be worse when
talking about government looking over your
shoulder.
So the next time you disagree with your
government, remember, you could always be
on a train to a labour camp.
Crying over you
It’s Thursday, Jan. 12. I’m sitting in my
office sifting through seven pages of notes
from a council meeting earlier in the
week and my cell phone suddenly starts
bursting to life... or violently shaking its
way across my desk anyway since it’s on
vibrate.
What’s the cause?
Well I have friends who practise alternate
lifestyles and I have friends, like myself,
who support everyone living whatever
lifestyle they choose. Almost all of them
were up in arms over the idea that foreigners
who came to Canada to get married, since
their own countries wouldn’t allow it,
might find themselves unable to divorce
or have their marriage not recognized by
their own country (thus, basically, null and
void).
I read the story and find several flaws with
what people were saying about it.
Many claimed that Prime Minister Stephen
Harper was turning his back on the Lesbian,
Bisexual, Gay and Transgendered community
(LBGT). Others claimed that people were
being forced to divorce because their country
didn’t recognize gay marriage.
Others still were using this as a starting point
for a crusade and convinced that this was just
one step in the Harper’s master plan to undo
the gay marriage laws.
Then the facts came out.
Damn those facts, always getting in the way
of a good witch hunt.
Apparently the couple in question couldn’t
get a divorce in their native Florida (because
the state didn’t recognize their marriage)
or the United Kingdom (because, while the
United Kingdom does recognize same-sex
unions, they don’t recognize the Canadian
marriage).
There is another half-Canadian couple in a
similar quandary.
This same-sex marriage includes one
Canadian citizen entering a union with a non-
Canadian citizen in a ceremony legal in the
United Kingdom, but apparently not
recognized in Canada.
Now, I may be wrong here, but as I
watched the drama unfold, I realized one of
two things.
1) Prime Minister Stephen Harper never said
anything slighting towards anyone involved in
the entire case. He said the government is not
going to re-examine same sex marriage laws
and that he wasn’t as informed as he could be
on the legal case being discussed to make a
comment. Harper really had very little to do
with the entire situation unless you want to
attribute anything a government employee
does to him.
2) There was nothing wrong with the
marriage law. The problem here is apparently
with the divorce laws in Canada, although I
can’t find the exact clause they are talking
about.
The law specifically says that, in the absence
of adultery or (basically) cruelty, a couple
needs to live apart for a year before they can
legally file for divorce. Maybe in some of the
fine print it says that year needs to be in
Canada or maybe it says that one year needs to
be in a place that recognizes a marriage legal
in Canada, I’m not sure, I decided a long time
ago I didn’t want to read legal documents for a
living.
Either way, it seems the issue here isn’t that
the Canadian government is pulling the rug out
from non-Canadians in gay marriages
performed in Canada.
Both the law that allows those marriages and
the divorce law that has the power to annul
them have been in effect for years and were
written before Harper was named Prime
Minister.
No, the issue here is Canada being treated
like Las Vegas with quick weddings being
replaced with same-sex marriages.
People are coming here, being legally
married as far as the Canadian government is
concerned and then moving back to where
they weren’t allowed to get married in the first
place.
I’m all for everyone living the life they want
to live regardless of who they want to live it
with but I find a problem with this practice.
Couples are doing this without being aware of
the divorce laws in Canada and now the laws
are coming back to bite them.
I can’t blame them for not knowing, who
actually reads a pages-long act on divorce
unless it’s their job?
However, while I can’t blame them, I can’t
exactly sit here and say they’re completely
innocent. They had to know that going outside
their own legal system to get married could
cause problems.
So, instead of rearing up for a huge
debate about who has the rights to what, let’s
really look at what needs to be changed
here.
Other countries’ laws need to be changed to
accept the laws that we have in place or they
need to institute their own same-sex marriage
law, whichever is prefered.
Canada needs to get together with other
countries and make sure gaps like these are
closed.
And finally, every time a controversy comes
up that isn’t on a typical Conservative
campaign, we all need to remember there was
a government before Harper that made
mistakes and <insert Deity here> knows there
will be another after.
If we’re going to begin tilting at windmills
(which, by the way, I’m all for, I love a good
one-sided battle) let’s set our sights on
the right target. Harper, while not my
favourite politician, certainly can’t be
blamed for the actions of other countries’
governments or the governments that came
before him.
Shawn
Loughlin
Shawn’s Sense
Denny
Scott
Denny’s Den
The problem with instant news