Rod McQueen's Blog

Geek speak

Some books are better unread. Some books are better unwritten. Source Code: My Beginnings by Bill Gates is just such a book. You wouldn’t be at all drawn to this book unless you knew the success he had launching Microsoft.
Or maybe you’re attracted to the photo of a seven-year-old with a front tooth missing which is what’s on the cover. It wasn’t the photo that drew me, it was the Gates name and the fact that it was billed as an autobiography.
Biographies and autobiographies are my favourite genre and my shelves are lined with others including the likes of Robert Caro’s multi-volume work on Lyndon Johnson, Max Beaverbrook by Charles Williams, and Hilary Brown’s War Tourist.
Growing up in the northwestern U.S. Gates had the usual early boyhood: school and scuffles. But there was something unusual. For this book he was somehow able to remember and include numerous full-length conversations with his 12-year-old friends as if he’d typed up notes each night and kept every page.
I don’t know about you, but I barely remember being 12 let alone what drivel was tossed around on the playground.
Source Code, the title, as I understand it, describes how you could read a computer program. In Gates’s case, he understood what he was reading and set out to train his brain.
But his words failed to train my brain as he teaches himself BASIC, a computer language. His father and his grandmother see merit in what he’s doing and don’t fret about him missing regular school. What a world!
But, from that point on you have to be a geek to care about what he’s doing. He was somehow able to see computer code in his mind and take it to the next level. Because he rarely attended school he’d stop coding and the hit the textbooks for a few hours before exams. Teachers were lenient but that wasn’t all; he did well despite his sporadic attention.
If the first half of the book is barely interesting, the second half is baffling – all coding talk.
But he got into Harvard and then at twenty in 1975 dropped out of Harvard to start Microsoft with Paul Allen. Today Gates is revered and worth US$106 billion. How he did it is beyond me and beyond his telling.
This is supposed to be the first of three volumes by Gates. I won’t be reading the rest.

Tweedle-dee and twaddle dumb

I know I’ve previously written about Artificial Intelligence, but, bear with me, my stomach is once more roiling about this nonsense that keeps intruding into our lives. In my morning paper, the Report on Business, was a story announcing that bank CEOs say that AI is already in use in their institutions.
According to the article banks are using AI to boost staff productivity, cut costs, combat financial crime and improve customer service. Wow! Isn’t it odd that the CEOs would cite those things, given how poorly the banks appear to be performing in all those areas.
“We don’t talk about ‘this is going to eliminate jobs,’” said CIBC CEO Victor Dodig. Assuming he was not misquoted, does not talking about something mean it will happen or it won’t happen? My five cents is on the former.
He also claimed that AI will “actually make working at CIBC more interesting because it will take the sand out of the gears.” Wait a minute. There’s sand in the gears? Hard to believe a bank could run at all in such a clogged condition.
Scotiabank CEO Scott Thomson was only slightly more optimistic, saying AI would provide revenue-producing opportunities, but muted his prognosis by saying that “right now we are focussed more on the client experience and the cost side as opposed to the revenue-generation side.”
Have any of these CEOs used Google recently? We’ve all relied on Google for years to solve queries that come to mind, but in the last little while, Google has gone through a metamorphosis: Answers are now generated by AI. Yes, you read that right.
Try a question on Google. The answer pops up on your computer screen headed by a four-pointed star and the words AI Overview. Read through the total answer that has been generated and at the end it says: “AI responses may include mistakes.” Click on the link and there’s a further explanation about how Overviews “may provide inaccurate or offensive information. AI Overviews can and will mistakes.”
How’s that for an admission of sins, both of the omission and commission kind? Yet this is the very AI that the bank CEOs are turning to for answers to problems such as improving customer service. And here I thought it was personal knowledge and professional talent that meant CEOs got paid the big money.
Maybe that thought was just another mistake generated by AI.

Boys and girls together

Whatever happened to chivalry? My concern is readily visible on almost any street in the country. Rather than see couples walk together, side-by-side, many men are two or three steps ahead of their wife, as if they don’t know her or wish they didn’t.
Or perhaps this out-fronter thinks he will look like some snappy male specimen who is single and therefore ready to join with whatever new woman will have him in her life. In his mind the choice grows greater and greater as time passes, such a hunk of humanity is he.
You see a similar sort of bad behaviour in restaurants. When a couple is shown to their table, the man immediately takes a position with his back to the wall. First of all, it is usually padded or more comfortable in some way than the rickety chair on which his wife is permitted to perch.
Second, with two mythic guns blazing he defends his territory as he imagines himself fighting off hombres trying to take him down. If there are no hombres, well, his wife has to put up with foot traffic at her back all night as wait staff delivers hot plates that pass so near to her neck she can feel the heat.
Then there are those all-too-plentiful occasions when a wife hasn’t heard from her husband all day. Dinner’s ready in the oven. Candles on the table are set to be lit. The children are snug in their beds.
And then the telephone rings. “Honey” he says. They always say honey when the news is bad, “Honey, the boss wants me to work late. We’ve got the quarterly numbers to finish up. Sorry.”
After she hangs up, she thinks “Weren’t there quarterly numbers just a month ago?”
And what about that dismissive phrase we’ve all heard used by too many men: “The Little Woman.” I can’t recall ever hearing a woman call her husband, “The Little Man.”
Is all this poor conduct caused by rampant misogyny? Bad social habits? Both?
Of course men do have other foolish foibles. Ever notice how men stand on stage at a presentation taking place in front of an audience? They will carefully fold their hands in a way that appears to be protecting their private parts. Maybe that’s what happened to chivalry.
It’s gone into hiding.

Blasts from the past

Those of you who are of a certain age – and I’m sure you know who you are – likely have the same problem I do. Out of nowhere, a tune from the distant past will pop into your head. But, for the life of you, you can’t remember anywhere near all of the words.
This happened to me recently with Yakety Yak. You likely know the opening lines: “Take out the papers and the trash, or you don’t get no spending cash. If you don’t scrub that kitchen floor, you ain’t gonna rock and roll no more.” And the refrain? “Yakety yak. Don’t talk back.”
Did you know that was sung by The Coasters? Somewhere along the way I had forgotten. Once prompted by the group’s name I was able to rattle off some other hits from the 1950s by the same foursome: Charlie Brown, Poison Ivy and Searchin’. Well, maybe rattle off is too strong a description. Recall may be more apt.
Other black groups from that era included The Drifters and The Platters. Am I ringing any bells? How about The Temptations and The Four Tops. Female groups were also making inroads: The Marvelettes and The Supremes.
Like Ed Sullivan on his Sunday evening TV show, when Dick Clark took over American Bandstand in 1956 he quickly made certain that black performers appeared. Chuck Berry was the first. Other black groups brought songs and dancing including The Stroll by the Diamonds in 1958 and The Twist by Chubby Checker in 1960.
Both The Twist and The Stroll were easy moves even for white guys like me. I can remember doing the Stroll as part of a gathering one morning in 1960 when some dizzy teacher brought all Grade 10 males and females together in the auditorium. I danced the The Stroll with a pretty girl named Pat who wouldn’t normally even speak to me let alone dance or go out on a date.
These days, I have a partner who dances with me and a daughter who recently gave me Apple Music. When I was stumped on Yakety Yak, I was able to turn to my iPhone, press a few keys, and hear The Coasters (remastered) from sixty years ago.
All of which leads me to say that there’s much in the past to be honoured and even more to be remembered in the present. With a little help.

Rocky Mountain low

The Blue Jays went into the three-game series against the Colorado Rockies this week with by far the better season. The Jays had won twice as many games this year as the poor, beleaguered Rockies. The Jays proceeded to win all three games and set new records.
Sound great doesn’t it? Well, it wasn’t. I won’t be watching the Jays for a while, such is my disgust.
This was not the same fine Jays team that recently swept four games from the New York Yankees. That was some of the best baseball I’ve ever seen and secured a three-game lead for first place over the mighty Bronx Bombers.
Last night was a different story. The Jays were ahead 15-1 in the top of the ninth inning. The game was already a laugher. I should have gone looking for the nightly newscast.
Instead, I watched as the Rockies sent out to the mound someone who clearly was not a pitcher. I guess they wanted to save their aces. The Jays jumped all over catcher Austin Nolan and scored five more runs to win the game 20-1.
“They’re adding to their totals,” said one of the announcers by way of explanation. I’ll say. In football, it would be called a pile-on. The Rockies should have conceded. Or the Jays should have stayed in the dugout. Anything would have been better than the even more lopsided outcome the game already was. The Jays scored 45 runs in the three-game series, a new record not just for the team, but for all teams. The 63 hits in the series was a Jays record.
To be sure, the Jays have been doing well. During the last two months they’ve won twice as many games as they’ve lost. They’re in first place in their division. They’ve got the best record in the American League, 67-48.
But what happened last night besmirched that record. The Rockies are among the worst teams in baseball. Feasting off them like that was poor sportsmanship. Davis Schneider, one of my favourite players, hit his second home run of the game in the ninth. I did not cheer. It was too easy. I might have hit been able to hit a home run off that stand-in pitcher.
I’d like to make a modest proposal. None of what happened last night in Denver should go into any record books. And we should send an official apology to the Rockies and their fans.

The 19 bus

The number 19 bus runs north-south on Bay Street in Toronto between Davenport Road in the north and Union Station in the south. I’ve taken that bus regularly since moving downtown in 2018. There’s always been just a handful of passengers.
But this week, as I rode northbound from King Street, people kept clambering on. By the time we reached my stop near Bloor, the vehicle was so packed that I almost couldn’t get out.
I also talked to my daughter who last week drove over the border to the U.S. at Niagara. Going into the U.S., there was no line-up. Coming back a few days later there was a long wait to clear Canadian customs.
These events mean to me that (a) more tourists than usual are visiting Toronto, and (b) even some Americans have decided to see what we’re all about. I’ve noticed more advertising for Canada in general and Toronto in particular but, still, the numbers are up.
A story in my morning newspaper this week said that tourism spending in Canada could grow by as much as 4 per over last year, mostly because more Canadians are travelling at home.
I also read that many Canadians with places in Florida are putting them on the market. The reason all of this is happening is simple: Donald Trump. Nobody wants to be anywhere near him, not on holiday, not even in our cold winters. And for all his bravado on tariffs, I think Canadians should be grateful.
I know, tariffs will hurt business and push up costs, but we’ll survive. After all, the vast majority of our trade falls under the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement. launched In 2020, CUSMA replaced the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Both agreements came with firm rules no president can alter.
Of much greater concern to me than all of the above is our poor rate of productivity. We may be a welcoming nation but Canadians simply don’t work as hard or as ably as Americans.
Among the worst offenders are small business owners in Canada. They have a dozen employees, a decent level of sales, and pay themselves $250,000 a year. But too many of them don’t consider what’s possible. They don’t want to work harder and grow their companies into world-beaters. Such terminal lassitude is a far bigger issue for us than Trump or tourism. Whatever’s wrong with Canada, we have only ourselves to blame.

Oh Canada!

One of the best reads in the always thoughtful London Review of Books is the Letters page. In it, readers correct mistakes from previous issues, add information they felt was missing, and generally show off their wit and wisdom.
In a recent issue, dated June 26, appears an unusual letter, even for the LRB. Written by one Benjamin Letzler, of Modling, Austria, the author – for reasons best known to himself – quotes numerous renowned writers who have castigated Britain.
In particular, Letzler mentions a two-column list of which he is aware, a list that apparently fills the better part of a page, containing nefarious adjectives that were used by English novelist and poet George Orwell to depict many aspects of British life between 1919 and 1939. The list comprises: ‘faecal’, ‘verminous’, ‘lousy’, ‘dim-witted’, ‘meagre’, ‘godless’, ‘sneaking’ and ‘Canadian’.
Canadian? To be sure, Orwell did have anti-colonial streak, but still, Canada is the only member of the Commonwealth that somehow made this detritus list. Orwell died in 1950 so I can’t complain to him. And I don’t have sufficient standing to be published on the Letters page of the London Review of Books, so I’ll take this more modest stage to reply to Letzler, whoever he may be.
First off, Canada has many distinguished writers of international standing: Margaret Atwood, Robertson Davies, Michael Ondaatje and Lucy Maude Montgomery. Second, we have eminent athletes including Summer McIntosh in swimming, Connor McDavid in hockey and Bianca Andreescu in tennis.
There is also unusual beauty in Canada. Here are just a few sights I’ve savoured: The Nelson River Valley in British Columbia; approaching the Rockies from Calgary; the Qu’Appelle Valley in Saskatchewan; the sand dunes near Brandon, Manitoba; hundreds of swallows resting on the beach at Point Pelee, Ont., after spring migration across Lake Erie; 400 years of history in Old Quebec City; the tidal bore in the Peticodiac River near Moncton, N.B.; the Cabot Trail on Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia; and the colourful row houses of St. John’s, Newfoundland.
So, Herr Letzler, come join us in Canada for a glass of wine from the Okanagan Valley in British Columbia; puff pastry or croissant from Les Co’Pains d’Abord in Montreal; fresh-caught bass from Lake Joseph in Ontario; and pie from Humble Pie Kitchen in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. Maybe some of that dessert will keep you quiet about places and people about which you apparently know so little.

Faking it

First off, unless you’re referring to artificial ice for hockey, anything that’s called artificial can never be as good as the real thing. I dislike Artificial Intelligence. There, I’ve declared my views on AI right up front.
After all, AI is attempting to stand in for human thinking. Why does anyone thoughtful want to have anything to do with something that purports to do that? As a writer, I never use AI. If I did, it would be like a house painter giving over his job to the first person who walks by.
I’m told the more you use AI, the better it gets at mimicking you. No thanks. I’d rather do my own research and writing. University profs can usually identify on first reading those essays written using AI. They often come from students who’ve had poor attendance at classes and are trying to shine at the end of term. Such sudden improved performances are suspicious.
Moreover, there are few, if any, footnotes in their essays. The student hasn’t read widely on the topic he or she is writing about. Maybe AI has even generated a mistaken interpretation for them from some source. Worst of all, the student has not done any thinking. Isn’t that what university is all about, learning how to think?
As for mistakes by AI, I’ve heard that AI is getting better over time. It’s learning along the way. Who want’s that kind of stumbling performance in a so-called partner? AI can also be asked to read something and report, but doesn’t always get everything right. Since when didn’t accuracy matter?
What about hospitals and physicians who use AI to diagnose an illness? Would you want your doctor doing that? Or make driving decisions in your self-driven car as you loll in the back seat. Your insurance policy would soon be null and void.
Yet, AI is all around us. There are AI data centres in Canada receiving hundreds of million dollars in government largesse.
But it’s all so mystical. One of the most used forms of AI, for language-based tasks, is ChatGPT. GPT is short for, wait for it, Generative pre-trained transformer. Do you really want anything to do with something as obtuse as that?
I asked GPT if the earth was flat and was told, no, it’s an oblate spheroid. I don’t know about you, but that didn’t help me much.
Know this. This blog post was written without any help from ChatGPT.

Going home again

The older I get, the more I remember the past with clarity. By the time I went to kindergarten, I could read on my own. My father had nightly read to me and listened while I read from a range of books including those by Thornton W. Burgess. I can vividly remember pronouncing “gnaw” in The Adventures of Danny Meadow Mouse with a hard “g” as if it had two syllables – g-naw – and being corrected.
As a result of his fine tutelage I became an early and avid reader at the Carnegie Library in Guelph. The children’s books were downstairs through a separate entrance at the back. By the time I was twelve, I had read everything on those shelves and was allowed to mount the front steps, past the columns, under the dome, and into the inner sanctum of the adult library.
All the librarians knew me which was both a help and a hindrance. When I tried to check out By Love Possessed by James Gould Cozzens, Miss Metcalfe took it off the counter, saying, “I don’t think your mother would want you to read that.”
My 1950 kindergarten graduation included a rhythm band and a musical playlet, called “If We Had Wings.”  Carol Anne Matthews, Leanne Dodge and Donald Kantel were ducks. Ruth Yeates and Dorothy Wells were butterflies. I was something less lyrical, a crow. My role consisted of singing, as rhythmically as I could: “C-Caw-Caw-Caw, C-Caw-Caw-Caw.” I’ve been singing for my supper ever since.
When I was eight, I wanted my own bike. My parents told me to save up and pay for it myself. My allowance at the time was $1 a week. That winter I did all my chores without prodding, including making my bed, shovelling snow, and helping my father take out the cinders from the coal furnace.
By spring, I had enough money, $30 as I recall, to go to Brown’s Bicycle on Quebec Street and buy a new red CCM. One speed only; nothing fancy in those days. I also bought a bell that was attached to the handlebars and an odometer for the front wheel hub. That first day of ownership I went far and wide, 28 miles in all.
What a feeling, not only to have the capacity to jump on a bike and go wherever you wanted, but also to have paid for it yourself. It’s a lesson every kid should learn.

The write stuff

As a writer, I love language. When I think back to my university days, I shake my head at the many and varied forms of the English language with which I struggled to become familiar. First, there was Old English, which was closer to Norse than anything recognizable today. A typical pair of words in Old English looked something like this, “Pæs oferéode,” meaning “That was overcome.”
Old English was used until the Norman conquest of England in 1066. Those invaders carried out an inventory called the Domesday Book of all the captured buildings. Included was the church in Earsham, Norfolk, where my grandfather, Andrew McQueen, and his wife, Alice Maud Hall, were married in 1895. I visited that church in 1983. Talk about your touchstones with the past!
The 14th Century featured Geoffrey Chaucer writing in what’s called Middle English. I loved this line from The Miller’s Tale: “Nicholas anon leet fle a fart, as greet as it had been a thonder-dent.” The next great wordsmith, of course, was William Shakespeare. “All the world’s a stage.” “If music be the food of love, play on.” He was followed by favourites like Charles Dickens, Virginia Woolf, Mark Twain and F. Scott Fitzgerald.
My so-called writing career has included newspaper and magazine articles, speeches, blog posts like this, a bi-weekly column currently running in the Saturday Toronto Star, and eighteen books published since 1982. Researching and writing a book can require anywhere between 50 and 100 interviews plus a daily output of 500 words that are revised downward to an eventual manuscript of 70,000 words.
In the end, all that’s required is just putting one word after another. In that regard, there’s no end of supply. One thousand new words are added annually to the Oxford English Dictionary. Recent additions include cromulent, meaning acceptable, and nepo baby, a person who gains success through family connections.
Some days, I weep at what’s happening to language. Some of it is minor nonsense. All too often I read in my morning newspaper the phrase, “a couple things.” Whatever happened to the “of”? And sportscasters are forever saying, “He’s 34 years of age.” Why not just say “34 years old”?
But the worst manglers are popular hip-hop singers like Drake in Charged Up. “Cops are killin’ people with they arms up/And your main focus is tryna harm us?/And you think you ‘bout to starve us.”
But there is one new phrase I very much admire: Elbows up!