The World Chess Championship 2018 and the Inherent Disorganization of the Internet

Just over a month ago, an American and a Norwegian moved wooden chess pieces back and forth over a checkered board while chess fans around the world watched. I was one of them.

Like hundreds of thousands of others, I live-streamed the games on my desktop, popping in every so often to catch up on the moves. It was fantastic background noise for a research position which, among other things, involved reviewing news stories particular to a single issue from any of several dozen internet news sources. In fact, it was my job which made me take a long hard look at the process by which I was consuming the moves and news about the chess championship.

Just a few days into the championship, I noticed that it was bizarrely not straightforward to find the live match itself. It took a little effort, which I thought was strange because THIS WAS THE WORLD CHESS CHAMPIONSHIP! What was going on?

Later in the day, when I wanted to review the moves, it again wasn't easy to find a platform with an interactive board on which to play out the moves. All of the games and moves are categorized and easily found on Wikipedia today, but a chess player (at least one of my caliber) wants to see the moves played out, to click forward and backward, in an effort to try to understand the match. Again, this information isn't hard to find, but it wasn't coming easily, both on the day itself and weeks later.

There was a decent amount of coverage of the event, but trying to find a particular article a month later was a hassle. Therein lies the worst part of the internet. There is so much content being created  that the experience of looking something up is different even a week after the event, much less a month or a year.

The Internet needs to be organized, and it needs to happen in real time. As you'll see below, this is one person's attempt to collate a wide variety of digital information about a single event. Wikipedia's great, but you don't get a sense for the history of a moment unless you read some of the articles and watch some of the live coverage. And you've got to read a few FiveThirtyEight columns to know what the data nerds are reading.

This isn't even close to exhaustive. I just tried to get a sampling of what's out there. Furthermore, these are all English sources. Who knows what the Norwegians were writing about their national chess hero, not to mention the rest of the world. And who knows what cool sources I missed.

This was a single event which lasted a few weeks in 2018. This catalog is meant to underscore how much information a single event can generate, how much washes over us, and in the end, how much we'll lose out on when these sources eventually get deleted. I don't have answers, but if there were something like Craigslist for all the content on the Internet, that'd be a great first step.

*****

***THE WORLD CHESS CHAMPIONSHIP 2018***

*PRE-MATCH COVERAGE*

'I FACED OFF AGAINST THE WORLD'S BEST CHESS PLAYER'... Humorous article about a simul with Magnus Carlsen: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/i-faced-off-against-the-worlds-best-chess-player-you-will-totally-believe-what-happened-next/ 

SPOTLIGHT ON CARUANA... Article about the challenger Fabiano Caruana: https://patch.com/new-york/parkslope/park-slope-raised-chess-player-compete-world-championship 

AND MORE... Another article focusing on the rise of Fabiano Caruana: https://theconversation.com/fabiano-caruana-is-poised-to-do-what-no-american-has-done-since-bobby-fischer-heres-the-path-he-took-to-get-there-94149

AND MORE... More hype about Caruana: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/11/28/fabiano-caruana-26-could-be-the-first-us-world-chess-champ-since-1972.html

AND MORE... From Slate... Ever comparing Caruana to Fischer... Audio commentary from Stefan Fatsis: https://slate.com/culture/2018/11/next-bobby-fischer-fabiano-caruana.html

AND MORE... The New York Times puts in its two cents about Fabi: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/03/sports/bobby-fischer-chess-caruana.html

NEWS BRIEF ABOUT CHALLENGER... Caruana wins Candidates Tournament and earns right to challenge Carlsen: https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/mar/27/brilliant-chess-game-immortal-loser-kieseritzsky/

'CHESS HAS NEVER BEEN AS COOL OR RELEVANT'... The Guardian covers the two players and the upcoming match: https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2018/nov/08/long-battle-expected-as-worlds-top-two-chess-players-meet-in-london

FIDE PRESS CONFERENCE... Interviews with all the notables before the match: https://www.fide.com/component/content/article/1-fide-news/11238-fide-world-chess-championship-match-2018-press-conference.html

LONG OVERVIEW OF CHESS IN AMERICA... In depth article about the rise of chess in America, from Fischer to Caruana: https://www.si.com/more-sports/2018/11/07/us-chess-world-chess-championships-fabiano-caruana-magnus-carlsen

*JUST THE MOVES*

GAME 1... Moves and interactive board: http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1937713
GAME 2... Moves and interactive board: http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1937714

GAME 3... Moves and interactive board: http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1937768

GAME 4... Moves and interactive board: http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1937769

GAME 5... Moves and interactive board: http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1937779

GAME 6... Moves and interactive board: http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1937789

GAME 7... Moves and interactive board: http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1937841

GAME 8... Moves and interactive board: http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1937842

GAME 9... Moves and interactive board: http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1937849

GAME 10... Moves and interactive board: http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1937891

GAME 11... Moves and interactive board: http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1937912

GAME 12... Moves and interactive board: http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1937913

GAME 13... Tie-break... Moves and interactive board: http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1937925

GAME 14... Tie-break... Moves and interactive board: http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1937924

GAME 15... Tie-break... Moves and interactive board: http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1937923

*MATCH COVERAGE*

GAME 1 COVERAGE... The entire seven hour match with in-the-moment commentary from GM Peter Svidler and IM Sopiko Guramishvili: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fG6wDxeit0k

AND MORE... Analysis after the game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWP0ggStlVA

AND MORE... More analysis after the game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWKKcdsKRMI

AND MORE... Article, video and game, including commentary: https://www.ichess.net/blog/world-chess-championship-2018-game-1/

AND MORE... Article and analysis of Game 1... Suggested alternatives by Kasparov: http://www.thechessdrum.net/blog/2018/11/10/2018-world-chess-championship-game-1/

AND MORE... The Guardian covers the result with quotes from players: https://www.theguardian.com/sport/live/2018/nov/09/magnus-carlsen-v-fabiano-caruana-world-chess-championship-game-1-live

AND MORE... The Chess World covers the game: https://thechessworld.com/articles/general-information/world-chess-championship-2018-game-1/

GAME 2 COVERAGE... Carlsen "grovels" to a draw: https://www.chess.com/news/view/world-chess-championship-round-2-carlsen-grovels-to-draw-after-caruanas-opening-surprise

AND MORE... From FiveThirtyEight... Championship "deadlocked" after Game 2: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-world-chess-championship-is-deadlocked-after-game-2/

AND MORE... From The Guardian... Carlsen "forced to hold on" in Game 2: https://www.theguardian.com/sport/live/2018/nov/10/magnus-carlsen-v-fabiano-caruana-world-chess-championship-game-2-live

AND MORE... Three-hour live coverage of match: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iAFhdYU3Tao

AND MORE... Post-game analysis by GM Huschenbeth: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_J2pK9cu4s

GAME 3 COVERAGE... "A finely balanced draw"... Match coverage with photos: https://en.chessbase.com/post/world-championship-2018-game-3

AND MORE... From Chess.com... Chances on both sides: https://www.chess.com/news/view/world-chess-championship-round-3-caruana-repeats-rossolimo-but-still-cant-break-down-carlsen

AND MORE... From The Guardian... Photos and real-time commentary about Game 3: https://www.theguardian.com/sport/live/2018/nov/12/magnus-carlsen-v-fabiano-caruana-world-chess-championship-game-3-live

AND MORE... From The Guardian... Regular article about Game 3: https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2018/nov/12/magnus-carlsen-fabiano-caruana-draw-game-three-world-chess-championship

AND MORE... FiveThirtyEight coverage... "Computers are haunting the World Chess Championship": https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/computers-are-haunting-the-world-chess-championship-which-yes-is-still-tied/

AND MORE... "Unimpressive draw"... Some quotations from the competitors: http://theweekinchess.com/chessnews/events/carlsen-caruana-world-chess-championship-2018/unimpressive-draw-in-game-three-of-the-carlsen-caruana-world-chess-championship-match

AND MORE... Live coverage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrSEUaGkvgA

AND MORE... After-game analysis from Chess Network: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9s06VFBnfg

GAME 4 COVERAGE... From FiveThirtyEight: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-biggest-blunder-of-the-world-chess-championship-is-a-deleted-youtube-video/

AND MORE... Even more coverage of the game and the released Youtube video: https://www.chess.com/news/view/world-chess-championship-game-4-carlsens-english-nets-4th-draw-despite-release-of-caruanas-training-

AND MORE... The Guardian gets in on it as well: https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2018/nov/13/world-chess-championship-game-4-carlsen-caruana

AND MORE... Live coverage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bGakxW6QB0

AND MORE... Post-game analysis by Agadmator: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_T9_PyuuG8

GAME 5 COVERAGE... Gurgenidze opening not enough: https://en.chessbase.com/post/world-championship-2018-game-5

AND MORE... The Guardian calls Caruana move a "Molotov cocktail": https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2018/nov/15/world-chess-championship-game-five-magnus-carlsen-fabiano-caruana

AND MORE... "Today we finally had some excitement": https://thechessworld.com/articles/general-information/world-chess-championship-2018-game-5/

AND MORE... Live coverage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hWvsHQthtY

AND MORE... Post-game analysis by GM Huschenbeth: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxvoxrCUfSs

GAME 6 COVERAGE... Review of all the matches, ending in the "thriller" of Game 6... Claims Caruana missed win: https://www.businessinsider.com/fabiano-caruana-missed-chance-world-chess-championship-2018-11

AND MORE... Live coverage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REVLvjWrRu8

AND MORE... Post-game analysis... Called "instant classic": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4yzaG0Ia_fs

GAME 7 COVERAGE... "Another day another draw": https://en.chessbase.com/post/world-championship-2018-game-7

AND MORE... Article with photos: https://www.chess.com/news/view/world-chess-championship-game-7-a-2nd-queens-gambit-a-7th-draw

AND MORE... Players remain "deadlocked"... The Guardian covers Game 7: https://www.theguardian.com/sport/live/2018/nov/18/magnus-carlsen-v-fabiano-caruana-world-chess-championship-game-7-live

AND MORE... Live coverage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Je_2zaLr5gU

AND MORE... Post-game analysis: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCUQAMIZu3o

GAME 8 COVERAGE... From FiveThirtyEight: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/one-bad-pawn-move-has-kept-the-world-chess-championship-deadlocked/

AND MORE... Speculation about the match from The Daily Mail: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6413903/Chess-grandmaster-26-American-win-World-Championship-50-years.html

AND MORE... The New York Times weighs in on all the draws: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/19/sports/world-chess-magnus-carlsen-fabiano-caruana.html

AND MORE... Live coverage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OPsdc1kPpQ

AND MORE... Post-game analysis: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDPE1S-_YLM

GAME 9 COVERAGE... "I blew it"... The Guardian reviews Game 9: https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2018/nov/21/world-chess-championship-game-9-carlsen-caruana

AND MORE... Carlsen gets a black eye?... Review of Game 9: https://thechessworld.com/articles/general-information/world-chess-championship-2018-game-9/

AND MORE... Live coverage... From the St. Louis Chess Club... Features GM Maurice Ashley, GM Yasser Seirawan, and WGM Jennifer Shahade: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LwYr2Rm8AgQ

AND MORE... Post-game analysis: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zg4grvQc_cM

GAME 10 COVERAGE... From FiveThirtyEight: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/chess-world-celebrates-a-sensational-move-that-leads-to-a-championship-draw/

AND MORE... Live coverage from the SLCC: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5xtOlfyyEQ

AND MORE... Post-game analysis from GM Peter Svidler: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctiw40M-Fo4

GAME 11 COVERAGE... Tension "at peak": https://en.chessbase.com/post/world-championship-2018-game-11

AND MORE... Caruana "suffers successfully" in match... FiveThirtyEight comments: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/caruana-suffers-successfully-in-game-11-of-the-world-chess-championship/

AND MORE... Players "play to quiet Game 11 draw": https://www.theguardian.com/sport/live/2018/nov/24/magnus-carlsen-v-fabiano-caruana-world-chess-championship-game-11-live 

AND MORE... Live coverage from SLCC: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVp3pcdwh0o

AND MORE... Post-game analysis from The Chess Network: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouIn3W8XEH4

GAME 12 COVERAGE... From FiveThirtyEight: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/carlsens-bizarre-decision-has-sent-the-world-chess-championship-to-overtime/ 

AND MORE... The New York Times covers the twelfth draw and transition to sudden death: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/26/sports/world-chess-championship-draw-tiebreaker.html

AND MORE... Head to tiebreakers: https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2018/nov/26/world-chess-championship-game-12-carlsen-caruana

AND MORE... Live coverage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikiHTNQnh58

AND MORE... Chess conference with Fabiano and Magnus: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzO7aFh8AMU

AND MORE... Post-game analysis: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-xD_JTfxWE

GAMES 13 TO 15 COVERAGE... Carlsen wins... The Guardian provides updates: https://www.theguardian.com/sport/live/2018/nov/28/magnus-carlsen-v-fabiano-caruana-world-chess-championship-tie-breakers-live

AND MORE... Post-game analysis: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLxSXuD9tv0

'EXCITING' POSITIONS FROM 2018 MATCH DISCUSSED... GM Ben Finegold discusses a few positions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5zWMIxeU78

INTERVIEW WITH CHESS PRESIDENT MERENZON... Between games 11 and 12, World Chess President Ilya Merenzon talks about monetizing chess interests: http://www.sportspromedia.com/quick_fire_questions/magnus-carlsen-fabiano-caruana-world-chess-championship-ilya-menenzon

WIKIPEDIA ENTRY... Best overview of the 2018 match on the net: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Chess_Championship_2018 

WIKIPEDIA ENTRY... Best overview of the World Chess Championship in general: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Chess_Championship

 

*POST-MATCH COVERAGE*

CARLSEN WINS... From Chess.com: https://www.chess.com/news/view/carlsen-wins-2018-world-chess-championship-in-playoff

AND MORE... New York Times coverage of win: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/28/sports/magnus-carlsen-fabiano-caruana-world-chess-championship.html

AND MORE... From CNN: https://www.cnn.com/2018/11/28/sport/magnus-carlsen-fabiano-caruana-world-chess-championships-spt-intl/index.html

AND MORE... From Thechessworld.com... Final three tie-break matches with commentary: THREE FINAL SPEED GAMES... Interactive speed games between players: https://thechessworld.com/articles/general-information/world-chess-championship-2018-tiebreaks-and-final-results/

AND MORE... Overview of the win... Includes video clips: https://en.chessbase.com/post/magnus-carlsen-world-champion-2018

AND MORE... Kasparov entitled to his 'stupid opinion' regarding Game 12 draw... Otherwise, Carlsen happy with result: https://www.channel3000.com/sports/magnus-carlsen-beats-fabianao-caruana-to-win-world-chess-championship/896989546

AND MORE... News blurb about Carlsen's win from Voice of America: https://www.voanews.com/a/norways-magnus-carlsen-defends-world-chess-title/4679221.html

AND MORE... The Week in Chess reviews Carlsen's win: http://theweekinchess.com/chessnews/events/carlsen-caruana-world-chess-championship-2018

Google Star(s)

In Gmail, a user can tag emails with a star. If you don't already use this, you should really look into it. Starring an email allows you to then use the "starred" search function, which pulls up only starred emails. It's a wonderful feature.

My suggestion is to add a star. Add two stars or three, even. The more the starrier.

The idea is simple. Of the emails which require flagging with a star, some of these are more important than others. Some, you merely want to flag, a little twine around your pinky finger reminder. Others, like a plane ticket receipt, you might want to double flag for easy access.

I predict two-star flagging will be a thing of the future. :)

The End of Things

I like wisdom as much as the next person, but it has always niggled me that dead people's words tend to have a certain cultural weight to them. Casual witticisms from Mark Twain and Albert Einstein have been transformed over time into Very Profound Thought. What's that all about? We say all kinds of stuff throughout our lives, much of it nonsense or filler. But as soon as we die, <pop!> there's meaning to be had.

But then I started looking at death merely as an end, among other ends and endings. The end of a book or movie is when we attempt to digest what we've just experienced. The frame of a photograph ends what we know to be a much wider canvass. Even a simple sentence experiences death in the form of a period.

What? You don't believe me?

First let me say that I'm not saying the end of a sentence is the same thing as dying. Obviously, it's not. But something is triggered by their finality. Something clicks. I don't profess to know why that something happens, but I know it's happening just the same.

Close a book, and you're still thinking about it. Finish a movie, and, especially if it's a good one, you want to hash out just what was happening all along. The end of a scene or chapter generates a similar effect. You're not getting any more information. The book, the movie, the scene, the chapter... they're finished. But their ending gives you permission to look into them more closely. The end invites scrutiny.

There's an infinite amount of information in all directions, but ends, edges, frames, dust jackets, fades to black - these are the tools that invite comprehension. The meaning has been there all along. We just need the occasional reminder to look for it.

Future Match Configuration for the World Chess Championship

Gary Kasparov vs. Anatoly Karpov
World Chess Championship 1984

The World Chess Championship has concluded in New York City, NY, USA. The reigning world champion Magnus Carlsen of Norway has defended his crown against challenger Sergey Karjakin of Russia.

The match was to be decided by 12 games, governed by classical time limits (or what might pass as classical today). Players were to have 100 minutes each for the first 40 moves, an additional 50 minutes until move 60, and an additional 15 minutes after that. Plus, they have an additional 30 seconds per move.

These long matches are brutal. Players are under tremendous stress and often lose several pounds throughout a match, just by thinking. Because of the high level of play, draws are common. Draws can also be strategic, though, as a quick one can give both players a much needed break from the stress of the match. In this last World Championship series, 10 of the original 12 games ended in draws.

Because both Carlsen and Karjakin won a single game, their 12-game series ended in a 6-6 tie. After that, the match was settled by a series of speed rounds. Carlsen won.

Between Carlsen and Karjakin, Carlsen's the stronger player by far. Before the match, he was the best player in the world by classical time constraints, best player in the world by speed time constraints, and second best in the world at blitz. In short, this guy is chess incarnate.

It's important to preface what I'm about to say with proper respect for the world's best. Because winning the World Chess Championship with speed game tiebreaks is a bunch of crap.

Apparently, the debate goes back decades, perhaps to the very beginning of the World Chess Championship. At the famous Karpov-Kasparov match in 1984, the first player to win 6 games would be crowned champion, and ties weren't counted. The match went to 58 games and lasted six months. They eventually cancelled it, under much controversy, and allowed Karpov, who was leading in points, to keep the crown.

Such an extreme condition seems unthinkable in today's world where the average Western attention span has been tempered by 30-second commercials, Facebook, and viral Youtube videos. That said, I still prefer it to what just happened between Carlsen and Karjakin.

Classical chess and speed chess aren't the same thing. Speed chess and blitz chess aren't the same thing either. The changes in time controls literally change the game. It's not like adding an extra five minutes to the clock in the NBA. The pieces move the same, but the level of game play changes fantastically.

In fact, there already is a World Rapid Chess Championship and a World Blitz Chess Championship. Can you imagine either of those titles being decided by chess played under classical time controls? No way! It defeats the whole purpose!!

First, FIDE has to resolve to use only classical time controls for a classical time control championship title. It's ridiculous to do otherwise.

Second, I think 12 games is too few. I also think 24 games is too many. However, the need to maneuver within the format has got to be respected. Every little thing means something in these World Chess Championships. The choice of opening, the repetition of moves, the speed at which certain moves are made. More games means more of an open arena for these players to really interact and create some great games.

One simple solution would be to divide the match into fixed sets with artificial end points. The winner would be whoever emerged from a set with a lead in points.

Let's say the match goes to 12 games at first. If a player is winning by game 12, he wins the match. If it's tied, the match continues another 4 games. If a player is winning, he wins the match. If it's tied again, the match continues another 4 games. The match should go like this until 24 games. If it's still tied, the world champion retains his title.

Match sets could be in any configuration. 12-4-4-4 or 12-8-4 or 8-8-8 or 8-8-2-2-2-2. With artificial end points, players will likely push a little harder to try to end the match prematurely.

Third, the way FIDE alternates white and black now is ineffectual. Switching in the middle of set is meaningless. In fact, the way it worked with Carlsen playing white in the first AND last game of the match really benefited Carlsen. For the artificial end points to work, you need to allow both players to be white at the end of a set.

Using Carlsen and Karjakin as an example, let's say a match was divided into 12-4-4-2-2. This would allow for a maximum of 24 classical games and a minimum of 12 classical games. The first 12 would see Carlsen start with white and Karjakin with black in the first game; the last game of the 12 would see Karjakin with white and Carlsen with black. If they remained tied, Karjakin would start the next 4-game set with the white pieces. If they still remained tied after the game 16, Carlsen would start the next 4-game set with the white pieces. Still tied, the next 2-game set would be lead by Karjakin with the white, and finally, if still tied, the last 2-game set would be lead by Carlsen with the white pieces.

This particular set up allows for multiple chances to end the match using ONLY classical time controls. It also incorporates a bit of natural tension to encourage players to avoid draws.

Really, anything is better than what actually happened. No offense, Magnus.

The Allure of KENKEN

This is KENKEN, a puzzle that piggybacked on Sudoku's popularity over a decade ago. I personally fizzled out on Sudoku pretty early on when I heard about editors merely deleting some of the numbers off the opening Sudoku puzzles to make them harder (never mind that the puzzles had been designed to be solved through logic alone). Disillusioned with a puzzle that could so easily be tampered with, I turned to KENKEN.

KENKEN, like Sudoku, requires the same numbers to be entered into every horizontal row and vertical column. In this particular puzzle, because the grid is 6x6, every row and column require the numbers 1 through 6 exactly once each.

What makes KENKEN different is that it incorporates basic math. Every bold shape (usually a rectangle or square, though sometimes a funky looking piece) has either a number alone or a number and an arithmetic symbol. The squares that have single numbers have no puzzle attached and can be filled in, as below:

After these giveaways, a solver must look to the other bold shapes, or cages, to solve the puzzle. Most cages have a number and symbol which is the clue to that cage's numbers. For example, the long rectangle next to the 1 in the upper left corner has "30 x" in it. That means the three numbers in that cage, when multiplied, equal 30. Two sets of numbers makes this true: 6, 5, 1 and 5, 3, 2. Since 1 is represented in that row, the set 6, 5, 1 is eliminated, leaving the other. However, the solver doesn't know what order to put those numbers in, so the puzzling continues. 

Like Sudoku, you have to sort out exactly what you can logically deduce from the information given, fill in a square or two, then repeat. Do this enough times, and you solve the puzzle.

The reason I linked to this particular puzzle is because it beautifully illustrated what I like about KENKEN. Even though these examples are time-stamped within a few minutes of starting, I actually had to spend nearly half an hour to make my first move!

I first went around the grid, trying to learn what I could. After figuring out part of the "30 x" cage, I knew the upper right corner had the numbers 6, 4 because they were the last two numbers for the row AND the equation made sense (6 - 4 = 2). But I still couldn't write anything. I moved on wondering about all the "2 ÷"s and feeling a little hopeless about them because they could all be solved with 2, 1 or 4, 2 or 6, 3. They represented too many variables to sort out. I looked at the "10 +" and the other "10 +". The second one can be problematic because it wraps around a corner, just like the "15 +" below. Because of this wraparound, they obey slightly different rules. These corner cages can have the same number in them so long as those numbers don't fall in the same row or column. In fact, several of my first KENKEN puzzles were ruined because I didn't understand this fact. The corner "10 +" could be 3, 4, 3, as long as the 3s didn't touch. Anyway, I looked at all these potential avenues for breaking into the puzzle, and though I collected bits of information, it wasn't enough to write anything down.

Finally, I had a breakthrough.

One thing I had overlooked was that certain cages COULDN'T have certain numbers in them. For example, all of the "2 ÷"s could never have a 5 in them. Once I figured this out, then I was able to bounce to the row with the 4 in it. Since it had two cages with "2 ÷", I knew that the 5 had to be in the "3 -" cage. This meant that the two numbers were 5, 2 (because 5 - 2 = 3), though I didn't know the order. That in turn meant that the rest of the row had to be filled in with 1, 3, 6. Only two of these numbers (6, 3) could fit into the far right "2 ÷" cage and make sense in an equation.

So after all of that, I knew definitively that the 1 had to go in the yellow square below. My first written square after the freebies!

Yes, that one square took me about half an hour. If I did these puzzles more regularly, I'm sure I would have found it quicker, but I'm out of practice. After the 1, I could fill in the square below it with 2 since that's the only equation that can work (2 ÷ 1 = 2).

Then it was back to the drawing board. Once again, you have to analyze the cages and figure out what information is there. With the "15 +" cage, I knew that it had to have a 6 in it. No combination of numbers adds up to 15 without a 6. But where did the 6 go?

If you'll recall, the top right cage has a 6 in it, and the cage to the right of the 4 has a 6 in it, so the 6s in both of those columns are spoken for, so to speak. You don't know which square they belong to, but you can black out those columns. And for our purposes, that's enough information!

With one square left in the "15 +" cage, we know definitely that the 6 goes in the yellow square below:

This is your introduction to KENKEN. I love it and I hope you enjoyed your introduction to it. How it fits in this blog is perhaps somewhat puzzling, but I leave it to you to figure it out. Any ideas?

Meta-Sitcoms: The Future of Television?

There is a very specific superhero craze going on right now. I'm not referring merely to the abundance of television shows and films, which our society has pretty steadily been into for a long time. I am thinking specifically of the crossover.

Marvel laid the groundwork with their heroes Iron Man, Thor, Captain America, Hulk, connecting them all with the Avengers franchise. Then they made the jump into television with Marvel's Agents of SHIELD. Following this is the Captain America movie Civil War which pits Captain America against Iron Man. There's even early buzz right now that Spider-Man might make a cameo in The Avengers III, connecting that whole other movie franchise.

DC Comics has jumped in on the game with their Netflix deals on DareDevil and Jessica Jones, both set in the same universe, as well as The CW shows Arrow and The Flash, the characters of which both frequently visit one another's cities. And of course who could forget the upcoming Batman v Superman movie which though not technically a crossover in the same vein as the above experiments (Ben Affleck, this movie's Batman, has never been Batman and is bouncing off the mega popularity of the Christopher Nolan series), still gets crossover appeal for putting two of the best known comic book heroes in the same story.

Who knew it would be so popular to connect movies and shows? Viewers get rewarded for watching multiple shows and movies and making connections between characters and their interrelated histories. What used to be a self-contained unit (either a TV series or a movie series) is now a dynamic meta-set of stories.

So if this kind of stuff can work with fantasy, why not do it in other genres?

Sitcoms are primed for this. For years, television has produced spinoffs, launching Frasier from Cheers, Mork & Mindy from Happy Days, etc. Some have succeeded, successfully carrying the audience from one show to another. Others have failed, like the short-lived Three's a Crowd (from Three's Company). But at the heart of it all is the crossover appeal.

What if a series of sitcoms came out that all overlapped and had crossover appeal? Off the top of my head, I think that if the children from The George Lopez Show, Fresh Off the Boat, and Everybody Hates Chris all went to the same school, it would make one crazy meta-television experience. Right now, these shows pretty much exist as islands, pandering to their specific minority's experience. But of course, while these shows are generating a lot of interest and mass appeal that TV execs never thought possible, keeping the camera on any one particular family isn't what the American experience is all about.

The school sitcom has been done. Saved by the Bell, Boy Meets World, Girl Meets World, Head of the Class, etc are well traveled territory. But we never really knew those characters' back stories. They were largely two-dimensional. But if you take the kids from existing shows, put them in a school together, you could get an unparalleled television experience.

Imagine! Exploring a particular character's life within a school-based sitcom would mean opening the door to that character's family-driven sitcom. Based on the success of the Marvel/DC franchises, I can't help but think that this would be an incredible venture in situation comedies. A meta-sitcom, an uber-sitcom, whatever you want to call it, could make for bold new television.

Paris: Merely a Litmus Test?

The front page story of The New York Times today explores the finances of the terror group ISIS. With reserves in the millions and perhaps in the billions and an estimated 900,000,000 in regular annual revenue, the group isn't likely to be going anywhere anytime soon.

I think the bigger message from the article is that ISIS is learning from the model of the West. Tickets for broken tail lights? That trick is straight out of the West's playbook. How many times have people gotten a speeding ticket only to complain afterward that the police should be out there stopping real crime? ISIS has studied how the West (particularly its local, state, and national governments) has inflated its coffers and successfully duplicated its practices. 

The real question now is: What else are they learning from the West? 

Awful as it sounds, I can't help but think that Paris may have been merely a litmus test for these guys. Station several hundred operatives across the world's major cities, attack Paris, and see what happens. Which services go down first? How fast? How many? Is there a pattern to it? How much is reported on the news versus what people are seeing in person?

Write it all down, report back to HQ.

What really strikes me is how detailed the process must be. I mean, tail light tickets? Folks, ISIS is taking notes. Really detailed notes. And while I applaud efforts to "study the enemy," I think trying to understand how they understand us is at least as relevant.

More Ideas About Curtailing ISIS Recruitment

ISIS recruits members from the West. They look for the downtrodden, of which, unfortunately, there are many.

I don't know the numbers, though. They might be getting more people who are just showing up on their doorstep rather than people who are actively sought out and lulled into the group. The real danger, as the various attacks around the world have shown us, is converting an otherwise ordinary citizen into a harbinger of unspeakable atrocities in the place where they're living.

To address this internal threat, governments have been monitoring, monitoring, monitoring. Sure, do some more of that. There's no telling when intelligence will become crucial. No argument here. But these ISIS trolls still appear to be finding young people and convincing them of their ideology. This has got to stop.

Here's a radical suggestion: encourage high schoolers to reach out to ISIS.

Right now, ISIS is finding these young people around the world because they're easy to find. But what if there were 1,000,000 more fake personalities out there crying for help? It would be seriously difficult to find the real people susceptible to extremism with a deluge of fakers.

Our government doesn't have the time to pull off a plan like this. They don't have the manpower either. But teens? I can't think of a group with more time to kill. Train them, prepare them for craziness, let them pretend to be someone else online, and then hand over the fishing pole when they bring in a big fish.

With so many fake cases out there, it would be a complete waste of time for ISIS to scour the internet looking for real people. And if they found someone, how could they trust them with so many fakers out there?

This would effectively bring an end to local US enrollment (or any other government willing to do it). As for the rest of ISIS, I'll get back to you.

ISIS and Curtailing Recruitment

This past week, the Islamic State, better known as ISIS, made international headlines by releasing a video tape of the beheading of twenty-one Christian Egyptians along the Libyan coast. They are gaining ground in the Middle East, and their enrollment numbers are also increasing. Take a look at this map of ISIS (in gray) on the wiki site to see specifics.

From all of this has emerged a conversation about why some people turn to radicalism and others don't. The New York Times ran a video about three friends, two who are working normal jobs and the third who left to join ISIS. It doesn't really offer any specific reasons why the third friend left home. The video just chronicles someone whose personal beliefs were no longer in sync with his friends'.

I don't think this line of inquiry - trying to understand the why of radicalism - will be a particularly fruitful path. So what if you discover the ins and outs of one particular person's reasons for joining ISIS? A thousand people might have a thousand reasons for doing the same thing.

In the short term, better to focus on a strategy to curtail enrollment. For that, look no further than our country's own relationship with home-grown terror: the Ku Klux Klan. They too enjoyed high enrollment for a while. But what happened?

As the story goes, one man infiltrated their organization, learned all of their secret code words, handshakes, whatever, and aired them over the radio on children's programming. That was it. Over time, with children repeating all of their mumbo jumbo, the mystique of the Klan was broken. It became a bad joke to join the KKK. For more of that story, read here.

My idea is to do the same with ISIS. Make a video of some clowns talking about clown jihad. Have a kid saying that challah is great. Make some Weird Al remake of some of their youtube releases. Above all, make the entire thing ridiculous.

You get the world laughing at these clowns, and their numbers will tank.

Stale Top Comments

I've been watching Macklemore & Ryan Lewis Thriftshop video. If you can stand to hear a lot of cuss words, you should jump in because it's a funny and entertaining video.

This Youtube video has already cleared 20,000,000 views. The number of comments exceeds (as of today) 26,000. However, the "Top Comment," as shown above, has hit a paltry 37 thumbs up. How did 20,000,000 people/views get reduced to 37?

Without incentives, you're not going to get people to rank anything. Boardgamegeek.com has an interesting system in which users can earn "Geek Gold" which can then be spent on the site. However, incentives are not the purpose of this blog.

What I'm curious about is a perpetual cycle. The "Top Comments" (usually just two) get the most views because they require no further clicking to see. This kind of built-in advertising solidifies in many cases the Top Comment hegemony. Two suggestions here: 1) make it impossible to vote for the Top Comment or 2) program staleness into the thumbs up so that a top position degrades over time.

The general idea is that a viewer should see more than just two comments out of 26,000, and building in a kind of comment renewal is a strong way to encourage more user interaction. Sure, I could scour all of the comments and cast my vote every time, but I'm just not the voting type. However, I believe that the attention and votes of people today count more than they do six months, a year, or five years ago.

Rating comments is very democratic. Everyone gets a vote, if they want it. Integrating comment degradation would not be an attempt to undermine the inherent democracy of the comment world, but rather to introduce a new rule to spice things up.

Just a thought.

Mother's Milk Tea Warning

I live with an array of housemates which includes a couple and their one-year-old. I mention this because as I was rooting through a take-what-you-want house shelf I found a couple of sacks of "Mother's Milk" tea. I'm an adventurous sort, so even though Chamomile was hardly a stretch difference, I went for MM.

I will never make that mistake again.

This was easily the nastiest tea I have ever had. I thought tea had a baseline decency. It's just boiled leaves or herbs, maybe fruit. It's not a complicated matter. To throw out this juxtaposition, I've made decent tea from pine needles.

I think MM should have a warning on it, it's that bad. I wish I could get more specific, too, but if someone forced me to lick dog poop, I doubt I'd stop to contemplate the subtleties of nastiness. If you're in the same boat, that makes you normal.

So that's it, a warning. It's not too much to ask. And in case you were wondering, the mom in the house loves the stuff. Like a hardcore fan, a warning would not deter her interest.

Standing Book Bids

I buy and sell books on Amazon.com. It's very very easy. As a buyer, you are just a few clicks and a few days away from getting exactly what you want at your doorstep. As a seller, it takes a little bit more work (you have to log the books, print out invoices, and mail them to get the max amount of money), but it is still surprisingly easy.

But the way the current system is in place, sellers definitely do more work than buyers. What if this were reversed? What if Amazon encouraged buyers to choose a price that they would 100% buy a book at (similar to a fixed stock buy) and it fell on the sellers to peruse these potential buyers to see if the price was what they were hoping to get for their product?

If a buyer isn't in a hurry to get something, he/she might put out a lowball bid, say 20% of the asking price. It might take anywhere from a few days to a few years to find a seller willing to sell at that price, but it would be an equally balanced equation like the system that is in place right now.

As a seller, I've got tons of books unsold right now. When I was logging them, I would have been more than happy to consider offers on them. As it stands right now, I've already put in the work for the current system. So I wait.

Google Maps Options

I want to talk about Google Maps, but I want to use this Yahoo! Sites listing as a starting point. First, just take a look. In just a few seconds, you get an idea of the possibilities on Yahoo! I don't use 95% of these sites, but I know they're there. When I started using Yahoo! back in the mid to late 90s, I navigated to their gaming page in a different way. When this quick tool bar popped up, the process (even though it may have only taken a few seconds less) was made easier.

Google Maps, to be clear, is awesome. I use it all the time. In fact, I just went through a little tutorial about all the options on the Google sidebar in the upper right (the place where you can toggle between Earth and Satellite views) and learned that there is a crazy PHOTO OPTION that, once checked, overlays local photos onto every place on the planet. Yeah, think about it. In just a few moments, I saw locally taken pictures everywhere from Boston, Massachusetts, USA all the way down to freakin' Antarctica and everywhere in between. Amazing.

However, awesome things can be made better. In fact, in this digital age, I would say that the definition of awesome is fluid in large part because awesome keeps on getting redefined every five seconds.

So how does one make Google maps better? For one, I'm getting annoyed that I get different results in Google search and Google Maps. I understand it's no fault of Google if a company doesn't have an online presence, that is, if they don't register their company in the online databases. But as a consumer looking for all my options, I'm a little put out that it falls to me to cut and paste the information that a computer program would do much more efficiently.

That's one thing. The other relates to these options. Once most of the businesses are logged into the database, then what happens next is the inclusion of another toolbar. I'm tired of punching in "Restaurant near Boston, MA," even if the stupid thing guesses what I want before I finish typing it. I want control. I want options on the side of the map that allow me to click, say, three options: Restaurants which appear in red, Game Stores which appear in green, and Grocery Stores which appear in yellow. With these options overlaid on the map of my choosing, I can easily see which places I need to go to first, second, third. Plus, I might find a place to go to that I hadn't considered, a grocery store that's usually off my radar, for example.

That's pretty much it. Oh, and I really think the Bike directions leave a lot to be desired. I absolutely hate all the green lines that pop up when I switch to bike view. Look at this madness (shown above). It's crazy!

Mom Makes Mittens

(For anyone unfamiliar with the saga of the Texas Perimeter Hike Mittens, please refer to my blog post about right here.)

A while back, my mom made me some mittens while I was freezing my butt off walking east to west along the Red River in North Texas.  The mittens, truth be told, were very warm, but there was one unfortunate, aesthetic problem: the thumb was about as long as a donkey's dong.  My thumb, poor thing, couldn't even reach the hole that was made especially for it.  Anyway, I figured out a way to make the mittens work but retired them after that winter.

Well, there's good news for those who loved them the first time around: They're baaAAaack!!

As you can see from the above picture, she has remedied the obvious problem of the elongated thumb by a procedure that those in the industry would refer to as "slice and dice."  Unwittingly, she has made a curious new aesthetic mitten with which one must pause to fully appreciate.  Turning it sidewise, you might see what I'm talking about.

It looks like Moby-Dick!!!!  I swear, I didn't think it could get any better than the Pac-Man ghost (as seen on the TPH blog), but my mom's got some tricks up her sewing and knitting sleeves.  

Up close, you can really see that the sewing and cutting that she had to do to "fix" the thumb was necessary to create this unusual effect.  There aren't any teeth, but the shape lends itself to the idea of teeth.  And this got me thinking about it once more: What else do the mittens remind you of?

Yes, my oh-so-innocent mother has given me a pair of Alien mittens.  I know they're not familiar with that movie or that super famous cinematic scene, so I'm throwing down a link for it.  Frankly, I prefer this version.

So you might be wondering why I've included this post on The Idea Train.  It's pretty simple, actually.  I don't think my mom should stop making mittens.  The best way to get better at something is through trial and error.  But these mittens, the former Pac-Man/Moby-Dick/Alien mittens cannot be saved.  I will use them and keep them, maybe even mount them on the wall next to pictures of me spearing them in the Corpus Christi Bay.  But altering them further will not bring them back from the brink.  I think they should stay the way they are.

HuffPo Needs a Better Algorithm

There's a lot of complex math going on behind the webpages we all visit.  If you receive an email with the words book or novel in it, you're instantly targeted with ads ranging from book publishing to Amazon.com's latest bestseller.  That's pretty insane when you think about it.  How in the world does Google's software pick "book" from an email in which the writer might have also included other important nouns like "mother," "homework," "baseball," or "car"?  I couldn't tell you.  The fact is that we've got a lot of really smart people writing really smart programs that essentially govern the media we're exposed to.

So it begs the question: if these people are so freaking smart, how is it possible to stumble upon something as blatantly STUPID as the above shot, taken from today's Huffington Post website.  The Huffington Post, or HuffPo as it's sometimes referred to, is an internet-only news source.  It's liberal, so if you've been plugged into FoxNews your whole life, you might not have heard of it.

So back to the shot.  Take a really close look.  The title of it reads "HuffPost's Big News Pages."  That's a good start.  It gets you wondering what is going on in the world.  There are some obvious ones, of course -- "Energy," "Election 2012," "September 11 Anniversary," "Hurrican Isaac 2012," "Libya," and "Taxes."  But wedged in there are some real losers: "fish" and "Bacon."  If you've got a puzzled look on your face, that makes you a normal human being.

What the hell is bacon doing up there with September 11 and Taxes?  Seriously.  This is evidence of an algorithm, some fancy piece of mathematical software, gone very very wrong.  Obviously, the HuffPo's software has grabbed all the websites that have gotten the most hits.  That's fine.  But they can't forget that there are actual HUMANS reading their website.  It's more than a little offensive to see BACON up there with a NATIONAL and WORLD TRAGEDY.

In chess software, you can't just tell the computer that the King is the most important piece on the board.  You have to assign it a value.  From what I've been told, you give the King such a high value (like a million versus the Queen's value of 9 or the Pawn's value of 1) that the chess program understands as a byproduct that the King is to be guarded at all costs.

It seems to me that if it's that easy to do that in chess software, it should be equally easy to do that with this.  Just assign Bacon a negative value in relation to Big News.  It's that easy.  Take it off the list.  People who are into bacon won't be offended, just like people who like comic strips aren't offended that they aren't on the front page of the newspaper.  Seriously, this one is a no-brainer.

Remote Control Ball?

Who knows why dogs love fetch, but they do.  A lot.  My dog goes after the ball like she's going to save the world.  And then she'll do it again.  And again. And again.  As long as you're willing to throw it, she'll go after it with all she's got.

Fetch is a great game, but it's not particularly satisfying on the human side of the equation.  If you don't have a ball gripper, it's even worse, what with saliva and dirt and whatnot.

What I propose is a new form of fetch in which we humans have some form of control over the trajectory of the ball.  It doesn't have to be hi-tech like a remote control ball, but I admit that would be pretty awesome.  I have no idea if this is even possible.  Would you have to use magnets or wind or electricity in some weird never before thought of manner?  You figure it out, brainster.  I'm just telling you what I'd buy as a dog-owner.  Woof.

Clips I'd Like to See

When I'm walking around town, I sometimes amuse myself by singing new song lyrics to old songs, matching normal people's faces to actors, politicians, or other famous folks, or by playing the "what if" game.  Most recently, I've had a couple of funny "what if"s, so I decided to share.

The second was about The Matrix Reloaded.  The famous fight scene between Neo and an increasing number of Agent Smiths was really fun to watch, but I started wondering if I could fend off a whole group of little kids.  This made me chuckle, reimagining the entire scene with little kids instead of grown men.  It's akin to the humor in Billy Madison in which Adam Sandler plays dodgeball with a whole bunch of little kids.  Anyway, if you want to make an internet meme, make this clip!

The first was about Aerosmith's Crazy video that came out while I was in high school.  For those not in the know, that's a younger Alicia Silverstone slipping out one of the windows of her prep school.  It's memorable for just about every dude my age because, at least in those years, she was the epitome of hot.

So, oddly, I found recreating this fun, sexy video into a hilarious one featuring a couple of nerds.  Imagine instead of Silverstone a guy slipping out the window and getting his shirt or underwear caught on the latch as a fun beginning.  It only gets better when he meets up with his other dorky friend, and they take off for a day in the town.  If you're a RTF major, this would make an awesome final project.

So that's it.  No ideas today about solving world hunger or the energy crisis.  I'm just excited to see a couple of potential memes that have floated around in my mind and made me laugh.

Comment Consolidation and Nazis

My friend mentioned Godwin's Law to me one day during a chat, and I confessed I'd never heard of it.  Godwin's Law states that the longer an online discussion goes the closer the discussion comes to the mention of Hitler, Nazis, and the Third Reich.  It's meant to be serious but also to poke fun at the way we interact with one another on the digital platform.

This got me to thinking about how much people like to leave commentary.  I do it every so often, just throwing out my two cents for the sake of getting it off my chest, but I never get into a sparring match, as there doesn't seem to be any point.

However, for some reason, I love reading what people say almost as much as what an article says.  If you want to know what America thinks, go to a controversial article and skip straight to the comments.  You'll find the bloody beating heart of America right there.  Without the inhibitions of a face-to-face encounter, people put it all out there.  It can get nasty quick, and comparisons to Hitler are the least of your worries.

Every site has their own system.  That is, generally, if you want to leave commentary, you have to have an account with that particular site.  If you love leaving commentary and you love reading ten different sites, this usually means having an account with every single one of them.  In short: this blows.

I would like to see a consolidation of commentary.  What Huffington Post does within their own web content is excellent by the way: they reward people who post a lot by highlighting their names, allow others to follow them (digitally, of course), and keep track of them overall.  I would venture to say that their system is the best one out there right now that I've seen.

It's this system that I would like to see used across the internet, a stand-alone company whose sole job is to provide commentary support for all internet content.  I want to know what people are saying across the spectrum.  I want a history of their writings across all sites; in short, I want whatever users write to create a history.  Like a credit card, it's their choice to create a good history or bad history.

Compartmentalization of comments, which is what we have now, allows for people to say whatever they want.  The goal of commentary should be to achieve a level of mutual respect that exists in the physical realm.  Obviously, not all interactions are positive in the physical arena, but those people who act out do so with the full knowledge that they alone support their words.  Comment accountability does not really exist in the digital realm, but it can and should.

A few days after my friend told me about Godwin's Law, he said that he had gotten into a heated online discussion.  After a few back-and-forths, the person he was debating used a reference to Hitler!  Godwin's Law was illustrated to full effect!  My friend was both pleased and disappointed.  The comparison (I don't recall which two things were being compared) effectively terminated the conversation because to play Devil's Advocate at that point would mean to side with Hitler.

It's this kind of stuff that one would hope to avoid while creating a history.  A user might even see patterns in his own way of debating things and make improvements upon himself.  But really, it should give a commentator a moment's pause before posting: this is going down in my record forever.

Multiple Windows

I open multiple windows on my laptop all the time, everyday.  Sure, I'm a fan of tabs.  Who isn't?  But sometimes I like a movie to be playing, a game of backgammon to be going, and a word document that I'm supposed to be editing open, and I want them all on the same screen.  Is this too much to ask?

Sure, I can fiddle with the windows.  Make them bigger, make them smaller, make them thin or fat or wide.  What I want the brainstinks at Microsoft to come up with is an automatic program that gives me the option of auto-sizing my stupid windows.  Call me lazy, whatever.  When I open a new window and this option of auto-sizing is already turned ON, I want the two windows to fill my screen perfectly.  No fiddling required.

Seriously, am I the only person who wants this?  I couldn't be.  There's got to be someone else as scatterbrained as I am who seriously wants half a dozen windows open at the same time.

So here's my vision.  Let's say you have three windows open at the same time.  The auto-size option has them fill the screen.  Let's say one window is the dominant window and fills up half the screen; the other two are smaller and lay on top of one another.  Perfect.  But when I manipulate one screen - that is, make it wider or taller - I want the other screens to auto-size accordingly.  I mean, come on!  This isn't rocket science here.  Figure it out and get back to me.

I *love* how I can swap tabs in certain internet browsers.  I want this swapping feature in conjunction with the auto-size option.  I want to be able to drag one window on top of another to swap them, to make a quick change up.  For someone working on multiple projects at the same time, this would be very very handy.

So do it!  Get someone on it.  Figure out this little itty bitty option.  It would make a lot of us really really happy.

How to Fire an Employee

So it happened.  I finally got fired.  I've been alive for 35 years, have had over a dozen different jobs, and I finally know what it's like to hear those words "You're fired."  And I've had all day to think about it, too, because I got fired from a midnight baker's job.  Yep, got the news at 3:45am.

First of all, I deserved it.  I'm not complaining about my sentence.  My former boss was a good guy.  I just wasn't up to the task of waking my ass up at 12:30am to get to work by 1am.  Justice has been served.

Maybe there's just no way to make this easy.  Maybe it shouldn't be easy.  I've had all day to think about this, so allow me a moment to share with you some of my revelations.

First, I looked at the syntax.  "You're fired" is a passive statement.  Technically speaking, the whole phrase is "You're fired by me."  So if this is passive, then why the hell does it feel so active?  As a boss, I can't imagine getting all revved up and saying "I fire you!"  That just doesn't work for some reason.  As for the present progressive "I'm firing you," that just doesn't make any sense unless the employee in question seriously does not know his ass from his elbow.  I mean, it happens.

So then I looked at corporate culture.  They hire an outside consultant to do the dirty work of appraising employees and firing them.  Not that this has happened to me, but I've seen Office Space.  This seems worse than being told to your face.

 I suppose there are some creative ways to do it.  My boss back in college told me the following story: "So I met this old-time business owner.  He told me that the way you fire someone is to give them a hefty raise for two weeks.  At the end of the two weeks, you send them packing.  After that, they'll never get a job asking for the wages they had at the moment you fired them."  Pretty wicked old man.

So in short, while an employer can get creative, I think the best way remains to fire someone to his face using the passive voice (which sounds active).  It's tense for a few moments, but then it's over.  The way I see it, my former boss did both of us a really big favor sticking to what's tried and true.