by Brendon J. Wilson

Cat’s Ass Coffee

Wandering through Urban Fare, our local over-priced grocery store for foods snobs, Ashley pulled me aside to see the latest thing in coffee. She’d seen the coffee on the local news the evening before, but thought the product was a hoax and decided she had to see it for herself. And there it was: coffee, fresh from the cat’s ass.

Technically speaking, they don’t call it “cat’s ass coffee”, although they might as well. The official name, Kopi Luwak, roughly translates to “luwak’s coffee”, where a luwak is a Paradoxurus hermaphroditus, also called a Toddy cat. The coffee originated in Java, Sumatra, and Sulawesi, and is distinct from other coffees in that it isn’t produced in the traditional fashion, where the coffee cherry is picked, the coffee bean extracted and dried. Instead, this type of coffee is produced when a luwak eats a coffee cherry and, uh, poops it out. The expelled bean is collected, cleaned (I hope) and sold for the low low price of $600 CDN a pound.

Reading the comments about this coffee from coffee aficionados is funnier than anything network television is likely to produce this fall. In one article on the coffee, Richard Karno, former owner of The Novel Cafe in Santa Monica, stated:

“It’s the best coffee I’ve ever tasted. It’s really good, heavy with a caramel taste, heavy body. It smells musty and jungle-like green, but it roasts up real nice…It has a little of everything pleasurable in all coffees: earthy, musty tone, the heaviest bodied I’ve ever tasted. It’s almost syrupy, and the aroma is very unique.”

Caramel taste? Earthy? I’m lucky that our dear friend Richard didn’t add the word “nutty” to his description of the coffee’s taste, otherwise I’d be in hospital right now suffering from a full body hernia. The aroma is “musty”? I’ll bet it’s musty. Nothing like traveling through the digestive tract of a jungle animal to give yourself an odor that’ll keep Coco Channel busy trying to camouflage it for the next fifty years.

People really fool themselves. This is the same brand of idiocy that convinces cigar connoisseurs to think they’re displaying their sophistication by partaking in a distinguished tradition, instead of realizing they’re sucking on a roll of dried leaves that’s been lit on fire. And paying a lot of money for the privilege to boot.

Suckers.

in Business / Personal 6 comments
 by Brendon J. Wilson

A Case of Mistaken Identity

It’s a funny way that the mind works. Today on the bus, trying to take my thoughts off the mind-numbing annoyance that is transit in the Lower Mainland, my brain farted up the memory of an email I received just after New Year’s 2000. The letter was from a kid in Egypt, and the subject was a case of mistaken identity.

The letter went something like this:

Dear Mr. Brendan,

I’m not making this a formal letter, cuz you’re a cool actor. I love the way you act, and I only watched one movie of yours, which is Encino Man. I loved it! My name is Ramy Mohamed Al-Reedy. I’m a 13 year old boy, living in Kuwait, but i’m egyptian. I study at the Gulf English School.

Looking forward to your reply,
Ramy

It was cute, but sort of sad. Obviously Ramy had found me by entering “Brendon” (misspelling the actor’s name) and “Fraser” (part of the name of my university, Simon Fraser University) into a search engine. Presto! He found my web site. At the time I received the message, I was still in Anguilla, a tiny island with few people and fewer things to keep me entertained while working on HushMail. It was a moment of entertainment, for sure, but also a little sad.

With heavy heart, I responded to Ramy to explain what had happened. No Virginia, there is no Santa Clause. No Ramy, I am not Brendan Fraser.

In some ways I wish I could have brought myself to lie, to propagate a child’s belief that they can reach out to anyone and that the Internet removes all barriers to communication. So if Brendan Fraser or his agent is out there, drop me a line. I still have Ramy’s email address, and I’m sure he’d be more than glad to hear from you, even after all this time.

in Personal 1 comments
 by Brendon J. Wilson

Three Little Pigs

This evening I was down in the recycling area of our building, doing my Sunday duty of taking out the recycling. It’s a tedious job, but hey, it fits well with my obsessive-compulsive need to sort and organize stuff. That, and it’s always interesting to see what people throw away. There’s the usual magazines (I could save a bundle on magazine subscriptions if I were sufficiently motivated), shredded financial statements (think of the things I could do with a scanner and a good piece of software), and The Three Little Pigs. Huh?

WTF? There in the middle of the usual discarded junkmail and pizza boxes is a pristine copy of The Three Little Pigs, the kind that is targeted for bedtime reading to three year olds. Alongside it, a similar copy of Jack and the Beanstalk. Am I mad? Hell yeah.

First, I’m a big book fan. When I was a kid, I grew to love books through my overly-literate parents’ numerous Sunday visits to the library. One weekend in fifth grade I read a dozen Hardy Boys. Twelve. It’s safe to say, I like books.

Second, I hate to think that some kid somewhere has nothing, and here’s someone who has so much that they have to throw away perfectly useful items just to make room for more crap. My mother had the curious habit of forcing me to keep my Dr. Seuss books and Lego on the presumption that trees and plastic wouldn’t exist by the time I had kids. I don’t know whether that was an overly pessimistic statement on humanity, or simply a subtle hint that she didn’t expect me to have a child until I was 60. Either way, it was probably a smart plan; after all, have you seen the price of Dr. Seuss books?

Finally, I really like the library but cuts are forcing them to become shadows of what they used to be. Any time I’ve got a book I’m done with, I usually try to donate it to the library (same with my magazines). The clerks at the library always looked shocked that someone is donating books. I like that look.

I picked up the books, and took them back up to my apartment. After all, I’ll be going to the library sometime soon. And it’ll make me feel a little better about the whole thing.

in Personal 0 comments
 by Brendon J. Wilson

Retirement Speech

During the first four months of my MBA program (the notorious “core” module), our organizational behaviour professor asked us to draft a retirement speech. The purpose of the exercise was to give us perspective on what we wanted to accomplish after the MBA. The following is the retirement speech I submitted:

When I first started my career forty years ago, I thought I had all the answers. Like many of my peers, my undergraduate education in engineering had made me an arrogant know-it-all. I had unrealistically high expectations. In my first few years in industry, I was both disappointed and frustrated to discover that companies and people never seemed to do the right thing. In my youthful impatience I attributed these failures to a lack of intelligence rather than my own inability to negotiate the facets of business that extended past the cold, hard facts.

It wasn’t until I got involved in small high-tech startups that I started to notice the abilities that created business success (or lack thereof that bred failure). These companies provided a fertile ground for conflict, their small size compressing and accentuating the personalities and confrontations that prevent businesses, or even societies, from being successful. Though many of these companies had the people, the finances, the technology and the ambition to succeed, they inevitably faltered. In this environment I learned the culprit behind these failures was a lack of three important skills: the ability to listen, the ability to be honest with yourself, and the ability to build a true team.

Once I discovered these keys to success, I constantly worried about how I would perform if it ever became my turn to lead a company. I was sensitive to criticism. I talked over other people. I was obsessive about details, and always wanted to do it all myself. I was lucky enough that, unlike many people, I managed to be honest with myself and realize these shortcomings, a realization that prompted me focus on learning not only to listen, but to hear. Through hard work, and conscious effort, punctuated by a self-deprecating sense of humor, I constantly worked to improve myself in these areas.

Most people start a business of their own to “be their own boss”, accountable to no one, ultimately in control of their own destiny. This is nonsense. You’re always accountable to someone, whether it’s your shareholders, your customers, your employees, or society at large, and you’re never entirely in control of what happens. By the time I started my first company, I had learned the only way to be successful was to bring people together, to understand their individual needs through thoughtful consideration of what they have to say, to keep improving yourself, and, when all else fails, to do the right thing.

I pass this experience onto you in the hope that you will be as lucky as I have been. On retirement from this company, the final of many business ventures I have created, I hope these pearls of wisdom will guide you to your own success. By doing this I hope I will be remembered not as the guy who signed the checks, or the man who got the job done, but as a leader who turned colleagues into teams; a visionary who turned ideas into businesses; a manager who listened with patience; a friend.

Oh, and that guy who signed the checks.

in Personal 0 comments
 by Brendon J. Wilson

Back To School

Back to school, and things are busy. Though we had our Orientation for the MBA Program last week, this week marked the first real week of school. Classes each day are about six hours or so, starting at 8:30, and ending typically around 4:00. Ouch.

To kick off the week, we already had to do a presentation with our team (chosen for us during the Orientation) on a “Fantasy Project”. Of course, the Fantasy Project was really just an excuse to get us working together and get us to know each other. We had to come up with a team name, logo, vision statement, and team profile in addition to our Fantasy Project presentation. We named our team “The Kapitalists” (a little on the nose, don’t you think?), and adopted the following logo:

The Kapitalists Logo

Now, normally I think a lot of the vision statement stuff is kind of lame and not very useful, but I have to say it was pretty useful for us, as a team, to determine what was important to us.

Initially I was nervous about the team, as the members were chosen by the program. Given the high percentage of international (and domestic) Asian students, I was worried that I’d end up facing a language barrier within the team. Luckily, I got some really cool members, all of whom were pretty enthusiastic and easy to work with. Lucky me!

We did a pretty neat Fantasy Project: a biotechnology firm aligned with organized crime. We proposed to provide a perfect biological clone, properly aged and under our complete clone, to organized crime for the purpose of replacing a target individual. The purpose of the presentation was to solicit proposals for targets and profit sharing arrangements.

Of course, all MBAs couldn’t possibly be this evil, could they? I’m starting to think maybe they could…

Earlier today we were discussing strategic management, and how people can basically be convinced to pay more for something that’s exactly the same product. I’m not ignorant, of course already I knew this happened. But to sit in that class and see that this kind of thinking was actually taught, that was another thing entirely.

This is something that bothers me. Engineers usually dismiss business, economics, or marketing because it isn’t built on certainties. The numbers associated with these fields are uncertain and, in many cases, subjective. Engineers hate that. But this is even scarier. Now these numbers are used to make decisions on whether the number in the net income statement projection is positive or negative. There never seems to be as much thought given to not “can we do this and make money?” but “should we do this and make money?” I mean, isn’t it slightly unethical to sell the same product for two different prices? Then again, if people we logical enough, they’d see through the marketing and we wouldn’t have this problem.

In my mind, there’s got to be a way to do business without being a slimeball. Selling the same product at two different prices may be great business, but I don’t know if there’s that much separating this practice from the practice of boosting the addictiveness of cigarettes. After all, it all makes money, right? What’s the difference between destroying someone’s physical health through an addictive substance, and corrupting their self-image by using advertising to convince them to buy an expensive product that is exactly the same as a cheaper product?

in Business 0 comments
 by Brendon J. Wilson

Busy, Busy, Busy

Well I’ve been busy, busy, busy. I took the last two weeks off and headed to Tofino with my wife for a much deserved rest before beginning my MBA at UBC. We spent a lot of time lying around the hotel doing, uh, nothing at all actually.

Oh sure, we did the mandatory whale watching, hikes (including Meares Island and Pacific Rim National Park), and walks on Long Beach. But mostly we did nothing. I normally find it scary to do nothing at all, but it was a nice change to relax and do absolutely nothing.

Sigh.

Since coming back, things have picked up in preparation for the start of the MBA Program next week. Between getting books, attending the orientation (including a great Presentation Skills workshop with Geoffrey X. Lang), and getting myself oriented to the campus and my new classmates I haven’t had much time.

And it only looks like it’ll get worse.

In among the insanity, I did have one interesting surprise: I found my book at Chapters! And not just one copy, but two! Wow. It’s almost like I’m actually an author or something. Then again, publishers will publish any old thing.

in Personal 0 comments
 by Brendon J. Wilson

Brain Drain Tollbooth

The CBC reported yesterday on an ongoing attempt by the State of North Dakota to attract farmers from Canada. This attempt to incite an “agricultural brain drain” has failed so far (none of the 30 farmers the state has tried to woo so far have accepted the offer), but it reminded me about another type of “brain drain” I became aware of very recently. This form of “brain drain” is quite different, but is an equal or greater threat to Canada’s future.

Preparing for my entrance into the UBC MBA Program, I met several students who were also entering the program. All of them have only been Landed Immigrants for less than a year and came to Canada specifically to attend the MBA program. What’s shocking, at least to me, is that none of these students have any intention of staying in Canada once they have completed their MBA!

Something about this seems wrong. Should these students be counted as part of Canada’s “brain drain”? The term “brain drain” has typically implied losing highly skilled Canadian workers to other markets (primarily the United States). However, I would argue that for this term to apply, the skilled workers in question would have to be truly Canadian in the first place. At this point, it would appear these students are Canadian only for the purpose of short-term gain, rather than long commitment to Canada.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve got nothing against immigrants. I originally came from Australia, so I’m also an immigrant (though I am now a naturalized Canadian citizen). I’ve lived here twenty-six years, as have my parents. We’ve paid our taxes and contributed our fair share towards building Canada’s social system. For me there seems to be something wrong with allowing people to manipulate the Canadian system to obtain cheap education, healthcare, and other social services at the expense of those of us who have committed to living in Canada. It would seem to me that these students have basically added an extra year to their program in order to bypass the cost of the International Program, before they move onto greener pastures. And they’ve done it at our expense. Who the hell do they think they are?

This is the problem: people are leaving their own country, stopping off in Canada to train up, and then moving onto other countries that are more willing to adequately compensate them for their skills. Is it unethical? Certainly, but it’s also perfectly logical. Why pay for education and healthcare when you can immigrate to Canada, stay long enough get trained (not working or paying taxes during that time), and move on?

What we need is a system that prevents against this kind of abuse. In some ways, we already have this in place; for example, my wife (an American) can’t claim welfare for the next ten years as a condition of her becoming a Landed Immigrant. Suppose that we implemented a sliding scale system for our social services, one that started at 0% coverage by the Canadian government (i.e.: you pay the full cost) to 100% coverage (i.e.: you pay the same as any other Canadian) over a ten-year period.

This would definitely prevent against Canada being taken advantage of by those who would use Canada’s generosity for their own gain. However, such a system would create second-class citizens within the country. Nobody wants to deny rights to those who seek refuge in Canada. But as much as Canada wants to be fair, I think it needs to recognize the world isn’t fair and act to protect itself.

Canada is at risk of turning into a filling station on the “brain drain” freeway. I’d say it’s time we built ourselves a tollbooth.

in Opinion / Politics 0 comments
 by Brendon J. Wilson

Livin’ The Dream

While I was in Ireland, it became apparent to me just how warped the North American lifestyle appears to be. Watching an episode of ‘Friends’, I noticed that Monica and Rachel’s apartment was roughly the size of most Irish families’ entire houses! Most movies showed homes that were not only disproportionately large compared to North American standards of living, but also nearly palaces by European standards. No wonder so many people around the world feel bad about themselves.

People in other countries must think we’re crazy, given some of the things that we consume. Think of the things that get made in places like China, Indonesia, India, and Bangladesh, to name only a few of the world largest Export Processing Zones. In No Logo, Naomi Klein presented the disturbing image of a child in one of these zones producing Disney merchandise for consumption by her North American counterpart. Imagine what she must think of us, or of the child that will be the eventual recipient of the toys she produces.

Personally, I always wondered what the workers in these zones think about producing all of the exotic sex toys consumed by the world market. How do you explain your job to your child? I guess all you can say is that daddy works “in plastics” or something equally vague. It must be surreal to work in one these factories, and to think that you have to scrape a living out of creating artificial phalluses for the pleasure of bored housewives. What do they think of us?

Even our perception of how we should be living is distorted within North America. Look at ‘Sex in the City’. Do you think Carry Bradshaw could afford some of the outfits and shoes she wears? I don’t think so. No wonder that, according to the Age Of Access, the saving rate of American has dropped from 25.5% of post-tax income in 1944 to -0.2% in 1998. In other words, they’re spending more than they make!

The time has come for us to stop this feel-good-about-ourselves consumption binge. We’re not living a dream, we’re living an illusion. It’s not healthy for us, those producing these goods, or the planet. Next time you’re in a store, ask yourself, “Do I really need this? Is this something that I can’t actually live a full life without?” and if the answer is “No”, then do the right thing. Don’t buy it.

in Opinion 0 comments
 by Brendon J. Wilson

Software Wars

Last week Hewlett-Packard attempted to use the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) to crush security research company SNOsoft for revealing a particular nasty exploit allowing a remote attacker to access to machines running HP’s Tru64 Unix operating system. While this is not the first attempt to disrupt legitimate security research using the DMCA (see earlier attempts by the RIAA against Dr. Ed Felten), this represents a true departure from previous attempts: to a casual observer, SNOsoft didn’t even violate the DMCA!

The DMCA, as its name suggests, is about protecting copyright in the age of technology that enables perfect digital copies of copyrighted materials. Part of the act outlines terms that make it a crime to circumvent copyright controls or distribute tools for that purpose. What’s interesting is that the “technology” distributed by SNOsoft had nothing to do with copyright protection technology, it only really enabled a malicious user to access a system running Tru64 without proper authorization. Is that wrong? Undoubtedly a person using the exploit against a third-party’s system would be breaking the law, but they, not SNOsoft, would be prosecutable under US federal computer fraud statutes, not the DMCA.

Did HP honestly expect it would be able to sue SNOsoft for damages resulting from the release of the exploit, despite the fact that the problem was a direct result of HP’s own faulty software? Most software today is distributed under an End User License Agreement (such as this example Microsoft EULA) that stipulates the software is provided “as is”, under no warranty, and not even guaranteed to be suitable for any purpose! If HP is not liable to its own customers for faults in its Tru64 Unix, how can it contend that SNOsoft should be liable for any damages that result from an exploit that someone other than SNOsoft used to breach a Tru64 system?

Perhaps recognizing the possibility of setting a software-liability precedent, HP hastily recanted its legal threats.

Software companies want to be able to sell a product, but they don’t want to be liable for any damage their product might inflict. They want to sell something, but a person who purchases their product doesn’t actually own it, they only own a “license” which can be revoked by the manufacturer at any time. They want to be able to access a user’s machine without their knowledge. They want. They want. They want.

How about what we, the users, want?

It’s time that software development companies realized that they’re just regular companies and, like every other company (recent examples notwithstanding), they have to follow the rules. Play time is over. Grow up or go home.

in Politics / Technology 0 comments
 by Brendon J. Wilson

Disposable Everything

It’s becoming more obvious to me the extent of the world’s insanity. Flipping through the channels, I’m inundated with advertisements for products that not only do I not need, but also I can’t understand how anyone could justify needing, let alone buying. In particular I’m most annoyed at the home cleaning products, whose rate of unceasing development is a cause for amazement. How can so much development money be focused on making the task of keeping a house clean any easier than it already is?

Look at the recent rash of new paper-towel-plus-cleaner products, like Procter & Gamble‘s Swiffer and SC Johnson‘s Pledge Grab-It, that take the concept of paper towels to a whole new level. Now not only can you clean, you can disinfect like you’ve never disinfected before! And when you’re done you can just throw them away, environmental consequences be damned!

There’s such an obsessive-compulsive desperation to the pitches for these products that I half expect to see a commercial in the future that goes something like this:

Pan to shot of Brendon crouched in the corner of his bathroom, scrubbing his body with Scrubbo™-brand personal body cleaning towels while rocking gently back and forth.

Brendon (mumbling): Still not clean, must get clean…

As if diapers weren’t bad enough for filling our landfills, now we’ve got Helen Homemaker nuking every bacterium that dares to step into her household, only to throw away the toxic results and create even more garbage. With the super-duper cleansing power of these new products it’s no wonder bacteria are becoming more resistant when we’re throwing every disinfectant at them at every opportunity.

These aren’t the only environmentally irresponsible products coming from these companies. There’s also the new rash of facial cleansing cloths, and disposable containers competing for our global garbage can. What ever happened to reducing our waste output?

What’s more disturbing is the amount of technology and funding thrown at solving problems that don’t exist, while real problems remain unsolved. Christ, I’ve got toothpaste and laundry detergent that gets my teeth and clothes so white they’re positively luminescent, and we still haven’t got an electric car! Part of me wonders if somewhere in the world researchers wring their hands and wish aloud, “If only we could get some of the Colgate or Sunlight funding, then we’d have this cancer thing licked!”

Don’t get me wrong, I like things clean and orderly. But after a while it seems to be counterproductive to clean things when you’re creating more garbage than you’re cleaning up. There’s a point of diminishing returns when you’re expending so many resources on keeping things clean instead of doing worthwhile work. Could it be that we’re turning into a race of people who need to wash our hands so often and so thoroughly that we never actually accomplish anything useful?

in Business / Technology 0 comments