Fidel Castro did a good job

It seems that Fidel Castro's government did a good job in Cuba. If one compares Cuba with other large independent countries in the Caribbean, one notes that Cuba is doing better in most ways. A comparison with developed countries or the territories of developed countries would not be fair. However, Cuba beats Puerto Rico (a territory of the US) in many categories and it even manages to beat the US in infant mortality, literacy and some other categories. This is all despite the US embargo and the collapse of the Soviet Union. All this makes Cuba seem like a socialist success story.

I'm amazed by how some people, especially Americans, attack Castro and Cuba. It seems like an irrational hatred of "communism" and attachment to democracy. The government works. It's like those people value the ability to complain about the government more than the performance of the government. One has to consider what has happened to other countries in the region to get a realistic picture of the alternatives. Haiti and the Dominican Republic have had democratic elections but also coups and other violence. It would probably be unreasonable to imagine that Cuba would have been a stable democracy (like the US or Western Europe) all this time if it wasn't for Castro.

Finally here's some information from the CIA World Factbook. Remember, this comes from the US government. It is not "communist propaganda". The country names link to the pages for that country at the CIA site.

	Cuba	Jamaica	Dominican Republic	Haiti	Puerto Rico	USA
Life expectancy	77.08	73.12	73.07	57.03	78.54	78
Infant mortality	6.04	15.73	27.94	63.83	7.81	6.37
Literacy	99.8%	87.9%	87%	52.9%	94.1%	99%
Unemployment rate	1.9%	10.2%	15.5%	widespread	12%	4.6%
GDP per capita	$4500	$4800	$9200	$1900	$19600	$46000
GDP real growth	7.0%	1.5%	7.2%	3.5%	-1.2%	2.2%
Public debt % of GDP	37.2%	134.3%	40.4%			36.8%

Generallization fallacies

Quite often, people seem to believe that some method, model or system of beliefs is good because they see instances in which it is good. This can be very false and deceptive, and it is sometimes used as a tool to spread and sell garbage. There are several traps involved here:

• Does even a part of it work reliably? It's easy enough to find a few examples which support something, but that doesn't prove anything. For example someone trying to claim that their stock picking scheme works has a huge amount of market data they can use to try to find good supporting examples. People can also deceive themselves because even a terrible model may sometimes fit reality through coincidence.
  
• If a part works that doesn't prove the rest. It's easy to package something accurate with a load of garbage and try to sell the whole load of garbage as if it was accurate. Some people will look at the accurate parts and conclude that everything under the same label is accurate.
• If something works and has a new name that doesn't mean it's unique. It's easy enough to try to market something as "new" or "secret". Sure, the idea might work but it might be overpriced and a deceptive source may deceive in other ways. It probably makes more sense to find a source which acknowledges the true history of the idea.
• Proprietary jargon can make something seem unique, sophisticated and special. Use of proprietary jargon can also draw people into a particular system. It is much better to use standard terms. They make understanding easier and open one up to many more sources of information.
  

"Ignore anyone who is not on my Messenger List"

I've been getting Yahoo! Messenger spam regularly. The current version allows me to report the message as spam, and I did that on every one. Unfortunately that didn't seem to help. All of the spam similar in that it has URLs with garbage characters paired with URL characters, kind of like what happens if you view UTF-16 Unicode as ASCII. I've now reluctantly set Messenger to "Ignore anyone who is not on my Messenger List".

Why be so hard on Scientology and not those other religions?

Recently I've seen a lot of stores on Reddit about various ways Scientology sucks and about how Anonymous declared a war on Scientology. It seems like bashing Scientology is pretty popular, at least among a certain demographic.

Scientology bashing seems to make sense. They seem have some really weird and unreasonable beliefs which might not even make good science fiction. Also, the church seems to be very litigious. It seems they also seriously financially exploit their faithful followers. However, Scientology doesn't seem to be exceptionally crazy or bad compared to other religions.

For example consider Christianity. There are lots of weird and harmful things there. Even the core idea is weird. Why would God need to send his son to be sacrificed in order for sins to be forgiven? Then there are missionaries who try to help people but in the process convert them to Christianity. People complain about Scientology going after drug addicts and criminals, but going after indigenous cultures is even worse. Let's not forget that many Christian organizations go after drug addicts and criminals too. Many Christian organizations also fight against equal rights for homosexuals and abortion rights. Many are even against condoms even though overpopulation and sexually transmitted diseases are major problems.

For another example consider Islam. I know less about it so I can't criticize it in as much detail. It's pretty obvious that some sects are against women's rights, even to the point of condoning honour killing. Some condone violence, such as going after the "infidels". (I'm not saying that all violence is bad. Some cases, such as the Palestinian Intifada, it might be justified.) Some sects barbarically punish people, and in some cases even rape victims. Then there's the ridiculous reaction to what they perceive is blasphemy, such as with Salman Rushdie and the Muhammad cartoons.

So how come people are going after Scientology but not after other religions?

I guess one issue is that Scientology seems to be a unified organization while most other religions are fragmented into various sects. If you point out something bad and claim it is a property of the religion, people will tell you it's just those particular sects. Even if the problem (like for example the Christian attitudes on homosexuality) exists in most sects, people still claim it's not an overall problem with the religion. Yes, there have been attacks on the worst sects (such as the Taliban and Westboro Baptist Church). However, so much shit from various religions gets tolerated and even protected.

I wonder if Scientology gets attacked just because they're new and small. That seems unfair, like bullying. Also, Christianity got attacked early on and that might have actually helped them grow. I also wonder if Christianity is maybe protected by residual internalized Christianity that's even in those who have rejected it. After being brought up in an environment with lots of Christian stimuli, it may have of worked its way deep into many people, so that they can't really see it as a weird, foreign and harmful cult like Scientology.

I got a sincere apology from the local Cineplex Odeon theatre

I sent what I wrote here about bad image quality during Hansel and Gretel live in HD to the Metropolitan Opera and Cineplex. I just contacted them normally with that text, not telling them that I was posting on my blog. First, the Metropolitan Opera said they would forward the information to the theatre. Then Cineplex asked for my address and phone number. Finally, I got a very sincere apology from the local theatre, and two special event passes. I was very impressed with the apology. It wasn't some generic corporate letter; instead it seems to be from someone local who knew about the situation.

I'll definitely make use of the passes, and if the image quality is really improved, I'll probably go again after that too.

The belief-o-matic

I just took the Belief-O-Matic test at Beliefnet. It asks questions related to religious beliefs and gives you a list of religions ranked by how they agree with your answers. Here are my top ten matches:

1.	Unitarian Universalism (100%)
2.	Liberal Quakers (91%)
3.	Theravada Buddhism (88%)
4.	Neo-Pagan (85%)
5.	Mahayana Buddhism (82%)
6.	New Age (81%)
7.	Secular Humanism (81%)
8.	Mainline to Liberal Christian Protestants (80%)
9.	Taoism (68%)
10.	Reform Judaism (67%)

Hansel and Gretel live in HD

I just returned from Hansel and Gretel live in HD from the Metropolitan Opera. I watched it at Cineplex Odeon at Devonshire Mall in Windsor, Ontario, Canada. The performance was quite good but the image quality was poor. Here is a list of image issues, roughly in order of decreasing importance.

• The image was stretched horizontally, progressively more further away from the centre. The very centre might have been unstretched, but the left and right edges were stretched ridiculously.
• The image only took up about three fifths of the screen vertically and horizontally
• The image wasn't focused very well. In the centre, focus wasn't terrible but it wasn't good and I feel it reduced the effective resolution to the equivalent of standard definition TV. The left and right edges were severely out of focus. (I wonder if poor focus on the edges is related to the stretching mentioned earlier.)
• There was trapezoidal distortion. The bottom of the screen was noticeably wider than the top.
• Overall the image quality was unimpressive. I think the digital projector used is the same as what's used for commercials and trivia before movies. It's okay for that, but not for what I actually paid to see.

I didn't think image quality was bad last year at SilverCity also in Windsor. I also felt that the overall experience was worse compared to last year. There was no cart with popcorn, no employee speaking a bit before the performance, and the programs handed out were low quality photocopies. However, the price was higher. I don't think I'll be going again this year.

Can Archos design be trusted nowadays?

Archos always had some innovative and based on the specs quite impressive media players. However, I've had many problems with them, mostly due to bad design:

Jukebox 6000 (my first MP3 player)

• Turning off unexpectedly due to loose solder connections carrying power from the batteries. The connections were between the main board and the small top board and they were used structurally, to hold the two boards together.
• Turning off unexpectedly due to the battery springs not being springy enough. One of them even has a wire going through it, deforming it and limiting it's extension. Lots of devices use AA batteries without such a problem.
• Overly small capacitors in the headphone circuit which seriously limited bass. I was still pretty happy with the sound, but the difference in bass compared to my computer was dramatic.

Gmini 220 (my 2nd player)

• Occasional glitches and corruption in the music. Archos never did anything about it.
• The buttons are unreliable, with a press on one sometimes being registered as a press on another. This is because multiple buttons are on the same wire and instead of the usual scanning arrangement different buttons connect to different voltage divider and the Gmini senses the different voltages. This is a unique and quite stupid design. Lots of people had this problem and Archos did nothing. Someone found how to change the voltage dividers by changing surface mounted resistors and improve the situation.
• The ground contact from the headphone jack isn't springy enough. It needs to be bent back every once in a while. This isn't hard, but I'm concerned it might break and other jacks never needed such service. Furthermore, this worsens the remote problems.
• The LCD seems very cheap. The overall brightness of a column is affected by what is displayed on it (with dark areas leaving white stripes). Archos claimed you'd even want to view photos on it and it actually even sucks with text.
  

Gmini FM remote, used with my Gmini 220

• Puts hard drive spinup and seek electrical noise in the audio (the Gmini 220 by itself doesn't have that problem).
• Backlight and scrolling cause electrical noise in the audio. Clearly the design has some problems. Many people report this but Archos doesn't seem to care.
• Unstable: Sometimes it goes almost totally dim, sometimes the red recording light comes on, and sometimes it locks up. The remote can easily become slightly unplugged from the Gmini 220 and the ground contact can also cause this problem, but even without these problems the remote still locks up. Again Archos does nothing about it.

V2 Jukebox Recorder (Like the FM Recorder without the FM receiver module. A friend got it used from eBay and used it for a while. He gave it to me for free when it broke the second time (thanks!) and now I use it.)

• Headphone channels (first one then both) cut out intermittently. This was because a small daugherboard is soldered to the headphone jack pins. It's such a high-stress point and solder isn't meant to be structural like that.
• Battery appears dead, but actually it seems the contacts were dirty. The contacts are cheap and other people had the same problem.
• Cannot charge if too discharged. It needs battery power in order to start charging!
• Bad solder joint at the charger jack. There's something weird there. It seems the jack is mounted on its side! The pin for the centre connection has been rotated and a short wire connects the pin for the side connection to the circuit board. The connection between that wire and the jack was bad.
• The metal part of the case is connected to the circuit board using only solder joints. Solder or the copper on printed circuit boards isn't meant for such use and of course there was some damage there.

The common thread is that generally things didn't just break randomly. Archos made some very questionable design decisions and that's why things broke. Several of the problems are because solder was used to make structural connections. The designers should have known better. Because of this I'm now afraid to buy Archos products. For example the Archos 605 for $249 Canadian was a tempting deal but how much is it worth if it's annoying and/or unreliable?