The Great Data Dilemma

I love my new job - it is great for me in so many ways. But perhaps the way that it is worst for me, but I am best for it, is the insane mess that is its data storage. I swear I am going to clean this mess up, if it takes me a decade to do it, which it probably will. Just some of the highlights (lowlights?) include:


1. Obsession with hard copies.

For being such a small business (there are only 8 employees with computer access) my work has a very progressive server backup schedule. In addition to complete backups done every night, there are incremental backups done throughout the day. But that isn't enough for the owners to feel safe about our data, and so every document that is on our servers is also in our filing cabinets. My office alone has three filing cabinets (with a forth coming soon) plus about 25 three inch binders that are all just old document storage; every office is like this because we have 20 years worth of everything the company has ever done.




2. Absurd file structure

I know a lot of companies are guilty of this, but my current one is one of the worst, that is having files on the server laid out in a way that is completely nonsensical. All of the transgressions that you can have in file structure are committed here, from poorly named folders to empty folders to folders that contain a single sub-folder to data that belongs in one place being spread out over several places. I have already done some work to cleaning this up, but I don't see myself attacking any of the biggest issues for at least a year or two.




3. Drawing naming system

While a lot of files have very poor names, we have so many drawings and are so dependent on them the absurdity that is our system for naming drawing stands out as the worst. The structure was borrowed from a company where the two owners used to work together, at a time that drawings were done by hand. I can see how it could work in a filing cabinet, but it is a very poor structure to use with electronic files (because it makes it very difficult to find the file you want). I have already come up with a good alternative, but I am not going to proposing it for some time, both because I know they are quite enamored with the current structure and because I know the work involved in changing over would be gargantuan.

4.  Interlinking files

One of the reasons that changing the drawing naming structure would be insane is that the company loves having Solidworks files refer to other  Soildworks files. Sometimes interlinking the files this way is a perfectly sensibly way to ensure that any future changes propagate through all connected files, but it is used so aggressively in this company that it can have the opposite effect, that changes that are meant to affect only a small number of parts could make unintended changes elsewhere.




5. Poor choice of file type

My company has a whole lot of data stored in Excel files and Word files. This data is so full of relationships that even the Excel files are poor choices; what is really needed is a database. I decided early on that this was going to be the first of the data management problems that I tackle, but it is such a huge problem that knowing where to start has been troublesome. Originally I was going to start with moving the part numbers spreadsheet into a database both because it would be easy to do and because so much of the other data really should be linked together via the part numbers. However, I have since decided that the best starting point is with smaller data sets that are primarily used by myself; I suspect that there will be no resistance when I suggest moving those over, and once I have them up and running, they can be used to demonstrate the advantages of a database in selling my bosses on changing other information into a database format.

12 Years of Beating the Odds

Today, April 27 2014, is our 12th wedding anniversary. Even though I usually love coming with reasons a particular number is important, and twelve is an easy number to do this for (important to ancient cultures, smallest number with 6 divisors, lowest abundant number, its a sublime number, its a super factorial, and duodecimal is the basis for time), I have none the less found myself focused on a very different matter to do with our marriage in the past few weeks; how incredible it is that we have stay married for as long as we have because we have been and continue to be hugely at risk for divorce.

Here is a list of the risk factors we had before our marriage even started - things about our background that are known to greatly increase a couple's chances of divorce:

• Margaret is 5 years older than me (I suspect this causes marital problems because the wife starts running out of years she can have children before the husband wants them at all, which is exactly what happened in our marriage)
• Both of us come from families that got divorced.
• We have different religions. 
• We both suffer from depression.
• We lived together before marriage. (Admittedly we were engaged before we moved in together, but I've never seen anything that says this lowers the impact on divorce rate)
• We knew each other less than 2 years before marriage.

But in addition to our backgrounds, a lot of things have happened in our years married that are additional risk factors towards divorce including:

• We have been under constant financial stress for pretty much our entire marriage
• We have both had long bouts of instability in our employment
• We lost a child (particularly in the five years following the loss, this sends divorce rates through the roof)
• There has been constant tension between Margaret and her in-laws

For fun I ran through the questions on a divorce probability calculator and it told me this:

Sean your score is 82 which puts you in the Very Strong Probability category.

Very Strong Probability

The news is not good. You're amongst a demographic of people that have the lowest long term marriage success rate. What that means is that based on the factors that you indicated, there are many things in your life that significantly contribute to divorce and very few, if any, factors that contribute to a long term successful marriage.

So I guess we've been beating the odds, and continue to do so every day. I feel like in the last 6 months a lot of things in our lives have taken turns for the better; hopefully that will continue and all these risk factors will continue to be little more than curiosities.

243 New Alignments

This was originally written in 2011 and is appearing here as part of Throwback Thursday.

There have been a couple of sites taking interesting looks at the meaning of each of the alignments in the two axis, nine alignment system. All of this reminded me of an idea I had more than a decade ago, but at the time wasn't able to fully realize.

I have always been a huge proponent of alignments, even when their detractors have been most vocal. From my perspective, when I am DMing, alignments can be an invaluable tool for getting a very quick understanding into how a monster/NPC operates. As a player, alignments aren't nearly so useful, but neither have I ever felt restricted by them the way some people do.

Being that I see alignments as a great source of information, it always seemed logical to me that rather than do away with them (as some have proposed) we should be seeking to expand them.


The Two Ways To Expand Alignment

I had two ideas for how to expand alignment, both of which were stemmed from the concept that alignments could be represented by two axis with three possible values.

Expand the length of the axis from 3 to 5, thereby creating 25 possibly alignments. The alignments would still cover the same range as the current ones, but would give a more detailed notion of where a creature lay.
Instead add a third axis, giving a total of 27 alignments.
The first idea was easy to implement, but difficult to see the benefit of. While it makes sense that there might be some people who are a light good and some who are a lot good, from a game perspective describing an NPC as a little bit good raises more questions that it answers.

The second idea really appealed to me, but I couldn't for the life of my figure out what the other axis would be. The nine alignment system seemed so self contained, that anything else would just feel out of place. However, in preparing to write this article I came upon a possible answer.


The Big Five Personality Traits

In contemporary psychology, the “Big Five” factors (or Five Factor Model; FFM) of personality are five broad domains or dimensions of personality which are used to describe human personality.

The Big Five factors and their constituent traits can be summarized as:

• Openness – (inventive/curious vs. consistent/cautious). Appreciation for art, emotion, adventure, unusual ideas, curiosity, and variety of experience.
• Conscientiousness – (efficient/organized vs. easy-going/careless). A tendency to show self-discipline, act dutifully, and aim for achievement; planned rather than spontaneous behaviour.
• Extroversion – (outgoing/energetic vs. solitary/reserved). Energy, positive emotions, surgency, and the tendency to seek stimulation in the company of others.
• Agreeableness – (friendly/compassionate vs. cold/unkind). A tendency to be compassionate and cooperative rather than suspicious and antagonistic towards others.
• Neuroticism – (sensitive/nervous vs. secure/confident). A tendency to experience unpleasant emotions easily, such as anger, anxiety, depression, or vulnerability.

Now if you assume that Conscientiousness is represented by the Lawful-Chaotic axis and that Agreeableness is represented by the Good-Evil axis then you would be left with Openness, Extroversion and Neuroticism to make up three more axis.

Obviously having five different values being measured would mean an end to the graphical representation of alignment with axis; a suitable replacement would be five parallel lines, or scales.

Here is what such a system might look like:

Now admittedly, before this could be truly useful a few adjustments would need to be made – notably the terms need to be revised to avoid ones that start with the same letter (to preserve the usefulness of writing in the format LG). But otherwise I could see a more complex alignment system such as this being a boon.

Coo Coo Ca Choo

Though I was both a good student and a bad one at various times in my life, the one thing I always was was an honest student. Not only was I unwilling to consider tampering in the dark arts of cheating, but I was almost always unwilling to ask for or accept help of any kind; I would sink or swim on my own (I'm not saying that not asking for help was good thing, but it was my thing). But the one thing I grew accustom to asking for help with, was also the one thing I could be said to have cheated on.

Its easy to peek over shoulders when you don't have a nose.

I am a good speller, and I have a strong grasp of grammar (thanks in no small part to having an English teacher for a mother), but as anyone who has been reading this blog has probably noticed, when I get too interested in what I am writing I often write nonsense; I will write words out of order, and I will repeat sentence fragments, and I will drop in words that were from a previous incarnation of the sentence that is still lingering in my mind. I don't have any  reason to think I am dyslexic (at least no medical professional has ever suggested it), but I find that I make these mistakes frequently, and then am blind to them if I try to proof read my own work. So, with my writing issues being what they were, I came to accept early in high school that I needed to have my essays proof read, despite my normal stance on refusing all help, and luckily I had an English teacher in my home who was willing to do this for me.

Now, to be sure, even though I realized that I had little choice but to accept my mother's help in proof reading, I normally was very uncomfortable with anything beyond a small correction; if she fixed the spelling of a word or reorganized a couple of words, I would just use the correction she had made. But if she found one of my aforementioned nonsense sentences and completely rewrote it, I would throw out both my version and hers and try to come up with a brand new sentence.

You might think with the advantage I had in parentage that I would have gotten top marks in English, but the truth was that with each year they slipped a little further down. This brings me to grade 12, when my marks in English were in no danger of failing, but with little hope of honours either. Late one night I gave my mother what I had hoped would be the last draft of an essay that was due, and she handed it back to me with more red ink than I had ever seen. I didn't have it in me to basically rewrite the whole essay, so I took her changes at face value, and after one more check from her I was done.

When I got that essay back it was graded 100%.

Never before in my childhood had my mother put school work of my up on the fridge to be seen and remembered, but she put that essay up. I won't say that my mother rarely felt proud of me, but rarely could I tell that she was, however, after that essay I could see her glowing with pride.

But amoungst all the pride there once slipped a little joke. Wondering one night how anyone could get a perfect score on an English essay, she mused that my teacher probably wanted to sleep with me. Not that it matters, but 17 year old Sean would totally have slept with his English teacher because she was pretty hot (oh, and I was a nerd with no prospects). I probably wouldn't even remember that conversation or the feeling of wishing it were true if I hadn't used the exact same technique to get 100% on my next essay.

Although the second 100% essay got a place on the fridge too right next to the first one (that was still hanging there weeks later), after the second one mom started playing up the teacher must want to sleep with me to the max. Not only was this a frequent topic of conversation, but she went out and bought me the movie The Graduate.

The music of this movie aged well, the appeal of
Mrs. Robinson to teenage boys, not so much.

It suffices to say that I never again used a rewritten sentence from mom and I never again got 100% on an English essay. But looking back on this years later, I can't quite guess what my mom's angle was. I'm pretty sure she didn't understand her role in my getting 100%, because I don't think she ever realized that I normally didn't take her editing suggestions. I'm also pretty sure that she wasn't actually wanting her 17 year old son to sleep with his 30 something teacher.

You might think the obvious conclusion was that she was joking, but then that would be because you don't know my mom; I'm pretty sure she ran into Red Foreman sometime in the 70s and he said to her "Lady, lighten up. (plus something about feet and asses)" I suppose her boyfriend of the time might have come up with this and got her to play along, but no matter what the truth was, it was an odd end to an odd situation, with seemingly everyone acting out of character.

The Phantom Post

Next month it will be 15 years since Star Wars - The Phantom Menace came out, and yet somehow, all these years later there continues to be a steady stream of hate directed at that movie, particularly on geek sites. I have for many years done my best to ignore this hate, and even today I'm not really going to address it head on (though perhaps I will soon), but I would like to talk about a particular theory I recently heard about the origins of TPM hate.

Noah Antwiler, known to his many followers as "The Spoony One", recently explained his views about the history of TPM hate in order to make an analogy about how he expects WWE fans of the future to view Westlemania XXX. In short this is how he thinks the history of TPM hate goes:

• Before TPM came out it got largely good reviews
• When fans went to see the movie they were so shocked by how bad it was that they actually thought it was good
• Internet reviewers like himself were able to slowly open the eyes of Star Wars fans
• On opening night almost everybody loved it, but today almost everybody hates it

I'm not going to say Noah is wrong, because while I believe there is an alternative explanation for what he is witnessing (that in 1999 the majority opinion seemed to be that it was good, while today the majority opinion seems to be that it was one of the worst movies ever made), I am of the belief that the flaw in his logic is that he is assuming that the opinion of an insular community is representative of the world at large, and to insist that I know he is wrong  would be to make that same mistake myself. So, at best, here is a possible alternative explanation for why the overwhelming majority of the Internet seems to think TPM is amoung the worst movies ever made.

• Before TPM came out it got mixed reviews, though notably Roger Ebert had high praise for it
• TPM was such a popular movie that it stayed in theaters for almost 6 months, a feat almost unheard of in modern cinema for a May release (and essentially impossible for a movie without massive positive word of mouth)
• A small portion of viewers (though still a numerically large group) were very disappointed in the movie
• Star Wars fan sites became never ending flame wars as those hated the movie could not let a single statement of appreciation for TPM go unchallenged
• Over time those who loved the movie gave up fighting for it because it is much more draining to be the one who loves something than to be a troll
• Once the voices of those who loved it were silenced, it became "common knowledge" that everyone hated TPM

I don't know if my version of events is truly what happened on the Internet, but I can tell you with certainty that it is what happened with me personally.

When The Phantom Menace came out, I absolutely adored it; I saw it 23 times in theaters. I wanted more than anything to have a home on-line where I could talk to other fans about how much we loved it; but there was no safe place for fans of TPM. In every thread on every board on every site those who hated TPM would appear and bash it.

For me the real Phantom Menace was the Internet. For three years I argued every day with people who hated TPM. Then, just about the time Attack of the Clones was coming out, I realized something – reading their negative comments every day, and responding to them every day had killed my love of all things Star Wars.

I only went to AotC twice and RotS once. In the years since I have given away and sold the thousands of dollars of books and collectibles I once owned. I don’t own a single Star Wars thing anymore; not even the movies. Not because of anything George Lucas did, but because of Internet trolls.

People who hate TPM have (or had) all this pent up rage at George Lucas, ostensibly because this movie somehow wrecked their enjoyment of the others. But for some reason it wasn't enough for these people to hate the movie themselves, no they had to find every last place that lovers of the movie were hiding and try to make them feel miserable.

If you are someone who didn't like TPM, or thought it wasn't worthy of being a Star Wars movie, I disagree with you, but I can respect that. However, if you are someone who felt the need to go to a fricking TPM fan site and endlessly crap on the movie, then you are a troll. If you are someone who has felt the need to sneak in jabs at TPM into discussions that weren't even about the damn movie years after it came out, you are a troll. If you are someone who years after the movie came out felt a need to "prove" to anyone that the movie was as bad as you thought it was, then you are a troll.

This all too common phrase is perhaps the most damning
proof that TPM haters were nothing but trolls.

That is my story, of how haters wrecked one of the things I loved most in the world. I hope I can find the will to write a defense of TPM in the next month, but I would be foolish to promise it; trying to write such a piece is going to open up a lot of old wounds for me, though maybe if I can pull it off, it can help close them for good.

TBT: Four Quotes That Changed My Life

This note was originally written August 27, 2009 - the day before I started the Mechanical Engineering Technologist program at NAIT.


I mentioned in another note six weeks ago that I feel 2009 will be the year I will forever look back on as the year my whole life changed. Since writing that note I have ended my career in tech support and registered and been accepted to NAIT. While I didn't know yet what I was doing career wise when I wrote that earlier note, I did know my whole mindset had changed, and that changes in my life had to follow.

It feels odd, and even foolish, to say this but there have four quotes which more than anything contributed to my change from being happy taking phone calls to being happy to never take them again. (it feels even more foolish to admit that three of these quotes came from TV shows)



"If you really want to help your children work on improving yourself."

That's paraphrased from a guest on The Daily Show in early 2009. Unlike the other quotes taken from TV, I didn't see the immediate value in this one, and so made no effort to record it. Basically the guest's whole premise was that the immense effort many parents put into trying to ensure their child has the perfect childhood is completely wasted. He said children are incredibly resilient and will turn out OK regardless of whether or not you do the things that various child-experts recommend. But, the one thing you could do that would help your child is to be a better example for them; don't work on them, work on you.

I really disagreed with this guy when I watched the interview. But the more I thought about it afterwards, the more I started to see his point of view. And while I am sure some people think I have always been a good role model for Robbie, I think that can only be said to be true to a degree; I have not been living a life I would want for Robbie, and in that regard at least, I have been a very poor role model.




"... you can never be who you want to be, if you're always looking over your shoulder at what could have been."

This was spoken by Chloe on Smallville, when she realized that it was time to let go of her life long dream of being a reporter. The moment I heard this line I had to stop the show and hear the line again, and again and again. I have been looking over my shoulder for 15 years, forever in love with my childhood dream of being a physicist.

For reasons I can't explain, after hearing this line I was able to forgive myself for my past failures, and was able to start trying to figure out who I want to be now.

"In life you always have a choice; sometimes its easier to think that you don't."

This was spoken by Guinevere on Merlin. I have very frequently thought that I had no choice in the happenings of my life. Up until I heard this line, I had spent much of the past five years thinking of my career in ways more typical of someone twenty years older than me - that it was set in stone and that at this point I was stuck on this path till it came time to retire.

Not only did this open my eyes to the absurdity of thinking your career is set in stone at 34, but I've come to realize that it is equally absurd to think so at 44 and 54. You always have a choice; you might not have every choice you want, but you do not have to accept something that is wrong for you.





"we choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard,"

Those classic words of JFK got a lot of air time in July, when I was considering going to school, but was afraid of how hard it would be. Hearing these words made me realize how much taking the easy route has cost me over the years. As far back as the seventh grade I was always looking for the easiest possible route at school. Doing this eventually cost me getting into Physics at U of A like I wanted. Then it lead to me getting expelled. After I was expelled I looked for an easy way to get back in, and as such never did. When I decided to go into computers I took an easy course that got me a worthless cert; its quite possible I would still be in IT and successful at it if I had instead applied myself to a meaningful program. Taking the easy route pays off immediately, but costs a hundred fold in the long run.

Hearing this quote over and over my fear of the difficulty of the program I have entered has disappeared. Not because I think it will be easy, but because I understand that the difficulty is what will make it worthwhile.

I'm not Racist But . . .

There is an odd and frustrating trend in our society where people want to distance themselves from a particular position that they hold while still holding that position. All too often this manifests itself in the form of them declaring "I'm not an x, I just believe" followed by them listing off some beliefs which clearly demonstrate that they are exactly what they claim not to be.

I'm not a blogger, I'm just a guy who likes to post his opinion
online then begs his friends to come read it.

A textbook example of this happened last weekend when Jenny McCarthy (aka the person most responsible for the anti-vax movement gaining huge traction) wrote an op-ed piece explaining that she isn't anti-vax, but rather that her views actually fall into a gray area. The basic formula that Jenny, and all persons trying to utilize this argument goes like this:

1. Declare that you are not what you are being accused of. (in Jenny's case anti-vax)
2. Redefine what you are being accused of so that only someone with the most extreme position would meet your definition. (Jenny redefines anti-vax as wanting to force other people to not vaccinate their children)
3. Paint yourself as taking a reasonable middle of the road approach, by virtue of not meeting the criteria you outlined in #2. (Jenny just wants everybody to be able to choose for themselves)
4. Imply that anyone whose position is far removed from the "middle" you just defined in #3 (including those who would have applied the unwanted label to you in the first place) are the ones who are unreasonable and deserving of a negative label. (Jenny wants us to think the real crazies are the people who would deny parents the opportunity to choose what's best for their children)

You can see this line of reasoning being applied all over the place; pretty much any time a label given to a position starts to take on negative connotations in society, there are people who will use this tact. For example:


Racist (I'm not racist, a racist would hate all people of a certain race, I just have noticed certain negative traits that are always possessed by a particular racial group. People who deny these traits exist are naive.)

Conspiracy Theorist (I'm not a conspiracy theorist, a conspiracy theorist is someone who believes in Roswell Aliens. I just happen to believe that something has occurred for which there is solid evidence against it happening and only pure conjecture in favour. People who don't believe what I believe have been brainwashed by the media.)

Homophobic (I'm not homophobic; people who are homophobic hate gay people, while I love the sinner hate the sin. I just believe that because my church won't allow gay marriage that neither should the law. The truly intolerant people are those who wish to label me because of my religion.)

Creationist (I'm not a creationist, a creationist is someone who denies science. I just believe that in the absence of eye witness testimony we can't be sure that the science is true nor that the bible isn't literally true. The real fools are the people who think they can know anything with certainty about the past.)


But while the cases I have mentioned so far might make this sound like a disease of the ignorant, it is not; there are many times that very intelligent people will fall back on this line of reasoning. I'll leave you with a video of fricking Neil DeGrasse Tyson explaining that he isn't an atheist, he's just someone that can't believe in god unless/until he finds more compelling evidence (which, of course, is exactly the position of most atheists).

Don't do THAT on Facebook

Some of you have heard me say before how fascinated I am with the most simple of truths about Facebook (and some other social networking sites as well); that on Facebook everybody has a news feed which is unique to them and nobody has any control over what gets into their feed beyond whom they choose to friend/follow (but not block).

The thing is, that different people have some very different ideas about what should and should not be shared on Facebook, and at times people can get very vocal about others sharing things they don't want to see because often the only choices you have are to convince your friends to stop posting things you don't like, block them from your feed or just live with the content you don't like.

I find that about once per year something has gotten me upset enough that I feel inclined to go on a public rant over my friends posting such things. Past rants of mine have included:

• Slacktivism (which despite being much less than it was 5 years ago, is clearly never going away)
• Friends constantly complaining about layout changes (the number of these complaints have massively decreased despite the fact that Facebook continues to change their layout multiple times per year)
• Friends constantly complaining about it being Monday (I am happy to be employed, why are you trying to drag me down with you?)
• Friends constantly complaining about the weather (if the weather upsets you 3/4 of the time, consider moving to a climate you would like)
• Friends constantly complaining about getting game invites in their feed (one of the few things you actually can easily block on Facebook)

But my complaints are just a small sample of what people are saying not to do on Facebook; if you were to try to not offend anyone you would have to avoid doing all of these.

• Don't post anything of the mundane things happening in your life. (obviously nobody cares)
• Don't post anything about your job. (its not as interesting as you think)
• Don't post anything about your hobbies. (everyone thinks they are stupid anyways)
• Don't post anything about shows you like. (most people don't care and the rest don't want to be spoiled)

• Don't complain about any of the little annoyances that happen in your life. (other people have it worse)
• Don't complain about any of the huge troubles in your life. (we don't want to be brought down, and somewhere, someone has it worse than you)
• Don't talk about any of the good things happening in your life. (you're just making other people jealous)
• Don't post about an upcoming party. (some people won't be there)
• Don't share your opinions on religion and politics. (people who disagree don't want to see your crap)
• Don't say anything pro or con about any health issue. (someone will hate you for it)
• Don't try to tell jokes. (you're not that funny)
• Don't post quotes. (so unoriginal)
• Don't post anything publicly you could send privately. (nobody cares)
• Don't post things on multiple social networks.
• Don't post links to anything you haven't checked on Snopes. (cause no one wants to see anything fake)
• Don't post links to Snopes. (don't be that guy)
• Don't post links to Cracked, Youtube, Reddit, College Humor, Buzz Feed,  The Onion, Slashdot, The Guardian, The Daily Mail, Fox News, The Huffington Post, Yahoo News, Rotten Tomatoes, any webcomics, Tumblr, Pinterest . . .
• Don't post links to news that other people on my feed have already linked to. (if its remotely interesting, you're probably too late)
• Don't post links to your blog (oops)
• Don't post pictures of yourself drunk. (don't need to see it)
• Don't post pictures of your kids. (no one cares)
• Don't post selfies (especially duckfaced ones)

• Don't post pictures of your vacation. (stop rubbing it in our faces)
• Don't post memes.
• Don't post Bit Strips. (don't you know everyone hates those)
• Don't play any Facebook games that will harass your friends. (which is to say, all of them)
• Don't "vaguebook".

So basically, don't post anything. Except that some people get pissed when there's nothing new on their feed, so you lose that way too. Don't have an account maybe? I don't know how to win this game. Oh wait, yes I do - "the only winning move is not to play" - which in this case means post whatever makes you happy to post and other people can follow you or not follow you as they wish.

On Expletives and Political Protest

There was a time in my life, more or less in my mid-teens, where I had gotten into the habit of including an expletive in just about every sentence I spoke. I did this partly because my friends were doing it, but largely because like so many teens I had come to believe that everything I said was so important that it needed a four letter word to emphasis just how important it was.

Like many, I eventually realized that if you emphasize everything, you are really emphasizing nothing. And further I came to understand that if you use an expletive in every sentence, there is no way to convey that extra level of emotion or importance when you need to; when you label everything with a superlative or an expletive, then there is no way to convey true importance using words because you have rendered every word you might use impotent.

I think most people understand this, with regards to their personal lives and day to day conversations, but a surprising number of people seem not to understand this in terms of expressing themselves politically.

If there is a politician or political party in power, at any level of government, whose political views are very different than yours then he, she or they are going to make a lot of decisions that you won't like. If you go on public rants about said politician over every issue, and frequently cite the superlatives of political discussion (comparisons to dictators, your country's way of life being destroyed, calls for extreme measures to remove said politician, etc) then what do you do when there is an issue that is even more important than all the other ones?

How can you get the attention of your ambivalent friends and neighbors, when they long ago began tuning you out because you scream bloody murder over everything? How can you tell a politician that this decision really is going too far, when you've already told them that dozens of other decisions they've made have gone too far? How much harder do these problems become when you are not a lone voice who has decried every decision, but one of thousands? How numb will you collectively have made the politician and the public to criticism?

The answer to this is the same for a politically minded person as it is for the swearing teenager. When you have painted yourself into a corner where words can no longer have the meaning you need them to, then your only choice is to take action. If this really is the law that's going to destroy the country, then your only choice is to actually do something about it; there are a lot of ways one can protest, and if a law really is the end of everything, then it shouldn't be hard to find others who will protest with you.