Idea for a new economic indicator

This post was inspired by, but is not directly related to, this article.

When talking about whether the population as a whole is making economic gains or losses, people often talk about middle class vs. low income vs. high income, or they look at average or median incomes for the population as a whole and for various demographics.  Less often, but sometimes, they talk about the ratio of income to tuition to housing prices. (The Globe and Mail has a useful comparison tool.)

It occurs to me that another useful indicator would be to look at changes in income over time with people who bring various levels of education, skills and experience to the table.  For example, how has the income level of a person with an undergraduate degree and 10 years of work experienced evolved over the years?  What about a newly-minted Ph.D.?  What about a student working their way through college?  What about people who have been freelancing for 5 years?

It might be useful to get somewhat specific (Is the person with an undergrad degree and 10 years of work experience a translator or a teacher or a computer program?), but the data would cease to be comparable if you got too specific (I don't know how informative it would be to track the income of social media specialists or FORTRAN programmers over decades).

If the data is available, it would also be interesting to track negative factors.  How has the income of people who were laid off one year ago evolved?  (i.e. were they more or less likely to get new jobs within a year in previous decades?)  What's the situation of people who started a business within the past two years?  What about people who are involuntary entrepreneurs (i.e. they didn't want to start a business, but couldn't get hired)?

I think this would fill in some blanks, and it has the potential to draw attention to certain problems that may be hidden by the other, more commonly used indicators.

Things They Should Invent in Fiction: Getting To Know You magic spell

A trope that exists in fiction - especially fantasy genres where magic is present - is the love potion.  You get the object of your affection to ingest the love potion, and they fall madly in love with you!  Of course, the problem is that this will never be true love, because it's just the effects of the potion (e.g. Merope Gaunt in Harry Potter).

It occurred to me that what these makers of magic in fictional universes should invent instead is a "Getting To Know You" spell. You cast the spell on the object of your affection, and they instantly know you - your likes and dislikes, hopes and dream, everything that you need to learn about a person to know if they're a good match and to fall in love with them.

In fiction, the protagonist and the love interest often fall in love after plot points allow them to get past their preconceptions and get to know each other's real selves.  (And, in real life, people suffering from unrequited love often feel like this would happen if the opportunity would only arise.) 

At this point, you're probably thinking "But that would ruin the story! They'd get to know each other and fall in love instantly and then there's be no story to tell!"

But what it actually does it open up whole new story avenues!

What happens if the protagonist casts a Getting To Know You spell on their love interest, and this doesn't cause the love interest to become interested in them?

What if someone casts a Getting To Know You spell on the protagonist, but they aren't interested?  And suddenly they have all this knowledge of some random person they're not interested in?

What if the protagonist casts a Getting To Know You spell on the love interest and the love interest appears by all signs to fall in love with the protagonist, but never casts at Getting To Know You back on the protagonist, so the protagonist doesn't know the love interest as well as the love interest knows the protagonist?  Would this mean the love interest is up to something nefarious?

What if spies started trying to beguile their targets into casting a Getting To Know You spell on them in the hopes of learning their secrets, or at least making them more manipulable?

What if the spells aren't reversible, and casting them is a Big Life Step?

What if the spells are reversible, but you have to go on a quest to acquire a MacGuffin in order to reverse them?

And the person you thought was your love interest but who is in fact nefarious and now knows everything about you is trying to use this knowledge to hinder your quest?

In a universe where magic exists and the pitfalls of love potions have been proven, the next logical step would be for someone to come up with a Getting To Know You spell.  I think this would open up new and interesting story avenues.

Things They Should Invent: MoralOfTheStory.com

My fairy goddaughter has an uncommon name.  I decided I'd try to find a book with a protagonist who shares her name and, after much searching, was able to find one.  Unfortunately, it wasn't currently in print in Canada and the library didn't have it, so I had to order it from the UK.  Because of this, I didn't know how the protagonist was portrayed or what the moral of the story was.

(I prefer to curate the books I give to children as gifts.  While I don't object to people - including children - reading junk or fluff (as I'm sure you've noticed from this year's experiment of posting the books I read), I like to give them things that are quality.)

Fortunately, my fairy goddaughter can't read yet, so her parents could screen the book for appropriate message and characterization.  If it's not appropriate, they can just not read it to her.

But by this time next year, she'll probably be able to read. So if I decide to send her a book that I can't preview first for whatever reason, she will be able to read it right away without the story being screened for appropriateness first (or, at least, end up in the awkward situation of her parents wanting to take away a book she's enthusiastic about reading.)

And, just a couple of years later, she'll be reading chapter books.  It's one thing to plop down in Mabel's Fables and read a pile of picture books that are a dozen pages each with only a couple of sentences on each page, to make sure that the characterization and moral of each book is something I want to put in front of a child I love.  But it would be quite another thing to have to read several hundred pages (even in the large, easy font of children's chapter books) in order to make an informed choice.  Especially since the pool of children I buy books for is rapidly expanding (Baby Cousin 3.0 just made his debut a few days ago!) and I try not to duplicate purchases among children who are acquainted with each other and might plausibly visit each other's homes and paw through each other's bookshelves. 

 My proposed solution: a single comprehensive website (MoralOfTheStory.com) that describes the ending and moral of children's books.  (Example: "Ending: he tries green eggs and ham and likes it. Moral of the story: try new foods, you might like them.")  It could also give a brief description of the characterization of the named characters  (or, if that's too much, just the title character), so before you buy Amelia Bedelia for a little girl named Amelia, you know that Amelia Bedelia is a bit of a ditz but an excellent baker.

There are websites to tell you whether various children's media is too scary or too "adult" - the exact reasons why they're rated PG, for example.  But, at least for books that are so young they're definitely rated G, I haven't been able to find any single reliable source of the moral of the story or the characterization of the protagonist.

It would be especially useful to integrate this into Amazon, since children's books bought sight unseen would most likely be bought on the internet.

Bad condo finish selection setup

A few days ago I got a call saying I have to make an appointment to choose my condo finishes.  But there are a lot of problems with how it's set up:

1. They don't provide you with a list of the decisions you have to make ahead of time.  I'm not just choosing colours, I'm also choosing materials.  And I don't know anything about materials.  And it's certainly not feasible to research every single possible material in the world!

2. You have to do it in-person.  It's the 21st century, you'd think they'd have a website where you can log on and put the different finishes on a simulation of your suite and see how they look together.  (Sims mods have been able to do that for at least 10 years!)

3. The office where you go to do this is only open weekdays during regular business hours.  A lot of people are at work during those hours!  I have to use my vacation time to do this! (And not everyone has the luxury of vacation time!)

4. You have to make the appointment within two weeks of when they call you.  On top of the problem of getting time off myself, this means I also have to find someone to help me who's can get some free time on a weekday at the same time as I can *and* at the same time as the office has an appointment slot available.  One of my closest friends (who is the mother of my fairy goddaughter) is very enthusiastic about this whole condo finish thing so I was quite happy to hand all the decision-making over to her, but she couldn't get childcare on a weekday within such short notice, so she couldn't do this thing we were both looking forward to.  Ultimately I ended up going crying to my mommy, who is knowledgeable about such things and fortunate enough to be retired so she can come and help me.


I've been happy with my builder so far and felt they're taking my needs as a regular person (as opposed to some posh investor who picks out condo units like they're choosing wine for a party) and a first-time buyer into consideration, but this condo finish selection setup makes me worried.  It feels like they're not taking into account that these are actual homes for actual human beings, not a game of monopoly where everyone's just trying to shuffle property around to make money.  It feels like they're trying to pressure me into making bad decisions.  I just feel so much less safe with this arrangement.

So I'm going to go in with my mother (in a total adulthood fail moment) and look at the stuff, and I'm totally prepared if necessary to walk out with no decisions made and a list of stuff to research. But that would still mean more vacation time to go back and make another appointment.

Really what they should have is a website where I can log in to see my unit and put different finishes on it, design and save different combinations, and let other people log in to look at it too.  Quite a few people I've talked to during this time think choosing condo finishes would be fun, but the vast majority of these people can't take time off on a weekday on such short notice. So I'd love to have it online and open it up and crowdsource the whole thing - let everyone who's interested put together a look and let people vote on them.  My friend could put together a look for me from the comfort of her own home after my fairy goddaughter is asleep, and maybe my fairy goddaughter could even put together a look herself! 

This would be good advertising for the builder, especially if they made it sharable on social media so everyone could crowdsource. It would be far easier for the end users, and it would probably save the builder some money on setting up and staffing a design centre.  If they found that people still wanted to look at stuff in person they could still have a design centre, but there wouldn't be as much traffic through it because a lot of the work could be done online.  It would be a win-win situation!

But, barring that, the very very very least they could do is send you a list of the decisions you're going to have to make ahead of time!

Things They Should Invent: tournament-style mayoral debates

In this past election, Toronto had a ridiculous number of mayoral candidates and a ridiculous number of mayoral debates.

But, for the vast majority of debates, only the handful of candidates deemed "mainstream" by the media are invited, with the dozens and dozens of others being completely ignored.

This is a waste of perfectly good scheduled debate time!  What's the point of having such a ridiculous number of debates if you aren't going to host all the candidates?

Therefore, I propose tournament style mayoral debates.  During the first few months, candidates debate each other in a round robin sort of format, so as many people as possible debate as many people as possible.  Then the people who have won the most debates move on to debate the other people who have won the most debates, until the top debates in the city are facing each other towards the end of the election period.

I'm picturing a sort of World Cup format for this, but it wouldn't be exactly the same because debates most often have more than 2 people.  And a true round robin might not be possible, depending on the math.  But, in any case, they should do whatever most convenient mathematically and scheduling-wise to get as many people as possible to debate as many people as possible.

So how do we determine who won a particular debate and gets to move on in the debate-offs?  My first thought is an audience vote - perhaps just in person, perhaps both in person and online.  But I don't know if that could be over-influenced by candidates stacking the audience. 

Another idea is a panel of judges.   But would they assess the candidates objectively, or would they favour the big names?  Although, the existing system already favours the big names, so could it be any worse?

What if audience members are assigned tickets to a debate, but they don't know who's going to be debating at the time they sign up for tickets (which would make it impossible to stack the audience).  But would enough people actually go to debates where they don't know who's debating?

Another alternative would be not to vote on winners of individual debates.  Candidates round-robin, the videos are posted online, and online viewers can vote for which candidates they'd like to see debate some more.  But, again, how could we prevent candidates from stacking the votes?

I haven't fully worked this out.  But the fact remains: if we must have dozens of candidates and dozens of debates, all candidates should get to debate.

All Toronto municipal candidates should publicly post their Vote Compass results

I was pleased to see that there's a Vote Compass for the Toronto mayoral election, but I was disappointed that it only compared your position with that of the three candidates that the media is treating as "mainstream".  There are 65 candidates for the position of mayor alone, to say nothing of all the councillor candidates whose platforms could also be charted on the same compass.

I suspect the Vote Compass people limited themselves to the top three simply for logistical purposes.  They have to analyze platforms, break them down into issues, place them on the scale, validate them with the candidates and the public...it would probably be impossible to do it for 65 candidates, even with our ridiculously protracted municipal elections.

So as an interim measure until someone can design a vote by issue that can accommodate dozens of candidates, I propose that all candidates should take the Vote Compass quiz and post their results publicly. Then voters whose positions on the various issues don't coincide with any of the top three candidates can see which of the many other candidates actually meet their needs.

It would be extra awesome if someone could compile all the candidates' answers in one place.  It's a bit late for this election, but maybe next election the Vote Compass people could do this!

Things They Should Invent Words For: "I don't actually think it's a conspiracy, but it looks exactly like one"

I have contacted Rob Ford in my capacity as a citizen and his capacity as mayor, and not only did he not address the issues I raised, he did the exact opposite.  When, for example, I urged him to save a planned program that was at risk - even presenting my position in his preferred idiom of tax dollars, quantifying the cost to myself monetarily and demonstrating how the cost to me is more than I pay the city in taxes - he cancelled the program in question at literally the first available opportunity.

I am not under the impression that Rob Ford is out to get me.  I know full well that a simple person like me can't possibly be of interest to someone with wealth and influence and a complex life like Rob Ford. However, if Rob Ford did receive my message and said "I want to hurt this lady.  How can I use the information provided here to hurt her as much as possible?", the outcome would have been exactly what it actually was in reality.

They need to invent a word for this concept - when you genuinely don't think it's a conspiracy, but if it were a conspiracy the outcome would be exactly the same as it was in real life.

Things They Should Invent: follow-up online reviews, with automatic reminder emails

Just over a year ago, I bought a paper shredder. (Brand name Rosewill, from Newegg.)  Just days after the one-year warranty expired, the shredder's motor died, in a rather terrifying puff of smoke and sparks.

When I was buying the shredder, there were online reviews from people who had problems, with follow-up comments from the manufacturer saying to contact them and they'd replace it under warranty, and there were reviews from people saying "I don't know what you're talking about, I didn't have problems."

But I wonder how many people had problems after the warranty period expired, but never thought to write a review because who goes back to the site you bought it from a year later to write a review?

Online review sites, including retailers, should fix this by standardizing the idea of follow-up reviews.  You write a review after you get the product, and then after a certain period of time you get an automatic email asking you to write a follow-up review.

The period of time for a follow-up review would depend on the product.  A week or two would be plenty for something like nail polish, but maybe six weeks would be good for moisturizers and stuff that are supposed to produce longer-term results.  I think 110% of the warranty period would be very informative for electronics.

This would be far more useful than one-time reviews of newly-purchased products, and would significantly increase traffic to the websites.  (At a minimum, you'll double the number of visits by people writing reviews, so you can show them recommended products etc.)

Things They Should Invent: list added sugar separately in nutritional information

There has been a lot of news coverage lately about the health risks of added sugar, but the general consensus seems to be that naturally-occurring sugars (like in fruit) don't present the same health risks.

Unfortunately, the nutritional information boxes on food packaging don't distinguish between these.  For example, the organic unsweetened applesauce in my fridge contains 12g of sugar per serving.  The supermarket ice cream in my freezer contains 13g of sugar per serving.  But I suspect the ice cream has far more of the added sugars we're supposed to avoid!

It's pretty glaringly obvious if you're comparing ice cream to applesauce, but what if it were a fruit smoothie?  Some of that sugar is going to be the naturally-occurring sugar contained in the fruit, and some of it is going to be the added sugar that we're supposed to avoid.

If they want people to take this seriously, they should list the added sugars separately from the naturally-occurring sugars in the nutritional information.

Answering Social Q's

From Social Q's:

While riding in the Quiet Car on Amtrak, which prohibits speaking on cellphones and loud conversations, I sat down next to a man who was reading a Kindle. Soon, I heard his breathing grow louder and increase to full-blown snoring. I know that snorers have no control over their sound level. But neither could I imagine reading quietly for several hours with that roar coming from two feet away. What would the appropriate response have been? (Note: Snoring is not specifically prohibited on the signs.)

The columnist suggests LW either move or wake up the snorer and tell him he's snoring.  But I don't think it's necessary to tell him he's snoring.  It's not like he can do anything about it.  Just nudge him and "accidentally" wake him up.

I am regularly included in group text messages. At times, I receive as many as 100 texts from group members within a five-minute period, leaving me feeling as if I’m trapped in other people’s streams of consciousness. I rarely respond to these messages and would prefer not to be included. Is it possible to opt out of them?

I wonder if there might be a technological solution for this. With email, you can set rules that would screen out emails with multiple recipients, for example. I wonder if you can do this with texting, perhaps with some of the texting apps that people seem to find it useful to use?  If not, lets add it to the Things They Should Invent list!

Things They Should Invent Words (and Natural Consequences) For

We need a word and natural consequences for that thing where people assume that the goal/motivation behind a particular action of yours is different from your actual goal/motivation, and then lecture you because that action isn't to achieve the goal that they've unilaterally attributed to you (which you aren't even trying to achieve in the first place).

Examples:

"You shouldn't buy those Cortland apples.  You should buy Gala instead because they're organic."

Except my goal isn't to eat what's most optimally healthy or environmentally friendly, my motivation is to eat what's most yummy to me.

"You shouldn't buy that used widget on ebay.  You can get newer widgets for cheaper at Big Box Store."

Except my goal isn't to get the cheapest widget, it's to get the specific widget that's worked for me in the past when other widgets haven't.

"You shouldn't buy a new condo. The maintenance costs will go way up."  

Except my goal isn't to have maintenance costs that never go up, my goal is to live in a brand new building in a suite that no one else has ever lived in before.

Any ideas for names for this phenomenon or attendant natural consequences?

Things They Should Invent: memorial library books

Picture this: a loved one dies, so you donate a copy (or multiple copies) of their favourite book or books to the library.  The books get an elegant notation inside the cover saying "In memory of [name]", and are then added to the circulating collection. This means people who check out that book in the future learn about the existence of your deceased loved one and the fact that they enjoyed that book, thereby introducing your deceased loved one to like minds and kindred spirits. There could also be a webpage where there's a blurb about each of the memorialized people, so if the book you check out of the library turns out to be a memorial, you can look the person up and learn more about them.

Possible option: donate the deceased's own books to the library in their memory.  The suitability of this approach would depend on the nature and condition of the books (I doubt the library needs any more Harry Potters, or old dog-eared copies of books they already have better copies of) but if the books were suitable for donation it would certainly be an elegant approach.

Problems to which I don't yet have solutions:  what happens if a memorial book is lost or damaged? What happens if, after some time passes, the library needs to get rid of some of the memorial books?  (For example, they don't have nearly as many copies of Harry Potter as they had when the books first came out, so they've probably sold some copies.)

Things They Should Invent: a way to save non-stressed feelings for later

As I've mentioned before, my stress levels have been really low (and quite often zero) since I started working from home.  However, my lease renewal recently came up, which reminded me that in a bit over a year I'm going to be moving into my condo, which is surely going to be stressful - not just from the moving but from the stuff related to the condo purchase, some of which, I'm sure, I haven't anticipated at all.

Despite the fact that, at condo time, I will have had nearly two years of a zero-stress day-to-day, I'll still get stressed then.  It's just not possible to bank non-stress for when I need it.  I can save money for when I need it, I can eat sparingly today so I have room for a good pig-out tomorrow, but stress is Tetris pieces, and no matter how good you are at Tetris, you can't move the bottom of the playing area any lower, even though you know the pieces will start coming too fast to handle when you reach Level 9.

Someone should really come up with a workaround for that.  (Or, barring that, a Tetris cheat that moves the bottom of the playing area lower if you clear lines well enough.)

Things They Should Invent: "if you like...you may like..." for beauty products

I use Beautypedia, but I don't always agree with their reviews.  For example, they give my favourite eyeliner a poor rating, saying that the long skinny brush is hard to control.  But I find that the brush is easier to control specifically because it's long and skinny, and I vastly prefer it to every other brand I've tried, whose applicators are all too thick for the look I'm going for.

This means that when I'm in the market for eyeliner, Beautypedia is useless for me.

And it might also be less than perfectly useful for other products, and I'm just unaware of it.  The perfect product for me might be sitting under some pile of average reviews on Beautypedia and Makeup Alley etc., because it isn't optimal for most people in the world but is perfect for my non-standard needs.

So I'd like to see a beauty product review site that compares products to other products.  If you find Product A and Product B very similar, you say so, and perhaps articulate how they differ from each other.  If you find Product C far superiors to Products A and B, say so and explain why.  If you find Product D far inferior, say so and explain why.

If they can get a critical mass of reviews, they could even match up users with similar skin types or other similar makeup needs.  For example, if several people have the same favourite masacara and the same favourite eyeliner, it might be helpful to know what each other's favourite eyeshadow is.  Or, if a product gets discontinued, you could find out what other people who liked that discontinued product also like and dislike, and avoid some irritating trial and error.

So how do we get all these people to write all these comprehensive and detailed reviews? My idea is: what if this website was sponsored by a retailer that sells a wide range of brands of cosmetics, like Shoppers Drug Mart or even Amazon?  Users could earn points for writing reviews, and the points could be redeemable for free cosmetics at that retailer.  To encourage users to populate the site quickly, the first X reviews (where X is the number of reviews they need to make the site useful) can get exponentially more points.  They could also have easy one-click links on the review site to buy reviewed cosmetics from the retailer.

Things They Should Invent: PBS donations conditional upon changing how Masterpiece is listed

I've been rather baffled and slightly irritated that PBS insists upon listing Downton Abbey as Masterpiece Classic in TV listings, when we all know that people are looking for Downton Abbey.

Wil Wheaton recently had the same complaint about Sherlock, which is listed under Masterpiece Mystery.

I don't understand why PBS does this or what they think they gain by listing popular TV shows under a less popular generic name, but I have an idea for how to stop them:

Everyone contact their local PBS station and promise to pledge money next pledge season if they start listing these things in a normal way. Then, as soon as we see our favourite programs being listed under their actual title, donate.  If they don't, don't donate (even if you normally do).

How Google can fix the internet in one easy step

There's an article circulating called The Year We Broke the Internet.  The way we "broke the internet" is by being so quick to share things via social media that ultimately turn out to be hoaxes.

Google can fix this problem in one easy step: introduce a reverse sort by date feature.

Google already allows you to search results by date, so you see the newest first.  Therefore, its databanks must already have the pages organized by date.  By adding a reverse sort by date feature, to simply reverse the order in which the results display so the oldest is first, Google will allow anyone to determine the original internet source and origin of anything in a single click.

This would be especially helpful for reverse image search. I find that if I'm doing a reverse image search of an image that has been heavily reblogged on tumblr, the first several pages of results are just tumblrs that have recently reblogged it without context.  A reverse sort by date would let us see the source quickly and easily without having to dig through pages and pages of tumblr purgatory.

If a computer system can sort, it has the ability to sort bidirectionally just as easily as it can sort unidirectionally. You can see this in any kind of table with headers that you can click to sort.  All Google has to do is give us an interface item that can activate this functionality, and it would be taking a huge step towards fulfilling its mission of organizing the world's information and making it accessible and useful.

Things They Should Invent: allow utilities to repair equipment that belongs to homeowners

I'm fortunate enough not to have as yet been affected by the recent spate of ice-storm-induced power outages (knock wood), but I have been following developments fairly closely.  And one thing that has come to my attention is that some of the electrical equipment that's attached to the house may belong to the homeowner rather than the utility, and therefore homeowners are responsible for getting it repaired before the utility can reconnect power.

This would piss me off if I were a homeowner.  I have no power (perhaps for days!), then the Hydro people suddenly come around, only to tell me  have to hire some kind of contractor I've never heard of before, and probably can't research adequately because I don't have internet.  And if I've decided to go elsewhere until power comes back, I might not even find out for days that I need to get the bits attached to my house fixed by a different contractor, thereby extending the time to restore power.

Solution: allow Hydro workers to repair the equipment that's attached to the house, and bill the homeowner for this service, with the owner's consent.  The owner can still hire their own contractor if they want, but if the Hydro truck is right there, you can have the option of getting reconnected immediately. If the homeowner is not present and doesn't contract Hydro within a certain period of time, Hydro reconnects and bills them. (This is to prevent homeowners who decide to leave the blackout area and go elsewhere from getting caught out because Hydro can't get in touch with them and they have no idea that they need to hire a contractor.)

If this happened, some parties would probably complain that the utility is taking business away from private electrical contractors.  I think this is negligible compared with delays in restoring power, but if it does end up being a problem that needs to be addressed, Hydro could outsource this portion of the work to private contractors through a normal bidding process.

Things They Should Invent: leave cartons with cracked eggs open on the shelf

In the grocery store buying eggs, I picked up a carton off the shelf, checked the eggs, and discovered that one was stuck to the carton, which meant it was cracked and leaking. Since I don't want a cracked egg, I put that carton down and selected another one.

But I put the carton with the cracked egg back on the shelf, which meant that the next person will pick it up, inspect it, find a cracked egg, and put it back on the shelf.  And then the next person will pick it up, inspect it, find a cracked egg, and put it back on the shelf.  This wastes a little bit of everyone's time and interferes with the smooth flow of traffic in the egg section.

Solution: we need to standardize some way to signal to other shoppers that a particular carton contains a cracked egg.

My idea:  If the carton has a cracked egg, leave it open on the shelf.  Other people can then avoid it and go straight to cartons that are still closed.

This will also signal to store employees that there's something wrong with this carton, although it's possible they might just close it and put it back.

As an added bonus, if you pick up a carton of eggs and find it contains an egg that's cracked but not stuck to the carton, you could swap that out with one of the good, non-cracked eggs in an open carton on the shelf, thus consolidating all the cracked eggs and potentially reducing waste.

Things They Should Invent: insist on Advent

On November 1, multiple non-retail sources, ranging from Weather Network polls to Reddit alien doodles, turned Christmasmas themed.  As though everyone had collectively decided "It's November, therefore it's time to think about Christmas!"  (In fact, one of the polls or articles on the Weather Network even said this outright.)

This is ridiculous.  It wasn't too long ago that US Thanksgiving was considered the distant early beginning of Christmas shopping and such.  But to stretch it out to very nearly 2 full months?  That will ruin it for everyone, because everyone will be tired of Christmas by the time December rolls around.  And to unquestioningly treat that as baseline human reality?  Unacceptable!

I have a solution: Christians should insist that Advent be respected.

Advent is, in many Christian denominations, a period of anticipation and preparation for the arrival of Christ.  In Western denominations (which includes Catholic, Anglican, Presbyterian, Lutheran and Methodist), it begins four Sundays before Christmas, which ranges from November 27 to December 3 depending on how the calendar falls that year.  That seems like plenty of time for actively getting ready for Christmas.  In fact, it has been decreed to be enough time by the very people who decreed that Christmas is A Thing in the first place!

Appropriately, because Christmas is a Christian holiday, this solution needs to be pushed and promoted and advocated for by Christians. There are people out there who are very insistent that Christmas should be acknowledged in public spaces, going to far as to proclaiming there is a "War on Christmas" if it isn't acknowledge to their satisfaction.

These people, especially, can do an enormous amount of good by also insisting that Advent be acknowledged, and by proclaiming and pre-Advent public display of Christmas paraphernalia to be a War on Advent.

The liturgical calendar exists for a reason.  There are different seasons that reflect the trials and tribulations of the life of Christ and of the human condition.  Christianity - and life itself - are not all trees and presents and food and adorable haloed babies. Advent, too, is there for a reason, and organizations that fail to respect it are failing to respect the complexity of your religion. You should protest this, like you would protest the use of a creche as an Easter decoration.

Things They Should UNInvent: banners that overlap the body text section of a website (or web browsers that can't handle this)

Some websites (such as Twitter and Salon) have banner-style headers that overlap the body text area.

The problem with this is if you press the spacebar to page down one screen, the browser behaves as though the area covered by the banner is visible, which means you miss a line or two every time you page down, and then have to page back up with a mouse.  This is very irritating, and also bad ergonomically - pressing the spacebar to page down is basically the minimum amount of ergonomic strain, and having to mouse could cause problems for people who have or are prone to RSI.

Web design and browser design need to fix this.  Pressing the spacebar should show the next page of text, with no text missed (and, in fact, with the last line of the previous page visible at the top, just to reassure the reader that they haven't missed anything.)