Showing posts with label a complete list of things i have seen or not seen is available in my blog. Show all posts
Showing posts with label a complete list of things i have seen or not seen is available in my blog. Show all posts

Sunday, April 02, 2017

Boys' entrance and girls' entrance

The school in which I attended middle school was built in 1929, originally intended as a high school. It was a brick and stone building, built in an architectural style that the internet tells me is called Collegiate Gothic.

At the front of the building are two imposing-looking entrance doors.  Carved in the stone above one door are the words "Boys' Entrance".  Carved in stone above the other door are the words "Girls' Entrance."

The mystery: the school has always been co-ed.  (It's been co-ed throughout living memory, and a search of newspaper archives can find no hint that they ever changed it to co-ed.)

Each front entrance door leads to a stairwell, both of which are identical. You can go up to the second and third floor or down to the first floor. Each stairwell let out in the same hallway, about a classroom length apart.  There were no hints inside the building that it had ever been divided into two and then later merged (and the interior of the building was such that it was clear when you were entering one of the wings that had been added later etc., so I doubt they would have removed any sort of dividing wall without leaving evidence.)

The gender segregation of entrances was never enforced within living memory.  (We actually used the back doors a lot more often because they were more convenient.)  The signs were only still there because they were carved in stone and it's hard to uncarve stone.

But the mystery remains: why have gender segregated entrances leading to the exact same hallways in a co-ed school in the first place?

Friday, March 10, 2017

Warning: Charmin Essentials Soft toilet paper is NOT the same as Charmin Ultra Soft

I have brand loyalty to Charmin Ultra Soft toilet paper.  It is the most comfortable toilet paper I have ever experienced, so I use it all the time as a small daily luxury.

Last time I went shopping for new toilet paper, I saw this package with the great big word SOFT, so I figured it's my usual Charmin and they've changed the package as they do from time to time:

However, once I got it home, I quickly realized it isn't anywhere near the same toilet paper - it feels like sandpaper on my pampered anatomy!

It turns out Charmin Essential Soft is a rebranding of Charmin Basic - the less comfy discount brand!

Charmin Ultra Soft is still called Ultra Soft, and its packaging looks like this:


So if you're picky like me, don't be fooled by the word "soft"; the word "ultra" is important.

Mnemonic: yellow packaging = yellow flag

Saturday, March 04, 2017

What I didn't expect about living in a concierge building (#FirstWorldProblems)

I knew that one of the services a concierge provides is that if you receive a package when you're not home, the concierge will sign for the package for you.

What I didn't know is that even if you are home, the delivery person will still leave the package with the concierge.

I guess it makes sense from the delivery person's point of view - I'm sure they're on a schedule and otherwise evaluated for speed and efficiency, and they'd much rather just dump everything at the concierge desk than buzz or knock on the door of each apartment that has a package on the off chance that someone is home in the middle of the day. And I'm sure that if I asked my concierge to send a particular delivery person up to my apartment (for example, because the package is large and unwieldy) they'd do so.

It just never occurred to me that living in a concierge building would put an extra step between me and my deliveries.

Wednesday, March 01, 2017

How Reitman's lost my loyalty and broke my heart

I have had brand loyalty to Reitmans for my entire adult life, ever since I discovered their Comfort Fit pants.  These are these only pants in the world that don't gap in the back when I sit down, which is particularly important because I have a desk job.

There were also Comfort Fit jeans, and they were a revelation!  The dark wash boot cut style not only fit comfortably, but was perhaps the single most flattering garment I've ever owned.  I look tall and toned and fierce wearing them, and feel bad-ass walking down the street!  In recent years they've been using a lower-quality denim that wears out faster (and, inconveniently, seems to wear out in the crotch first), but no biggie, I can just pop in and buy another pair of the same.

But this time, I couldn't.

There are zero boot cut comfort fit jeans, and zero dark wash.  There was a straight leg style, but it wasn't a true straight leg - the ankle was skinny and I could barely get my feet through. They looked exactly like the hideous cheap fake jeans from Biway that the kids on welfare wore in my preteen years.

Which means there are now zero jeans in the world that will fit me comfortably and make me feel good about myself.  And my old ones got a hole in the crotch, so now I don't even have the option of wearing jeans.  At all.  Ever.  An entire baseline category of clothing is unavailable to me.


***

This has been happening to me more and more often. Clothes that make me feel good about myself are taken away, and no workable replacement manifests itself. Victoria's Secret changed my underwear, and I still haven't found an alternative that's as good. Smart Set made shirts that were flattering to me, then they closed down. I normally adore Fluevog shoes, but everything this year has pointy toes and I don't think my black ankle boots are going to hold out long enough for their silhouette to evolve again. Lord and Taylor made cashmere gloves that actually fit me (even though they were a bit too delicate and I only got a year's wear out of them), but then this year they didn't make them any more.

Despite my best efforts to take care of my clothes (even my mother thinks the extent of my air-drying is ridiculous!), they're wearing out.  And I'm afraid once I lose the clothes that make me feel good about myself, I'll never be able to find a replacement and I'll never feel pretty again.

Monday, February 13, 2017

Profiled

Last spring, I experienced thigh chafing for the first time in my life.

Due to my disproportionately long inseam and dislike of the current trend of tight pants, it turns out that on most of my pants the gusset fell below the bit at the top of my thighs that was chafing, meaning that the legs of my pants couldn't serve as a barrier to protect me against the chafing. What few pants I owned that did have a high enough gusset were made of unpleasantly rough or unbreathable material, which may have even made matters worse.

I clearly had immediate need of softer pants, and they probably needed to be more fitted so the gusset would stay right at the very top of my thighs and protect the area being chafed. But the last thing I wanted to do when every step was painful was go pants shopping!  So I went to multiple websites with generous return policies and ordered multiple pairs of yoga pants, one of each plausible pair in my usual size and one a size smaller.

Over the next few days, a wide selection of yoga pants arrived at my door. I tried them on and kept everything that worked for me.  It turned out my idea of going a size down was unnecessary (I hadn't bought new yoga pants in years and they're more fitted now than they were last time I shopped for them), so I returned everything in the smaller size and some of the things in the larger size.

Shortly after that happened, I started getting coupons and offers and recommendations for maternity wear.  I guess I triggered an algorithm somewhere - frantically shopping for yoga pants and opting for the larger size in every case is totally something a pregnant lady would do! 

This was all about nine months ago.  And now I'm getting coupons and offers and recommendations for baby things!  Even though I haven't bought yoga pants or maternity wear or anything comparable in the meantime, apparently online shopping algorithms are the kind of people who count months.

I wonder how long this will persist for? Will I be getting offers for toddler things for a few years, followed by back-to-school offers and high school graduation offers?  Will they start trying to sell me those conception monitors if I don't shop like a pregnant lady for a few years, on the grounds that my non-existent child should have a sibling?

Maybe I should use Privacy Mode when googling for baby gifts just in case...

Wednesday, January 25, 2017

A solution to the bringing kids to demonstrations dilemma

I've always had mixed feelings about bringing children too young to develop an independent opinion on the issues to political demonstrations.

On one hand, bringing your kid to a demonstration is modelling political participation, just like bringing your kid with you to vote. And a demonstration is also a part of regular life, like taking your kid with you grocery shopping.

But, on the other hand, participating in a demonstration (especially if you're holding a sign, chanting the chants, etc.) implies having a certain opinion on a certain issue, and some kids are simply too young to have developed an opinion.

On top of that, children tend to make for good pictures, so there's a high likelihood that kids at demonstrations will end up with a photo of them on the internet holding a sign that may or may not reflect the opinion they develop independently once they become savvy enough to do so.

So far, the best idea I've been able to think of is that kids at demonstrations shouldn't be photographed, which helps contain the issue but doesn't completely address it. (Although I have no objection to any policy that protects kids - or people of any age, really - from having their pictures posted on the internet without their informed consent.)

But the other day, my Twitter feed gave me a much better idea:

Kids participating in demonstrations must write their own signs, without any adult input about content or messaging. 

I'll allow adults transcribing the kid's message (only at the kid's request) if the kid's printing and spelling skills haven't caught up with what they want their sign to say, but the content of the sign must be entirely the kid's idea, and the kid must be permitted to use their own sign regardless of whether it's consistent with the demonstration's messaging.

Here are two delightful examples of this phenomenon that were tweeted into my feed. They can also been seen on imgur here and here.






As you can see, the kids are clearly expressing their own ideas rather than mindlessly regurgitating what the adults around them are saying. But they still get to proudly participate in the social and cultural experience of a demonstration, even if they don't have independent understanding of the issues, without expressing any ideas that they wouldn't if they had independent understanding of the issues. And, despite the fact that they're off-message, they don't take away from the message of the demonstration, and, in fact, add to its credibility by making it look like an inclusive family event.

Wednesday, January 11, 2017

Things people say

People (specifically Canadian Anglophones) are often surprised that I learned French in regular public school (as opposed to going to French immersion or growing up in a household where French was spoken) and went on to have a career where I use French every day.  It's like they see it as impossible to learn French in school.

In my previous job in tech support, people (specifically non-techy end-users) were surprised that I didn't study computers in school, and instead picked up what I needed from personal use or everyday life or people around me or the internet. It's like they see it as impossible to learn computers without doing so in school.

***

I'm not very good at convincing or persuading people.  But when I say that out loud, people say to me "Don't be silly, of course you are!"

Even though I have literally just failed to convince/persuade them that I'm not very good at convincing/persuading people.

***

I've noticed a significant overlap between people who react to the fact that I've bought a condo as though it's exciting and people who believe that money can't buy happiness.

If you think it can't buy happiness, why do you think it's exciting?

Tuesday, January 03, 2017

Things They Should Invent: put buildings on the internet before they tear them down

In my neighbourhood, there's a group of row houses that's going to be torn down for condos, and I'm extremely curious about what they look like inside - so much so that I've even pondered attempting to break in engage in some urban exploration, which isn't something I've even considered before.

The reason why I'm curious about these houses as opposed the many other buildings that are being torn down for condos is that I can't figure out their history just by looking at them from the outside. I'm not savvy enough about architecture to tell when they were built. I can't tell if they're single family homes or apartments. I can't tell if they're middle-class or working-class. I can't tell if they're middle-class single-family homes that latter got subdivided into working-class apartments. They clearly have a story, and I can't even begin to speculate what that story is.

Every building that is torn down has a story, and you never know when or to whom that story will be of interest.  So to preserve our stories, they should document buildings before they tear them down, and post all the information on the internet.

On a single comprehensive website, interior and exterior photos, floor plans, and all known history should be posted for every building that is torn down.  Maybe the public could also add to it, so someone idly googling their grandparents' old house could come along and add the interesting factoid "My grandparents bought this house for $10,000 in 1952 and raised four children here on a steelworker's salary."

I'm not a person who objects to development (as evidenced by the fact that I keep insisting on living in new buildings), but there's no reason why the stories of what was here before should be lost in an era when everything can be so easily archived and indexed.

Monday, January 02, 2017

Girl colours and boy colours

I currently have four baby cousins: three boys and one girl. (They aren't all so much babies - the oldest one is 3 - but old nomenclature dies hard.  And it's not like they can read this blog to complain that I'm referring to them as babies.) I bought xmas gifts for all of them (I don't celebrate xmas myself, but my family does and it's an awesome excuse to look through all the adorable children's books at Mabel's Fables), and since all the gifts would be going under the same tree I put gift tags on them.

I managed to find a package of non-xmas-themed gift tags in all different colours, one of which is pink.  So I put the pink tag on the girl's gift.  Because pink is for girls.

Of course, I myself don't actually think pink is exclusively for girls and not for boys at all.  If any of my male baby cousins expressed interest in pink things or things that are culturally marked as for girls, I'd be the first to make sure he had all the girly things he wanted. 

But, because on a broader cultural level pink has connotations as "for girls", some boys might not like it.  Some boys might find it insulting to be given the pink thing. It might be problematic to give one brother pink and the other brother a colour without gender connotations. (The inverse is true too - I remember once feeling very humiliated and insecure in my femininity when my sister got a Judy Jetson toy and I was given smelly old George Jetson.)

If I had multiple pink tags, I wouldn't hesitate to give every child a pink tag. But I only had the one, and I only ever use gift tags for the baby cousins, so the one pink gift tag went to the one girl.

And so, out of consideration for connotations that these small children may or may not have yet picked up from the prevailing culture, gender stereotypes of colours are perpetuated for another generation.

***

Another similar issue is that I'm very mindful of making sure the boys get books with male protagonists (insofar as the books have protagonists and the protagonists have gender - with children this young, sometimes the books are about animals or shapes or colours, and sometimes they don't have enough of a plot to have a protagonist), but I don't put the same thought into making sure the girl gets books with female protagonists.  This is because I have the idea, absorbed from the ether, that boy are more likely to be reluctant readers, and that boys are more likely to be disinclined to read books with female protagonists. 

In real life, none of these kids are reluctant readers, simply because they're too young for anyone to make that determination.  In real life, I'm not even sure to what extent children that age do or don't perceive gender.  But, nevertheless, I've decided to pre-emptively address this Thing That People On The Internet Say Might Happen, and, as a result, might be perpetuating the stereotype that books about girls aren't for boys.

Part of it is the fact that I can testify from my own first-hand experience that even a girly girl whose gender identity and expression is wholly feminine can totally enjoy books about a male protagonist, and therefore would feel confident in getting a girl a book with a male protagonist.  But I have heard anecdotes of boys being disinclined to read female protagonists, and I only have a self righteous "Well, it shouldn't make any difference!" to counter that.  (I don't actually know whether my male baby cousins as individuals care about the genders of their protagonists - I'm never able to have as comprehensive a conversation with their parents as I'd like because we keep getting interrupted by the presence of babies and toddlers.)

But ultimately, I think it's more important (in terms of both gift-giving and child development) to maximize the likelihood that the kidlets will enjoy the books put in front of them. And so I resort to gender stereotypes unless I have further specific information.

I kind of wish I could switch off that portion of my knowledge of self and culture, and choose books cheerfully unaware of what gender (and other) stereotypes might exist and need to be addressed.

Sunday, January 01, 2017

"Excuse me, are you Jewish?"

For several years now, there have been young men (they appear to be Orthodox Jewish students to my semi-informed eyes) who stand around on the corner of Yonge and Eglinton and ask passers-by "Excuse me, are you Jewish?"

While I'm flattered to pass for potentially-Jewish, the fact of the matter is I'm not at all, so I've always just said "No, sorry" and left them to their business.

But I've always been super curious: what happens if you are Jewish?

So this year I decided to ask one of them. When he asked me "Excuse me, are you Jewish?" I replied "No, but I'm super curious what would happen if I said yes!"

"We give you a free menorah if you don't have one already," he replied.

So there you go!  Free menorahs!

I'm not knowledgeable enough of the nuances of Judaism to be able to speculate whether the free menorah comes with evangelistic strings attached.  (I don't even know if Judaism has evangelism, but, coming from a Christian background, that's what my concern would be if they belonged to some Christian denomination and were giving out, like, free Advent wreaths or something). But that's a mystery solved!

Sunday, December 11, 2016

The bizarro universe of new home construction

So when you buy a new home, the expectation is that there will be problems.  (They call them "deficiencies".)  I've had a number of them, ranging from the superficial (paint on a lighting fixture) to the more problematic (a draft caused by my balcony door being misaligned).

The developer has a system all set up to handle this. I report the deficiencies to this office, and they coordinate having people come in to repair them. Since I work from home, they just give me a ring to let me know when someone is coming, and a nice tradesperson swoops in and solves a problem for me, often answering any questions I might have along the way. (If I weren't home during the day, property management could let them in for me.)  Every individual I have dealt with throughout this process has been awesome, and no one has batted an eye at the number of things I have reported.

Everyone I know who has bought a new home (condo or detached) says they've gone through this.  Even my parents, who bought a new home back when I was still a fetus, went through this.  And everyone tells me it's normal.

What's weird to me is that it's normal!  Imagine in your own job, if you could turn in work with about at least a dozen mistakes!  I'd get fired for that kind of error rate! And imagine if this was considered fine and normal, to the extent that your employer had a whole infrastructure set up for your clients to report the mistakes you made, and then you'd resolve them in batches over the next several weeks. And your employer was considered a good service provider on the grounds that the mistakes were resolved promptly and cheerfully, and it would be completely unreasonable for your clients to expect you not to make mistakes in the first place!

And the bizarre thing is it's been like this for decades!  It was like this 36 years ago when my parents bought a new home, and no one has fixed it yet!

Don't get me wrong, I'd still rather have a newly-built home that only I have ever lived in than an older one that has the leavings of other people's different housekeeping priorities in it, but it blows my mind that for decades and decades this entire industry has just been okay with the fact that there are multiple deficiencies in the product delivered to the customer - especially when it's the biggest purchase of the customer's life and one that affects every aspect of their day-to-day happiness.

Friday, December 09, 2016

How I'm making my new home uninhabitable to anyone but me.

I blogged before about my filing system, where I sort things in order of when I received them after years of failing to sort stuff and just sticking it in the front of the file drawer.

As I've been setting up my new home and finding myself have to organize things, I've been coming up with more unique ways to organize things:

- I organized my desk drawer full of office supplies and other miscellany in order of "How likely am I to look for it?" Stuff I think I'm going to look for all the time goes in front, stuff I don't expect to look for goes in the back.

-In my file drawer, I made a folder for "stuff I can never figure out where to put and then can't find it and then panic". Now I'll never need to panic about not being able to find something again!

- In a bathroom drawer, I made a "stuff I use every day" section. Once I get drawer dividers figured out, I'll also add a "stuff I use regularly but not daily" section.

- My new place has a den. I'm used to living without a den and didn't deliberately seek one out (the suites that met my other requirements all came with dens). So I'm putting all the stuff that I can't figure out where to put it in the den, some of it in moving boxes, some of it in random piles.  I'm going to leave it like this for several months to see what makes its way out of the den, the I'm going to simply use the den as a storage room for everything else. In theory, I'll eventually acquire some kind of storage furniture or boxes that look more permanent than moving boxes, but who knows if this will actually happen in practice? Meanwhile, my desk is still in the living room like it's always been - previously because I didn't have a choice, but now because my den doesn't have windows and I don't want to spend the vast majority of my waking hours in a windowless nook.

In short, where my limited skills enable me to impose an organizational paradigm, I'm setting things up so they meet my own eccentric needs perfectly.  But, in the process of doing so, I seem to be creating a space that won't make sense to anyone else. 

Thursday, November 24, 2016

Laptop battery progress report

In April 2013, I blogged about mixed messages I was receiving about laptop battery management.

I just realized enough time has passed for a progress report.

In April 2013, my laptop battery died at the age of 28 months, during which I'd been using the computer primarily plugged into the wall but with the battery still installed and active.

After I replaced that battery, I decided to try disabling battery charging when the computer is plugged in, meaning that the power cord is not charging the battery but is rather providing power directly to the computer, although the battery is still physically present. I've been doing that for 42 months, and it still seems to be working well. The battery does gradually lose power over a period of many months (I have to charge it an average of twice a year) but it has lived for significantly longer than it did with the computer plugged into the wall.

I intend to proceed this way for the rest of the life of this battery.  I doubt this computer has the life expectancy to also test it with removing the battery, but if it it turns out it does, I'll test that and report back.

Sunday, November 20, 2016

Teach me about people who hand out flyers and coupons

Living in a neighbourhood with a lot of pedestrian traffic, I see a lot of people standing on the sidewalk handing out flyers and/or coupons.

My natural inclination is to politely decline anything I'm not in the market for.  But it occurred to me in the shower that I might be making their job harder, depending on how they are incentivized and/or rewarded by their employers.

Are they incentivized to get rid of all their flyers, or are they incentivized to have a high conversion rate?  If they have to stand out in the cold until they get rid of all their flyers, or if their employer looks more positively upon them for handing out more flyers, I'm doing them a kindness by taking a flyer regardless of whether I'm in the market for what they're selling. But if they're incentivized based on conversion rate, i.e. their employer looks more positive upon them for people actually coming into the business and buying something after receiving a flyer/coupon, I should keep rejecting things I have no intention of using.

Anyone know which approach would be the kindest to the people in this thankless job?

Monday, November 07, 2016

People who can leave the house without a plan

With the already very loud US election coming to a crescendo, my various feeds are filling up with US "get out the vote" advice.  And one piece of advice I keep seeing is that you should make a specific plan to vote - when you're going to do it, how you're going to get there, what you'll do if you encounter various possible obstacles.  Apparently people who make a plan are more likely to actually end up voting.

The part that baffles me: are there people who don't make a plan when they're going out to get shit done?  Because I can't not!

The plans I make are nothing terribly complex or arduous, but they are present.  For example, today's was "It's 15 degrees, not doing anything important, so I'll wear the pink shirt, black sweater and jeans. I need to mail the card and acquire lemon cupcakes. The mailman collects from the nearest mailbox at 5, and I have a phone appointment at 5.  So stop working at 4, write, address and stamp the card, put the card in my purse, put on default boots and black trenchcoat. Walk to the mailbox, mail the card, check the time. If I have time to go to Loblaw's before my phone appointment, go to Loblaw's and buy lemon cupcakes if they have time. If I don't have time to go to Loblaw's or they don't have lemon cupcakes, go home so I can make my phone appointment and go to the cupcake place after my phone appointment."

I don't do this on purpose.  My brain just does it before I leave the house.

But apparently there are people who can leave the house - even on a day when they have an important, time-sensitive errand, without making a plan?

Monday, October 17, 2016

Warning: there's a good chance you might have to face backwards on a VIA Rail train

I recently travelled outside the GTA for the first time in years, so I decided to indulge myself by taking the train. Trains are my favourite mode of transportation for many reasons, not least of which is that, unlike cars, buses and planes, I don't get motion sick on rails.  I can read to my heart's content on a train, whereas on a road or in the air I spend the entire trip fighting off nausea.

However, on the first leg of my journey, I was surprised to discover that my seat - and many others in the train car - faced backwards.

Riding backwards makes me nauseous even on rails.  I don't think I could have even made it to the next station without vomiting. Fortunately, a staff member promptly and cheerfully switched me to a forward-facing seat.  Unfortunately, I got the last forward-facing seat, so the poor lady behind me was struggling with her own motion-sickness for the rest of the journey.

I asked if my seat on my return journey would be facing forward, and no one on the train or in the station could tell me because they don't know until the train is actually pulled up to the platform what kind of configuration it has.

Fortunately I was facing forward on the way home, but if I hadn't been I would have had to literally get off the train, eat the cost of cancelling my ticket last minute, and find another way home.  If I were to fly, at least I'd only be fighting off nausea for one hour instead of four!

VIA Rail does not yet have the ability to specify a forward-facing seat when you book, but they've assured me on Twitter that they intend to implement this functionality by the end of 2017.

I hope they do, so whenever I next have to travel I can again enjoy a nausea-free trip.  But until then, beware if, like me, you absolutely have to face forwards.

Sunday, October 02, 2016

Tales from Grade 9 group work

Grade 9 science class. I was generally uncomfortable in this class. My friends all abandoned me at the beginning of the year and I hadn't made any new friends. There wasn't even anyone in this class with whom I casually socialized. I sat alone at one of those lab tables that's intended for two people.

I was good at science, but didn't have any particular passion for it. Because I'd spent the last three years being bullied for being a trekkie, I was worried that here, in Big Scary High School, I'd be bullied for showing any aptitude towards science. But this was a required course. I had no choice. So I kept my head down, quietly did my work, and pulled in low As, making a point of not putting in enough effort or enthusiasm to get high As.

One of our assignments was that we had to dissect a fish. This worried me. I'm a naturally squeamish person. Even the smell of the stuff the fish were preserved in (formaldehyde?) turned my stomach. I tried to think of ways to get out of it, tried to figure out if I could make an argument on moral grounds (I'd recently gone vegetarian, but my shoes were still leather - you can't be picky when you wear a size 11!), but I knew I'd never have the support of my parents and I didn't want to get in trouble, or to draw attention to myself if my attempt wasn't going to be successful. So I found myself there, in the nauseatingly smelly classroom, the day the fishes were being dissected.

I was grouped up with the two boys behind me. This worried me too. I didn't know them very well, but they seemed like the kind of people who would be mean to me. They got poor marks in the class, and had that unfortunate early adolescent male "might not necessarily have bathed within the last 24 hours" look. They wore faded heavy metal t-shirts, probably smoked, and would almost certainly know how to get beer. They used swear words in casual conversation (a habit I hadn't yet picked up) and called breasts "boobies" (which was more disrespectful than I was comfortable with at the time - not to mention that they talked about breasts in class enough that I knew what they called them). It was like Wayne & Garth meet Beavis & Butthead. I was afraid not only that they might be mean to me, but that they might use the bits of dissected dead fish to torment me, putting fish eyeballs down my shirt and the like. So it was with trepidation that I turned around to their table and huddled over the dissection tray with them.

To my surprise, the boys did not hesitate to pick up the scalpel and start cutting the fish open. I'd thought I was going to have to do it myself! Bonus! So I just sat back watching the proceedings. They get the fish open, and remove something from its guts using the tweezers.

"What's this?" they wonder. It's large and lumpy, didn't seem very attached to anything, takes of most of the fishy's belly, and doesn't look like anything in the diagram.

"Eggs," I blurt out. "The stuff in the diagram is probably still in there, underneath the eggs."

They look at me, pleasantly surprised. It makes perfect sense! They open Ms. Fishy up some more, and find stuff that looks more like the diagram in the book. The more artistic of the two boys starts sketching it, and the other boy carefully, fascinatedly, does the actual dissection. My job is simply to identify the parts and their function, which I could easily do without touching or getting too close to the dead fish. Whenever I identified a part, the boys would peer at the fish, fascinated, lightbulbs going off in their heads, and Artistic Boy would add it to the drawing. Then when we were done, Artistic Boy added a sketch of the eggs to the drawing, Other Boy cleaned up all the gross dissecting stuff, and I quickly knocked off the written part of our assignment.

When we got our assignment back, we'd gotten a perfect mark, plus bonus points for identifying and dealing with the eggs without assistance from the teacher. The boys were quite impressed - they never got perfect marks! - and I was rather pleased to have gotten through the assignment without puking or getting fish eyeballs down my shirt or even having to touch a dead fish! We each came away feeling like we'd done the easy part or the fun part and the other people had done all the work, but the result was better than any of us could have achieved alone.

It would never have occurred to me that I might have something that smoking, drinking metalheads - boys who looked scarier than the boys who used to bully me - could use. And it certainly would never have occurred to me that they could have something I could use. We didn't become friends - I never saw them outside of that class, and don't even remember their names. But we were cordial neighbours who occasionally helped each other out in science class using our respective talents. While this all seems perfectly innocuous now, it was a new concept to my 14-year-old self who was still skittish from years of bullying, and it worked far better than I ever would have imagined.

***

This should have been revelatory. It should have led me to seek out people with complementary skill sets for group projects, even if they aren't the kind of people I would seek out as friends. It should have led me to see the value in what I can contribute and what others can contribute and how this can all be combined to make a whole that is bigger than the sum of its parts.

But, unfortunately, soon after that came the health class project.

***

I forget exactly what the health class project was, but what's relevant is that it needed a written report and several medical diagrams.  I was paired with a girl who was cooler than me, whom I very much wanted to befriend. As we looked over the assignment and planned out what we needed to do, I found myself most intimidated by the diagrams. No way could I draw these complicated medical diagrams!  Fortunately, the girl I was paired with could draw, so she started by doing the diagrams while I knocked off the written part of the report.  I'd done about 12 pages of writing to her 3 pages of drawing, but it took us the same amount of time and we each felt that we'd done the easy part.

Unfortunately, the way the health teacher marked group projects was by asking the group members how much they'd each done, and distributing marks accordingly.  And because my work took up so many more pages than hers, I got a better mark.

My 14-year-old self wasn't assertive enough to argue the point to the teacher, pointing out that we'd spent the same amount of time and that my classmate had made the invaluable contribution of doing the work that I was terrible at.  So I walked away with the higher mark and she walked away with the lower mark.

We never became friends. (I just googled her, and she's even cooler now.)  And my nascent inspiration to seek out complementary skill sets for group work were was squelched for the rest of my academic career.

Saturday, September 17, 2016

In which I fall for a practical joke perpetrated by a baby

I'm waiting to cross a street, and this guy pushing a baby in a stroller is waiting next to me. I can't tell how old the baby is - I'd say more than 8 months but less than 2 years.

Suddenly, the baby points skyward and looks up, as though he sees something interesting.  For some reason the father doesn't respond, but I look up to see what the baby's looking at.  However, I don't see anything.  No airplanes, no balloons, no clouds, no birds sitting on a wire, nothing.

So I look back at the baby and say "What do you see?"

And he looks me in the eye and bursts out laughing.

He totally tricked me, and I totally fell for it!

Sunday, August 28, 2016

Things They Should Study: do political positions correlate with attitudes towards politically-incompatible celebrities?

Sometimes the celebrities I follow on Twitter get people telling them to shut up about politics and stick to entertainment.

This is something I find difficult to understand. 

I do see why someone might not want incompatible political opinions turning up in their Twitter feed.  But what I don't understand is why you'd want to keep following someone once you know that they hold these incompatible opinions.

When someone has incompatible politics (by which I don't mean simply that I don't agree with them, but rather that I see their position as outright harmful and/or cruel) I'm not able to respect them enough to be a fan of them. I cease to be interested in their day-to-day life and thoughts, and most likely in their work as well.  Even if for some reason I do maintain interest in their work (for example, perhaps if one member of an ensemble cast for a major fandom has incompatible politics) I no longer have any desire to hear from them as an individual, just to see the finished work.

It would be interesting to study this on a broader level.  Are there any patterns of the political opinions or affiliation of people who want to continue following politically-incompatible celebrities but not hear about their politics, as compared with people who lose interest in politically-incompatible celebrities, as compared with people who can cheerfully continue following a celebrity without regard for their incompatible politics.

They could also study whether there are patterns in real-life relationships as opposed to celebrity-fan relationships, but I find the celebrity-fan relationship particularly interesting because it's unidirectional. If a parent holds political opinions you consider harmful, there's an element of "How can you bring a child into the world and then work politically to make the world a worse place?" But the celebrity has no loyalty or attachment to the individual fan and the fan adores the celebrity, so it's an interesting and unique dynamic.

Friday, August 26, 2016

Late-breaking story on the CBC

I know this has already been thoroughly commented on in many, many places, but I feel the need to post it here for the record:

The CBC's coverage of the Tragically Hip's final concert was an outstanding example of our public broadcaster meeting the needs of Canadians.

We had a need that could be met with a television broadcast.  But, at the same time, this need was not super compatible with the conventions of television broadcasting.  The format required it to be commercial-free, despite the fact that it was in prime time and had a huge number of viewers.  And it happened to be during the Olympics, for which the CBC held broadcasting rights.  It was of unpredictable duration.  The content would likely contain some swear words.  Canadians abroad needed to be able to see it just as much as Canadians at home.

And the CBC overcame all these obstacles to make it happen, prioritizing the needs of Canadians rather than bureaucratic or penny-pinching requirements or the need to put commercials in front of eyeballs.  They could just as easily (actually, far more easily) have shrugged their shoulders and said "Sorry, we're committed to the Olympics", or "Well, we have to run commercials to earn our keep," or "You can't say 'fuck' on television!" or "Broadcast only available in Canada" and we wouldn't even have noticed. But instead they stepped up, figured out a way to make it work, and served a huge number of Canadians - more than twice the number of Canadians who voted for the winning party in any election in my lifetime!

Many people noticed and appreciated this, and I hope that creates and sustains the political will to give the CBC the resources it needs to keep meeting our needs in the future, even when they don't correspond tidily with the conventions of broadcasting.