How Nortel pensioners can state their case more compellingly

On the radio yesterday morning, I heard an interview with a Nortel pensioner talking about the aftermath of the severe cuts to their pensions and benefits. Unfortunately, he didn't make his case very compellingly. When the interviewer asked him to describe how it affected his life, he said something about how he and his wife have to sit down and budget and figure out if they can afford expenditures. But that's not going to elicit sympathy in those who aren't already onside - people are going to say "So what? That's how real life works."

So here, with, as Col. Brandon says, an earnest desire to be useful, are some starting points for Nortel pensioners and others in similar positions to make their case more compellingly.

What decisions did you make in your working life that you would have done differently if you'd known you weren't going to have the promised pension or benefits? Did you work full-time for the purpose of increasing your pensionability, even though you didn't need the income? Did you stay with the job rather than pursuing a higher-paying or more rewarding alternative so that you'd have a pension? Did your spouse forgo pursuing pensionable employment to pursue their dreams or stay home with the kids or go back to school or have a go at starting a business because you had the security of your pension?

How would you have scheduled your retirement differently if you'd known you weren't going to have the promised pension or benefits? Would you have stopped working when you did? Have you been out of the workforce for 10 years and suddenly have to make money? What about older retirees - is there anyone whose dementia started setting in around the time pensions are eliminated so now they can't work and need more expensive care, but still have a decade or two of life expectancy left?

How would your financial planning have been different if you'd known you weren't going to have the promised pension or benefits? How much money did you pay into your pension anyway? Did you ever get any of that money back? By how much were your RRSP limits reduced each year? How much compound interest have you missed out on? Can you afford your home? Do you now have to live somewhere less pleasant, less safe, less convenient, less conducive to aging in place? Are there now bugs crawling out of your walls?

How would your basic life decisions have been different? Did you pay for your kid's wedding or your parent's nursing home only to discover that now you'd be much better off with that money back? Did you put one kid through university and now can't afford to do so for the other? Are you locked into a three-year iphone contract? Do you now have to ration your cheese intake? Would your family planning decisions have been different?

How does this affect your health? Can you no longer afford the proton pump inhibitors you need to eat adequately or the acupuncture you need to relieve your chronic pain? Have you cut back on dental care? Is your glasses prescription current? Will you have to have your dog put down earlier than you otherwise would because you can't afford the lifesaving veterinary treatments?

Tell people, in specific terms they can identify with, how the pension cutbacks have affected your everyday life. Tell them about choices you made that were sensible and prudent with the assumption that you'd get the pension you were promised, but that you would have made differently if you'd known that you wouldn't get the promised pension. Keep at the forefront of your message the fact that you were promised more, and not only planned accordingly but paid commensurate contributions into the pension plan. That's far more compelling than vague statements about having to budget.

The disparity between the size of glasses and the size of standard drinks

Reading about a game on the LCBO website that tests how well you can pour a standard drink, I was reminded of the first set of wineglasses I ever purchased.

I had one or two wineglasses among my worldly possessions already, but I wanted to get some that matched. They were cheap, from the dollar store or something, but they were decently nice-looking and I quite liked them. We christened them with a lovely glass of wine that gave us quite a happy buzz indeed. The next day, I got home from work and poured myself a glass of wine, and...discovered that there wasn't even one glass left in the bottle? How could that be? The two of us had one glass each the previous day, there are five glasses in a bottle, where did the rest of the wine go?

Turned out they were oversized glasses. When you filled them to a reasonable-looking place, they contained two standard drinks of wine (unlike my previous glasses, which, when filled to a reasonable-looking place, contained one standard drink of wine.) No wonder we got such a good buzz on the previous night! There hadn't been any serious consequences to that little adventure, but what if those glasses had been used to serve to someone who had been driving?

This gets me thinking that it would be useful if glasses intended for alcoholic beverages were only available in single standard-drink sizes. Of course, oenophiles would probably complain because they like those oversized bowls so you can get the nose of the wine. So what if there was a line on the glass itself indicating how far to fill it for one standard drink? What if the box they come in or the bottom of the glass was marked with a warning label saying how many standard drinks it holds?

This would probably still garner complaints about the government meddling in commerce and whatnot, so here's a faster and easier solution that should offend no one: the LCBO should give away free glasses. They should be simple but attractive, of decent quality, and sized to make it impossible to accidentally overserve. They should be available in any quantity up to whatever constitutes a normal set of glasses like you might find in a wedding registry. You can just walk in and pick them up, no drama, and perhaps they could even include them with purchases as a value-added bonus at the beginning. Drinking glasses are cheap (I've bought them commercially in a set for as little as 50 cents a glass), the LCBO's profits are high, and hindering accidental overserving surely falls within their social responsibility mandate. The fact that they're given away for free at the place where you go to buy alcohol anyway means that people would have to make more effort to get oversized glasses than to get standard-sized glasses, so more responsible drinking is easier than less responsible drinking.

Personally, I'd still prefer if all alcohol glasses commercially available had to be sized to a standard drink, but I think a lot of people would complain. Giving them away at the LCBO would get the job done for people who don't care what kind of glasses they use and people who do want their glasses sized to a standard drink, without giving those who want non-standard glasses any reason to complain.

What if the library gave patrons credit for early returns?

One thing that surprised me in discussions of the library charging for holds that aren't picked up is the number of people who are annoyed not just by people who don't pick up their holds, but by people who pick up their holds on the last day before they expire, or keep library materials check out right up until the due date.

I don't consider this a problem myself and I don't know if the library considers it a problem, but nevertheless my shower gave me an idea to address it:

What if libraries gave patrons credit for holds picked up early or books returned early? For example, using amounts that make the math easy and might not necessarily be the optimal ratio, suppose they credit one cent to your account for every day before the deadline that you either pick up a hold or return an item. Late fines are currently 10 cents a day, so this would mean that if you're a cumulative total of 10 days early in circulating your material, that will cancel out one day's late fine.

The big question here is whether circulating material faster is more important to the libraries than the revenue generated by fines. I don't know the answer to that question.

The other question is whether this would motivate people to game the system by taking out material they don't want and returning it right away. This incentive could be partially mitigated by allowing the credits to only offset future fines and you still have to pay fines already incurred. People could still game the system, but how many people are organized enough to game the system in anticipation of future late fines but not organized enough to get their books back in time? I don't know the answer to that question.

But if it turns out it actually is important for the library to encourage faster circulation of materials, this could be a starting point for brainstorming.

A little less conversation: building better consensus-building

One thing I find absolutely tedious about watching youtubes of Occupy is the people's mike. It takes such a long time to say anything! This also echoes something I find tedious about municipal politics: live, in-person consultations where anyone gets to get up and talk. Again, it takes such a long time! Surely it would be faster, easier, and more convenient to have everyone submit their ideas in writing - reading is faster than talking, and the writing process tends to result a more organized deputation than extemporizing does.

But, at the same time, there's a certain democracy to everyone getting up and having their say in full that we don't necessarily want to lose. So how can we make the general process of public consultation faster and easier and less tedious without making it less democratic?

Here's what I've got so far:

We start with a whiteboard, which can be either literal, virtual, or metaphorical depending on what's needed. For a set and reasonable period of time, everyone writes on the whiteboard every factor they can think of that needs to be taken into consideration for the issue in question. Each factor only needs to appear on the whiteboard once, no matter how many people think it's important (we'll address the number of people who think it's important in a minute.) So even if every single person in the room thinks it's important for the new widgets to be backwards-compatible with existing widgets, only one person needs to stand up and say so or send in an email saying so for it to get written on the whiteboard.

This is also a question and answer time. Anyone can post or ask a question, and anyone can answer or expand on anyone else's answers. All questions asked and all answers given are recorded on another whiteboard for everyone's review.

After the period of time for contributing to the whiteboard is over, there's a voting period. During the voting period, everyone votes on each factor on two axes: Agree/Disagree and Important/Unimportant. You can cast a neutral vote by abstaining. Once all the votes have been tallied, you can see what the collective's priorities are. Then they can take action to implement everything that gets a high number of Agree and Important votes and avoid everything that gets a high number of Disagree and Important votes. Things voted Unimportant but with a clear Agree or Disagree consensus will be addressed if doing so doesn't interfere with the things voted Important. Things voted Important but without a clear consensus could be subject to further discussion/dissection, or looked at in terms of how they related to other Important factors with clearer consensus.

Whiteboard and voting will be made as accessible as possible. The whole thing could be online if everyone involved has internet access, but if that's difficult for anyone then in-person, telephone, write-in, and any other kind of input method people might require should be allowed.

The enormous advantage of this method would be that it eliminates duplication. Instead of having to hear (or even read) dozens of impassioned pleas on the importance of backwards-compatibility, only one person has to bring it up and the importance will be made clear in the voting phase. At the same time, if one lone maverick is insistent that the widgets should glow in the dark, it's right up there with all the other idea and will stand and fall on its own merits. If other people think it's a good idea, it could go through even though that one guy doesn't have very much reach.

This method of consensus-building is far from perfect, but I'm putting it out there as a starting point. Improvements welcome.

What if quality of housing counted towards section 37 community benefits?

I was looking at City of Toronto documents for a proposed development, and I was surprised to see that the developer had to contribute a certain amount of money as "community benefits" to various projects in the area. Turns out this is set out in section 37 of Ontario's Planning Act. In basic terms, it means that if developers want more height or density than normally permitted, they have to give something back to the community in exchange. In the documents I was looking at, they suggested contributing money to parks or streetscape projects.

But what if developers could contribute their community benefits through quality of housing?

For example, what if they provided more family-sized suites, or lower prices, or more energy-efficient housing, or some combination of the above? What if they provided some of the suites for use as public housing? What if they reserved a certain number (or even all!) the suites for purchase by owners rather than investors or agents who are just going to buy and flip or rent them out for profit?

As an area resident, I find it beneficial to increase the supply of suites that meet my needs, even if I'm not immediately in the market for moving. If the supply increases, that might drive down prices, thus reducing my rent increase as well as making it easier to buy.

There would need to be measures to make sure that they don't introduce crappy housing as a baseline, upgrade it to normal housing, and call it a community benefit. There also need to be measures to make sure that this better-quality or better-value housing benefits actual residents, rather than getting snapped up by investors.

Off the top of my head, perhaps quality of housing could be measured relative to the rest of the neighbourhood. If it's basically the same as the rest of the neighbourhood, you get fewer points than if you're introducing the first building in the neighbourhood to have central air conditioning. This is analogous to how the City might try to encourage grocery stores to move into neighbourhoods that are food deserts, but wouldn't take any particular measures to encourage grocery stores to move into neighbourhoods that already have a couple of grocery stores.

To keep investors and flippers from yoinking better-value housing, perhaps the amount of community benefit credit the developer gets for building lower-priced units could be based on the number that are still occupied by the original owners after a certain amount of time. The flaw here is that the developers don't have much control over what people do with their units after they buy them, but they do have the power to stop these kinds of marketing techniques and instead focus on the actual community they're becoming a part of.

The dialogue surrounding development and intensification all too often seems to disregard the fact that what they're building are people's homes, and the people who live there will be citizens, constituents, and community members. I'd really like to see analysis of a development's impact on "the community" include the people who will be living there.

A faster alternative to peeling eggs

The way I was taught to open hard-boiled eggs is to smash them on the counter and roll them around until there's a bunch of cracks in the shell, then peel the shell off. I find that disproportionately time-consuming (#FirstWorldProblems).

I've discovered a faster way. You know how you open a soft-boiled egg by putting it in an egg cup and tapping the shell with the spoon until it breaks into two pieces? Put your hard-boiled egg down on a plate or bowl (or the counter if no one's watching) and tap it like you would a soft-boiled egg but lengthwise instead of widthwise. Now you've got two pieces, and each piece is the perfect size to scoop out of the shell with a teaspoon. Way faster!

The disadvantage of this method is you need a spoon and perhaps a dish of some sort, but if you have a dishwasher it's more efficient.

What to do when someone is standing in front of the seat you want on the subway

I always get really annoyed by people who stand in front of empty seats on the subway, blocking access to those seats for others who might want to sit down.

The other day, I was inadvertently that idiot standing in front of the seat. (The seat was vacated just before I was about to get off the train myself, and I was too oblivious to think to move.)

This lady moves in towards the seat, but I'm blocking the way. So she says to me "Oh, sorry, were you going to sit there?" Which led me to step back from the seat, give it to her, and apologize.

Some people argue that you should just ask standers who are blocking seats to move so you can sit down, but not everyone is comfortable with that approach and it is marginally confrontational, asking the stander to stop doing something (thus implying that they're being bad). This lady's approach allows both people to save face and look generous by offering the seat to each other, with the same end result.

Thanks, subway lady, and I apologize again for blocking your seat!

How to get people to stop asking you for money

Put in your earbuds and walk down the street at your normal brisk, businesslike pace. Whenever you see someone panhandling or fundraising or otherwise trying to part you and your money, make direct eye contact, smile, nod, say "Good morning", and keep going without once breaking stride. Do this for a couple of weeks, and they'll all start ignoring you.

The earbuds give you plausible deniability of having heard the exact words they use to greet you, allowing you to make your own script. The direct eye contact and acknowledgement eliminates any incentive for them to take extraordinary measures to attract your attention. And the full polite greeting gives you control over the entire script for long enough to pass the other person walking at your normal brisk, businesslike pace.

After a couple of weeks of this, the panhandlers catch on that you're useless and focus their efforts on other people.

How to raise taxes so it doesn't hurt

There are a number of jurisdictions in the world where raising taxes would be useful, but people don't want them to because it will hurt. Here's an idea on how to possibly make it not hurt.

If tax brackets are constructed properly, people whose gross incomes increase will always have a higher net income, even if it puts them in a higher tax bracket.

However, if taxes increase, it's possible that people whose gross incomes increase or stay the same might end up with a lower net income than before, and that's where it really hurts. (If your gross income and net income both increase, you still feel like "YAY, more money!" If your gross income decreases your net income will also decrease and that will hurt, of course, but it will hurt regardless of taxes.)

Here's an example of how it works. For simplicity, I'm pretending there's only one tax bracket. The principle still applies with tax brackets, it's just that even fewer people would be affected.

Suppose your gross salary is $50,000 and your tax rate is 20%. $50,000*0.8=$40,000, so your net pay is $40,000.

Suppose they raise the tax rate to 21%, and at the same time you get a raise and your gross pay increases to $51,000. $51,000*0.79=$40,290. So your net pay is still higher than it was last year, even though your tax rate has increased.

Now suppose that, instead of $51,000, your gross pay increases to $50,500. Your net pay would be $50,000*0.79=$39,500, which means you'd be taking home less money than last year even though you got a raise. THAT would suck.

So what they need to do is have some kind of grace period for the people in these margins, whose gross income increases but net income decreases because of the tax hikes. Maybe for a year or five years or something reasonable, they could guarantee that if your gross income increases, your net income will not decrease. If your gross income decreases, your net income will remain the same proportion of your gross income.

Given the nature of inflation, unless the whole economy is tanking (which it might actually be...), this will affect very few people. In the example I gave above, the pay raise to $51,000 is a 2% increase, and 2% is generally the target inflation rate. So everyone who isn't falling behind will still get a net pay increase. All they need to do is put in a bit of a net income guarantee for those who are falling behind, and it won't hurt.

Further attempts to translate Eddie Izzard's giraffes and tigers

A while back, I proposed a strategy for translating Eddie Izzard's (technically untranslatable) giraffes and tigers bit. The basis of this approach was that the tiger needs to be replaced with something that's charadable in French.

In the shower this morning, it occurred to me that it might be possible to keep the tiger.

The French for "tiger" is tigre (scroll down for French pronunciation). The first syllable could be ti, as in the casual French diminutive for petit. And, if the onomatopoeia for a growling predator animal is reasonably similar in French, the second syllable could be "grrr" just like in English.

Now you're probably thinking (especially if you're Anglophone) that the second syllable of the French tigre doesn't sound very much like "grrr". Which is absolutely true. But it the second syllable of the English word "tiger" as pronounced in Eddie's own non-rhotic dialect doesn't sound much like the very rhotic "grrr" either. Eddie pronounces it something like the UK example provided by "mooncow" here, in a way that I would write out in my North American dialect as "tie-guh". The fact that the English word "tiger" contains a G and an R seems to be enough to carry the charade in non-rhotic English, so I see no reason why it wouldn't work in French. (I don't know if the French sound in the second syllable of tigre can be defined as rhotic or not because I never paid enough attention to my phonetics unit, but the French R is certainly more growly like a tiger than the non-rhotic UK English R in the English word "tiger".)

The flaw in this translation is still in the first syllable, using the diminutive ti. In English the first syllable is "tie", which Eddie charades by miming the act of tying a tie (i.e. men's neckwear). The Anglophone audience sees this and thinks "tie", thus making the charade effective. However, any effective charading of the French ti will first lead the Francophone audience to petit, from which they'd need to be guided to ti. It's still a two-step process in French where it's a one-step process in English, and the additional step is significant when you're doing something as complicated as trying to communicate syllables soundlessly while imitating a giraffe.

I can't tell you whether or not this translation would work on stage. It would have to be tested to an actual audience in real-life conditions. But it's the closest I've gotten so far to translating this untranslatable sketch, so I'm posting it.

This year's election night drinking game

Drink every time a riding changes hands. Go!

Let's brainstorm ways to vote effectively while ignorant

The most common reason I hear for people not voting is ignorance. They don't feel familiar enough with the issues or the overall situation, but they aren't about to accept spin or partisan statements at face value. This is actually the reason behind the one time I chose not to vote. The 2000 municipal election happened just weeks after I'd moved to Toronto, and I didn't feel like I had any objective sense of the political environment. If, hypothetically (because I forget what the actual issues were), one candidate said that TTC service is woefully inadequate and needs to be improved regardless of the cost, and another candidate had said that the city was in dire financial straits and we need to cut back on TTC service to survive, I could not have determined which one was true because I'd only been there a couple of weeks and was still excited by the novelty of a subway. Even a thorough reading of the platforms and media coverage wouldn't have led me to be able to make a fully-informed vote.

General social consensus is that everyone should vote. But if you feel like you aren't fully informed, maybe it isn't a good idea. What if you fall for some spin and vote wrong?

So let's brainstorm some ways that people can make good use of their vote if they're currently too ignorant to vote informedly. I have a few ideas, but I'm hoping you guys can help me come up with more.

1. Vote for your #1 issue. What one thing that falls under this level of government's jurisdiction has the greatest impact on you, personally? OR, what one issue that falls under this level of government's jurisdiction to you feel is most important at a societal level? Consider focusing on this issue, reading a variety of comment from a variety of sources until perhaps you feel you can read between the lines on this issue, and either voting for whoever will do the most good in this one area, or against whoever will do the most harm in this one area. Note: I do NOT recommend this approach if you don't have a #1 issue at this level of government and have to kind of stop and try to think of one.

2. Vote in support of someone you care about. Is someone you care about more affected by the outcome of the election than the average citizen? Do they work for, or in a field that falls under the immediate jurisdiction of, this level of government? Are they dependent on a program that falls under this level of government, or affected by the absence of a program that this level of government should be providing? Ask them how they think you should vote. I only recommend this approach if you care enough about this person that you genuinely don't mind putting aside your own needs in favour of theirs. Unless you are closely aligned on all political issues, it's possible that the party they recommend voting for won't be the same as you would have chosen on your own.

3. Vote for an individual candidate you like. Do you find any of the candidates in your riding particularly appealing? Maybe one of them is especially responsive to your questions. Maybe one of them makes you think "THAT's the kind of person we need in public office!" If this is the case, and you don't feel capable of voting on policy, consider voting for the individual. Two caveats for this method: 1) Read the candidate's platform (and, if they've held public office before, voting history) to make sure they're not unacceptable. 2) Try to talk to the other candidates and give them a chance to impress you too, so you don't vote for someone solely on the basis of having being the first to canvass you.

Those are all the ideas I have at the moment. Anyone have any more?

How to make corporate tax breaks create jobs

I previously blogged a rather complex idea to make corporate taxes support social services, with the ultimate goal of encouraging job creation.

I think I've come up with a simpler solution: make payroll a tax deduction. All money that companies pay to their employees in pay and benefits is deducted from their taxable revenues. If a company has $10 million revenues and pays $5 million in payroll, they're only taxed on the remaining $5 million.

Further idea but more complex: different tax rates for employers with different employment conditions. Employers that pay less, have fewer benefits, use a greater percentage of contract workers etc. have to pay a higher tax rate, and companies that provide more stable employment get a lower tax rate. Perhaps there could be a grace period of several years for new businesses just starting out, because obviously you can't provide a pension plan when you're two people working out of a garage. I think small businesses could also use the loophole of the owner drawing as a salary any profits the business makes.

How to set politicians' salaries

There's been some debate recently here in Toronto about whether our city councillors should get a pay raise. On one hand, they already get way more money than most of us and the city is short on money. On the other hand, it would be morally wrong for me to oppose a cost of living increase for anyone. I don't object to politicians being paid more than me. They don't have job security, they're subject to public scrutiny, and usually have to quit (or at least take unpaid leave from) their regular job just to run for office (with no guarantee of being elected.) But there needs to be some way to make their pay reflect the average citizen's situation.

So here's what I came up with.

Each politician's salary is the sum of the following numbers:

• the median individual income in the jurisdiction they represent
  
• the median individual income of all people represented by their level of government
  
• the median individual income of the poorest 20% in the jurisdiction they represent
  
• the median individual income of the poorest 20% represented by their level of government

(For the purposes of this post, "the jurisdiction they represent" means a ward at the municipal level and a riding at the provincial or federal level. "People represented by their level of government" means everyone in the city, province, or country at the municipal, provincial, and federal levels respectively.)

If the sum of these four numbers is not within a range that's commensurate with current salaries for that particular government, then the total is multiplied by a coefficient. The coefficient is whatever number will make the average salary under the new system equal to the average salary under the old system. The coefficient will then remain constant year to year.

The result of all this is that politicians would have an immediate personal investment in the fortunes of their own constituents and their level of government as a whole. The poorest 20% receive extra weight to make sure we don't create an incentive to make the very rich excessively richer (thus bringing up averages) while ignoring ordinary people. Similarly, we're using median instead of mean because of what we learned here, although I'd accept mean if there's a sound argument for it.

Possible issue: under this system, representatives of ridings with higher incomes would get more money.

Possible mitigating factor: maybe that will just mean that their income is commensurate with the cost of living in the riding, so it might all even out.

Another possible issue: "star" candidates who are parachuted in to ridings where they don't live because the parties think they can win will have more incentive to pick richer ridings.

Possible mitigating factors: 1. Might this already be happening anyway? 2. Would it actually affect the results that citizens get?

Improving anti-peer-pressure education

Last week, I blogged about how my grandmother gave me strategies for tricking your friends into thinking you're drinking when you're not, which surprised me because in what world do your friends try to get you to drink when you don't want to? But then I realized that the anti-peer-pressure education I received assumed just that.

The anti-peer-pressure education I received talked about strategies for convincing our interlocutor of our no - making excuses or distracting them - as though simply politely declining wasn't an option. I now find myself wondering if this might have actually introduced the idea that it's normal to peer pressure people, whereas in real life, in the adult world, it isn't. So have an idea for modifying peer pressure education to address this.

On the first day or two, they go through the material normally, with their usual teacher. But the next day, there's a substitute teacher. Rather than being chosen from the supply teacher pool using whatever the normal method is, the sub is very carefully cast. She's young, probably just out of teacher's college. She's attractive and dressed trendily, and very much comes across as someone's cool older sister.

The sub gets the class started off on the anti-peer-pressure exercises from the textbook, then drifts off to the side of the classroom while the students are supposed to be doing their seatwork. She settles in comfortably near where the cool kids are sitting, casually leaning against a ledge or table and looking over the exercises they're working on. Then, in a conspiratorial tone that can be overheard by the entire classroom, she says to the cool kids "I can't believe this is in your curriculum! Do they seriously think you guys are pathetic enough to be obsessing over who is and isn't drinking that day?" It isn't a massive rant, it's more of a bitching session with the students, like you'd have with your classmates when given a particularly stupid assignment. She doesn't make any sort of point of telling the students that they shouldn't smoke or drink or whatever, she instead just quietly accepts it as something people do, the same way we handle it around adults. "I mean, yeah, if you're having a beer you offer your friend a beer. But why on earth do the people who wrote this book think you'd be pathetic enough to obsess over whether they take you up on the offer?"

This will introduce the idea that it isn't cool or adult to peer pressure people, and create motivation by presenting it as something that the boring grownups don't think the kids are cool or adult enough to understand.

How to buy better school performance with one simple tweak

I've read in a number of places that one approach to improving school performance is to offer money to schools who improve, or offer the most money to the schools who improve the most.

I'm not sure whether or not that approach would work, but here's a simple tweak to maximize its effectiveness: give some of that money to the students.

All students get some money. Students who pass get more money than students who fail. The highest-performing students get more money, but the most improved students also get more money. The highest-performing student in the school and the most-improved student in the school get exactly the same amount of money. Maybe the money baseline could increase with each grade, so that you'll never that less money than last year for getting exactly the same marks (i.e. if a D student pulls their average up to B in grade 10 and gets a shitload of money for improvement, we don't want them to get less money for maintaining a B in Grade 11.)

A school can only be successful if it elicits the desired behaviour in its students. School administrators and teachers already want the students to show the desired behaviour, if only because it makes life easier. If financial incentives are effective and appropriate (and I'm not sure whether or not they are), why not give at least part of them to the group that actually front-line produces the results being evaluated?

Shyness as selfish: a more useful approach

A while back, I heard the idea that shyness is selfish, and I blogged about why this selfishness (insofar as it is selfish) seems perfectly reasonable to shy people.

However, explaining the concept as "shyness is selfish" is unhelpful, because what it's really saying is "Stop being shy!" And you can't just stop being shy. You need specific strategies, accrued experience, a safe environment, and cumulative empirical evidence of the net results produced by non-shy behaviour. It isn't a matter of convincing people why to do it, it's a matter of explaining in specific terms how.

Today it occurred to me that the real point is that non-shy behaviour is helpful and useful. I learned this by watching my Gen Y colleagues, who are so much more confident and Entitled than I am. This is useful to me. I don't have to think of everything myself or start all the conversations or figure out what the other person needs. If your goal is to get people to unshy, it would be far more effective to show them why and how unshying is helpful to others rather than just making them feel guilty for being "selfish" on top of feeling shy.

I've heard this presented in loose terms by people saying you should "contribute", but that implies that what you say has to be big and important enough to be considered a "contribution", which adds even more pressure. And there's also conventional wisdom like "Ask questions!" and "Approach another person who's shy!" But that doesn't work so well, because if you're shy the last thing you want is some stranger wandering up and interrogating you.

It's more useful to express precisely what unshy actions a shy person can take and why exactly they're helpful to others, and even more useful to witness this in action. It takes self-awareness and bravery and a supportive environment, but it's far more useful than just telling the shy person they're being selfish.

A concrete improvement to one of the TTC panel recommendations

I've been reading the TTC Customer Service Panel Report (PDF), and I thought of a way to improve upon Recommendation 2R.

The report says:

OBSERVATION 2R

Many customers stand right in the doorway of the subway cars, which blocks and slows down passengers getting on or off.

RECOMMENDATION 2R: Review Subway Door Signage

The TTC should review the current signs that say, "Do not block doorway.” A more effective sign should be developed and used on all subway car doors.

This issue would be better addressed by thinking about why people stand in doorways.

People stand in the doorways because those little red and clear wall-like things next to the doorways are convenient to lean against. It's easy to stay balanced there, and you can even have your hands free to read or text or game. To address this - especially if there's still time to tweak the design of the new subway cars - they need to make the doorways less convenient places to stand, and other parts of the subway car more convenient places to stand.

In terms of immediate action, the best thing they could do install a rail down the centre of the ceiling of trains that don't already have a rail there. (Some do and some don't). When there's no centre ceiling rail, it's very difficult to stand in the aisle, so more people will gravitate to other parts of the trains (including all the nice convenient walls and bars near the door). A centre rail enables tall people at least to stand comfortably in the middle of the aisle, well away from the doors, without fear of losing balance. It won't solve the whole problem, but it will help.

In the more long term, the ideal would be good handsfree standing places that aren't near the door.

The other thing to keep in mind is that it's totally okay to stand in front of the doors that aren't going to open. If I'm riding north on Yonge from downtown and getting off at Eglinton, it's totally okay for me to stand in front of the left-hand doors, because all the downtown stations use the right-hand doors and Eglinton is the first station to open on the left. I'm in front of the doors the whole time, but totally out of everyone's way.

However, sometimes people block doors because they don't know which doors are going to open next. Longtime riders on familiar routes know, but people who are new to a given route sometimes stand in front of the wrong door thinking they're diligently keeping out of the way. If there was some kind of visual or audio signal indicating which doors are going to open next, people could get themselves out of the way before the train pulls into the station.

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Also, I just had to add this really bizarre thing from the Panel's proposed list of customer responsibilities:

Never run to catch the bus, streetcar, or subway. This is dangerous for you as well as other riders.

I see the argument for not running on a subway platform. However, by telling us not to run for a bus or streetcar, they'd be basically telling us not to run down the street! Sorry, TTC, but that's out of your jurisdiction. We can evaluate the risk of running down the street for ourselves, thanks.

I sincerely hope they choose not to retain that particular wording.

How to get all law-abiding citizens to trust police with two simple rules

1. If you are found to be innocent of whatever police were trying to arrest/detain/search/question you for in the first place, you (and anyone acting on your behalf/in your defence) cannot be charged with assaulting a police officer, obstructing justice, resisting arrest, and all those other laws that exist to enable police to catch bad guys.

As I blogged about before, a main reason for being afraid of the police is that even if their original reasoning or methods are bullshit and you're just trying to protect yourself, they can still rightfully arrest you for assaulting an officer or resisting arrest. If a bunch of plainclothes police try to throw you into a van and you try to fight back because, hey, strange men throwing you into a van, they can still charge you with resisting arrest, obstructing justice, assaulting an officer, mischief - even if it was a case of mistaken identity and you aren't actually the person they wanted to arrest.

So they should change this rule. If law-abiding citizens truly had nothing to fear, we'd be much more trusting of and willing to cooperate with police.

2. If the conditions of your detention do not meet Geneva Convention standards, you get financial compensation. Always. Period. Even if you're guilty.

As I mentioned in #10 of my braindump, what makes me more afraid of the police than of the black bloc is the detention conditions. If the worst a law-abiding citizen had to fear from police is having to sit around for a while, with access to sufficient drinking water and adequate toilet conditions, while the red tape is untangled, we'd have no reason to fear them. But once they start denying us drinking water and threatening us with rape, they become the biggest threat to us - and the reason why I now wouldn't even consider calling the police unless the threat I faced was even greater than several days of insufficient drinking water and rape threats. If they could get back to a place where I can be confident that the inconvenience I'd suffer if wrongfully arrested is no worse than waiting in line at some government office, I could trust them again.

Variations I'm toying with:

a) Financial compensation for inhumane detention conditions is somehow deducted from police salary increases. Not sure if this is logistically possible, not really comfortable with establishing the precedent of cutting workers' pay punitively (what if it was just the police chief's pay?), pretty sure pay negotiations would just take this into account and demand higher increases to adapt.

b) If you're found to be innocent and are detained under inhumane conditions, not only do you get financial compensation, but you get a get out of jail free card (or maybe several, depending on the length and severity of your detention). So next time you're guilty of something, they have to throw out the charges, or next time you find yourself kettled or otherwise detained by police, they have to let you go. Even if you're guilty that time.

A solution to busybodies

There are certain parties who like to ask very personal questions and, when you protest, say "But I was just making conversation!"

A possible solution: change the subject to something completely else that's perfectly valid for just making conversation. "So did you see any of the Perseid meteor shower?" "Would you recommend Inception or Scott Pilgrim?" "Is it just me, or are blueberries more expensive this year?" After all, that's conversation!