Things the Library Should Invent: subscribe to author or series

A while back, I read and enjoyed Daughter of Smoke and Bone.  I then googled it and learned that a sequel was in the works, but the title and release date of the sequel hadn't been announced yet.  Then I forgot about all it.

 

Fortunately, the sequel (entitled Days of Blood and Starlight - I haven't read it yet so no spoilers please) turned up on some of the Best Books of 2012 lists, so I was reminded of its existence and added it to my holds list.  However, if it hadn't been mentioned in an article I read, I would never have thought to look it up again and would miss the opportunity to spend more time with the characters.

 

The same thing keeps happening with the Dexter series.  I forget to look for new books and discover two have been written since I last checked, or I check for new books and find that there aren't any.  I'd also be interested in reading whatever Malcolm Gladwell happens to write next, but he hasn't published in 3 years. I also think I'm going to keep reading the Inspector Gamache series once I catch up, but I don't know whether it's on a predictable publication schedule. 

 

I don't want to subscribe to all the authors' newsletters, because in many cases I’m not actively involved in the fandom so I don't want all the promotional material about book signings and paperback release dates and media appearances.  I just want to be informed when there's a new book to add to my holds list.

 

I think the library would be able to help me with this.

 

I'd like to be able to select an author or series out of the library catalogue, and have it automatically add any new title from that author or series to my holds list.  Users who subscribed first get placed on the holds list first, and users would have the choice whether to add the title in active or inactive mode.  That way I don't need to keep googling every author I'm interested in, then keep searching for upcoming titles until they show up in the library catalogue, and perhaps the library would have better data on interest in upcoming titles.

 

If this is all too complicated, maybe the library could just send out automated email alerts when a new title from an author or series you subscribe to has been added to the catalogue, and users could add it to their holds list themselves.

Things They Should Invent: computer program for choosing condo finishes

Apparently the way you choose finishes for your new condo is you actually go to a place and look at swatches and choose them that way. 

That's so 20th century!

They need instead a computer simulation where you can click on each finish and see what it would look like in your actual unit. You could view different combinations at a click of a mouse, save them and revisit them later, and even share them.

In my particular case, nearly everyone I've ever met is inexplicably enthusiastic about the possibility of choosing finishes, so I was giving very serious consideration to crowd-sourcing the whole thing.  (The part of my brain that finds randomness satisfying would appreciate that.) Unfortunately, that's not very feasible if you have to make an appointment and be at a specific place at a specific time.  However, if everyone could log in to a website and save their preferences, I could choose my finishes by pure democracy, or have everyone put together a look they like best, or have everyone put together a look and then put it to a general vote to pick the best look.

If this were sharable by social media, it could even help create buzz for the condo builder - people might start tweeting and facebooking their gorgeous future kitchens.  Plus, it would certainly be more affordable to build a real-life version of the Sims' build function (maybe it could even be done IN the Sims' build function?) than to rent and staff physical space for people to go look at swatches for every single condo a given developer builds.

Coping tips for a young introvert

 From a recent Dear Prudence chat:

Hi Prudie, My family is rather large (45 people on average for Thanksgiving) and my husband's parents are divorced and we try to see both of them at some point over the weekend. Our kids are 13, 11, and eight and in the past have seemed to enjoy spending the holiday weekend this way. Yesterday my 11-year-old daughter told me that she wants a "quiet" holiday. We have noticed that she is getting increasingly introverted over the past year or so, more likely to read by herself than play with her brothers and cousins. She told me that there are "too many people and too much driving." My husband and I are party-loving extroverts, so house hopping and driving six+ hours over the weekend is no big deal to us. But my daughter doesn't complain often and I know if she brings something up it is legitimately important to her. In small groups, and especially one-on-one, my daughter is a delight: creative, funny, and very smart. But in big groups she just fades into the background, possibly counting down the minutes until she can read by herself again. How do I balance my daughter's request that we tone things down with a) reasonable expectations from family to see us, b) the rest of my immediate family's love of going all-out, and c) not making the holiday all about her. My daughter's personality is so different from the rest of us that I don't know how to meet everybody's needs at once. Any advice? Any introverts want to chime in?

In addition to Prudie's answer, I have some ideas:

- First of all, don't worry about the fact that she's fading into the background!  That's not a problem.  She doesn't need to be the star.  She's there, she's doing her duty, she's not being rude to anyone, that's sufficient.  Work with her on managing the situation so she doesn't get overly drained and melt down, work on giving her options for respites and recharging, protect and advocate for her within the family, but don't worry that she isn't the star of the family dinner table.  Civil and emotionally neutral is sufficient.

- In terms of specific strategies, is there a job she could do that would take her away from everyone else?  A dog that needs walking?  A sleeping baby that needs to be checked on?  Something that needs to be fetched from the garage?

- Is it possible for her to spend a small amount of time (like 10 minutes) in the car alone while everyone else is in the house?  You could have a code "I need to get something out of the car", give her the keys, and let her get in the back and decompress.  If anyone comes out to check on her, she could be rummaging through a bag that's in the car.  (Besides, anyone who catches an 11-year-old girl secretively getting something out of the car is just going to assume that she got her period.)

- Set a schedule, tell her what it is, and stick to it.  "We're going to Auntie Em's for dinner at 6, and we'll leave by 10."  It's much more bearable when you know when it's going to end.

- If the house is big enough to have multiple bathrooms, when she needs a break she could use the upstairs bathroom.  The two-storey suburban houses in my family have a small powder room downstairs, and a full bathroom upstairs that's the family's primary bathroom (for showering, brushing teeth, etc.) but isn't in any of the bedrooms.  (There's often also an ensuite in the master bedroom.)  Usually guests use the downstairs bathroom, but when there's a lot of people in the house and it's family, you might use the upstairs bathroom if the downstairs bathroom is occupied.  This would be quieter and give you a moment alone.  You can pretty much stay in there until you hear someone coming up the stairs, and then you have the excuse "Oh, the downstairs bathroom was occupied and I couldn't wait." (Again, they'll just assume that she got her period.)

- If there is an unoccupied "public" room of the house (i.e. not someone's bedroom), she could go hang out there and, if someone comes and asks her what she's doing, she could say "Oh, I was just admiring this picture on the wall.  What's the story behind it?"  Practise plausible scripts with her, so she can turn being "caught" being alone into a pleasant sociable conversation-starter.

- If the trip involves overnight stays, can you stay in a hotel rather than with relatives?  Since the letter mentions the introvert daughter as having "brothers", that would mean she's the only girl, so she should at least be able to get her own bed.  If you can manage a suite instead of a room, maybe she could get her own room (girls going through puberty do start needing privacy from their brothers, after all), or sleep alone in the living-room area of the suite.  If you have to stay with relatives, think about how to give her her own space to sleep. Maybe she'd prefer sleeping on the couch in the den rather than on her cousin's floor?

- Can you host, maybe every other year or so?  That would spare your daughter the driving time and give her the option of retreating to her own room.

- Does she have a smartphone?  (Or will she within the next couple of years?) Since she likes to read, maybe she could put an ebook reader app on her phone, and, when she gets a chance to duck into a quiet room, read that way.  It gives the appearance that she's  just sending a quick text or something, whereas sitting with an actual book implies that you've settled in for a while.  People might still think she's rude for ducking into another room and texting during a family event, but I think if she can give the impression that she's just finishing up when someone notices her, it shouldn't go over too badly.

- Try to give her at least one day off during the weekend.  I always find going straight from an action-packed weekend to a full week of work (or, worse, school) is practically unbearable.  I need at least one day to sleep in and lounge around at home doing nothing.  If it's not possible to have a day off during the weekend, maybe let her stay home "sick" on the first day back.  (You could tell her brothers she really is sick if they're likely to want a free sick day too.  Again, they'll just assume she has her period.)

- Depending on the personalities involved, you might consider strategically outing her as an introvert to key family members.   Don't make it a big "We need to talk" with undertones of shamefulness.  Break the news with enthusiasm for the revelation and sympathy for your daughter.  "I was just reading this book, and I realized that Daughter is an introvert.  You know how we love seeing the whole family over the holidays and get energized and recharged from it?  Turns out all this time this has been draining to her, poor kid!"  If one key member of each household you're visiting is aware of her needs (and isn't going to use this information to give her shit), maybe they can help with things like letting her walk the dog or giving her more private sleeping arrangements, or at the very least not meddle and nag if they ever spot her catching a moment's privacy.

- Prudie recommends the book Quiet by Susan Cain.  It is useful, bit I found Introvert Advantage by Marti Olsen Laney even more useful. It includes a technical (but understandable) description of the neurology behind introversion, and specific strategies for introverts in extroverted families.

Journalism wanted: how can people who find themselves in Amanda Todd's position get their tormenters in trouble without getting themselves in trouble?

Amanda Todd was coerced into exposing herself on a webcam when she was 12 years old.  She was a legal minor and she was below the age of consent, so surely that was illegal on the part of the coercer.  And, of course, having the pictures in his possession would have counted as possessing child pornography.

Then, when she was 15, someone tried to convince her to expose herself again, threatening to distribute her previous pictures if she didn't.  Blackmail is illegal (it's covered in the Criminal Code under "Extortion"), plus he was trying to coerce someone who is underage and under the age of consent to appear in child pornography, and threatening to distribute child pornography if she didn't comply.

It sounds like it should have been quite easy to report the blackmailer to police and put an end to Ms. Todd's troubles.

However, according to the story, the police knocked on Ms. Todd's door at 4 a.m. to tell her that her photo had been distributed. 

If I were a teen in Ms. Todd's position, that fact alone would be disincentive to going to the police.  The knock at the door at 4 a.m. would lead me to conclude that I couldn't expect the police to have compassion for me as a victim.  (At the absolute bare minimum, if the victim doesn't yet know they're a victim, why not do them the small decency of letting them get a full night's sleep?) It would lead me to conclude that the police wouldn't care about protecting me from the wrath of my parents (because a 4 a.m. knock at the door would result in my parents being tired and cranky and frightened, which would mean emotions are running high), which could be a reason to actively avoid police involvement if I had abusive parents.

Therefore, I think it would be helpful if some of the media coverage told teens in Ms. Todd's position how they could get help without getting into trouble.  Can you report it to the police without involving your parents?  Can they investigate it if you report it anonymously through Crime Stoppers?  What kind of evidence do they need?  Screen shots?  How can you avoid the 4 a.m. knock on the door?

Similarly, what should you do if you're an adult and a kid comes to you with this kind of problem?  How can you get the perp in trouble while minimizing the awkwardness and humiliation to the kid?

I also think, if they haven't done so already, the police should come up with a way for minor victims to report their victimization without the involvement of their parents, if they prefer not to involve their parents. Victim Services counsellors should also be trained and available to help minor victims tell their parents if they want, but parent-free reporting should still be possible.  And if it turns out that it is in fact possible to report that you've been a victim of a crime without involving your parents, police and media need to publicize this fact and give specifics.

How to conduct a garbage audit for plastic bags

From time to time, news coverage of discussions of plastic bags contains the results of various garbage audits, where they look at a sample of garbage and see how many plastic bags are in it.   These numbers are often used to support the author's thesis about which measures do and don't help, but I find that the garbage audits I see cited tend to be less thorough - and therefore less useful - than they  need to be.

Here are the questions a plastic bag garbage audit needs to answer in order to be truly informative:

- How many shopping bags are being used as garbage bags?  These would likely be replaced with garbage bags if shopping bags were banned, and therefore would not be eliminated from the total landfill plastic.

- How many garbage bags are there in total (including shopping bags being used as garbage bags)?  If the audit counts shopping bags being used as garbage bags, it also needs to count garbage bags being used as garbage bags.  If there's a reduction in the number of shopping bags but a corresponding increase in the number of garbage bags, banning shopping bags didn't change anything.

- How full are the garbage bags?  I empty my kitchen garbage every day, for a minimum of 365 garbage bags a year.  They aren't always full, I just don't leave food waste overnight for sanitary reasons.  If a significant percentage of garbage bags aren't full, the smaller shopping bags would actually be a better choice because there would be less plastic.

- What is the total quantity of plastic?  Remember how plastic grocery bags got bigger when they introduced the five cent fee?  Suppose I was using 400 bags a year for my garbage before they got bigger (because I occasionally have more than one bag of garbage).  Then suppose the new, bigger bags are always big enough for my garbage needs, so I'm using 365 a year.  If the new ones are 20% bigger, that's actually the equivalent of 438 of the old bags, so I'm throwing out more plastic.  If, in the future, I'm forced to use the even-larger kitchen catchers, that's even more plastic being thrown out.

- How many plastic bags are in the recycling stream? Sometime after we started talking about plastic bags, I became aware that plastic bags are recyclable.  I don't know offhand if they first became recyclable then or if they were already recyclable and I just found out then, but the fact of the matter is that awareness of their recyclability has increased in recent years. If there are, say, 100 fewer bags in the landfill but 100 more bags in recycling, nothing has changed in terms of what we throw out.  Obviously it's better for things to be recycled than to go in the landfill, but you can't claim a reduction in usage if the same things are just being recycled now.

- What is the condition of plastic bags that are in the landfill or recycling but not being used as garbage bags?  I have heard some people complain that they hate plastic bags because they rip.  This is not my experience.  However, regardless, it would be informative to see how many of the plastic bags not being used as garbage bags have ripped. If, for example, 87% of the thrown-out bags have ripped, that suggests we have a high reuse rate and people aren't throwing them out as trash unless they can't be reused normally.  It might be worth investigating whether it would be more efficient to manufacture higher-quality bags.  (Obviously they take up  more resources to manufacture and have more plastic in them so there's a tipping point in here somewhere, but it should be looked into if it turns out to be applicable.)

Solving ethical dilemmas with helpful kitchen tips

I recently had a party and afterward had quite a few large bottles of leftover wine (they were opened and wouldn’t keep). There is a particular corner in my neighborhood where benign “drunkards” hang out and drink. They have done so for years, and everyone accepts this as part of our neighborhood. My question is, Should I drop this mother lode of wine off on their perch for them (because who am I to judge their choices?), or pour it down the drain (which would be a “waste”)?

Solution: pour the wine into ice cube trays and put them in the freezer. Then you can defrost it in easy and manageable portions next time you want wine. If the wine is red and the idea of drinking red wine that has been cold offends your delicate sensibilities, you can use it to make sangria. (Or to cook, of course, but I'd assume that people who are savvy enough to cook with wine would already do so as a solution to leftover wine.)

How to cool the Ontario housing market without hurting ordinary people

Recently in the news: Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney wants to cool the housing market.

This made me think of subsection 6(2) of the Ontario Residential Tenancies Act, which states:

(2)  Sections 104, 111, 112, 120, 121, 122, 126 to 133, 165 and 167 do not apply with respect to a rental unit if,

(a) it was not occupied for any purpose before June 17, 1998;

(b) it is a rental unit no part of which has been previously rented since July 29, 1975; or

(c) no part of the building, mobile home park or land lease community was occupied for residential purposes before November 1, 1991. 2006, c. 17, s. 6 (2).

Section 120 of the ORTA applies to the guideline rent increase, which means that properties that were built or started being rented out after 1998/1975/1991 (as applicable) are exempt from the rent increase guideline, and the landlords can raise the rent by however much they want.

So to cool the housing market, they should either remove this exemption, or place a time limit on it like there was in 1992.

From the point of view of an ordinary person hoping to break into the housing market simply to purchase a place to live in, the problem with the housing market is investors. They have lots of money and go in buying up condos en masse to rent out and perhaps later flip, taking them away from those of us who need to be prudent and evaluate a unit from the perspective of "How would I feel about pouring my life's savings into this and living here for the rest of my life?"

If the exemption from the guideline rent increase is eliminated, rental properties will be less attractive investments. It wouldn't make them completely unattractive investments, but a limit in how much you can increase rent where no such limit existed before should cool the market a bit by making investors more cautious.

But this will not make condos any less appealing to ordinary buyers looking for a home for themselves.  It will simply take some of the investors out of the market and leave more units for the rest of us.

It will also have the advantage of improving long-term affordability of newer (and therefore better-quality and more energy-efficient) rental housing, thereby making better housing more accessible for everyone.

How to teach literary analysis: don't let students read ahead

As I've blogged about before, I hated and was terrible at literary analysis when I was in school. Despite getting respectable grades in lit classes in three languages, I just didn't feel that analysis added anything to the reading experience or understand what on earth it achieves apart from giving us fodder for academic essays. I'm done the story, why dissect it so tediously?

I didn't start to truly grok literary analysis until I entered the Harry Potter fandom. I started reading Harry Potter shortly before the fifth book, and people on fan sites were using literary analysis to figure out what would happen later in the series. That made far better sense to me: we're looking for clues to solve a mystery!

Back in school, as a diligent student and a voracious reader, I'd always read ahead in the books we were studying. But my Harry Potter experience made me realize that this actually made learning how to do literary analysis more difficult for me. I'd be far ahead of the chapter we were discussing in class and simply wouldn't care about dissecting it, I was more interested in finding out what would happen next. Or I might even be finished the book and on to the next while we're still discussing the early chapters, at which point I most often simply didn't care. I'm done the story, let's move on!

But in my Harry Potter fandom, we couldn't move on - the books we needed to move on hadn't been written yet! So we'd analyze instead. And it was fun! It was my happy place for years!

So how could this be duplicated in the classroom, to not only teach literary analysis but convey the purpose and pleasure of it?

My idea: don't let the students read ahead. Earlier on, in grades 9 and 10, this could take the form of not allowing the books to leave the classroom, and doing the actual reading (or perhaps listening to an audiobook and reading along) in the classroom as part of class time. Then, at the end of every chapter or at every logical break, go over discussion questions that are geared towards using analysis to figure out what happens next. The teacher would have to make it clear that you don't get points for guessing or knowing what will happen next, but rather for having a logical analysis. A thesis that turns out to be factually incorrect but is impeccably argued with the information on hand should get just as many points as a thesis that perfectly predicts the outcome. (This is a problem I had in school - some teachers liked it when departed from the standard interpretation and backed it up with cited evidence, but other teachers docked points for not coming up with the standard interpretation.) Once they've finished the book, the teacher could go back over what clues in the book should have made it possible to guess what was going to happen.

After doing one or two books manually in the classroom so students can learn what they're looking for, they wouldn't have to do all the actual reading in the classroom. Instead, they could move to a system where you simply have to answer some questions at the end of each chapter before reading the next one. This could even be achieved electronically - answer the questions on an online form that emails the answers directly to the teacher, and doing so unlocks the next chapter. This would enable diligent students and those who are enthusiastic about the subject matter to work ahead at their own pace rather than being held back by their peers. (I didn't have this option in high school. While I had the book and could read ahead - and, being a diligent student, did so - I had no idea what we'd be discussing in class so I couldn't keep an eye out for it. Then I had to go back over something I'd already read to look for symbolism etc., which made an already uninteresting process outright tedious.)

If they do this with several books over a period of years, gradually loosening restrictions on reading ahead, by the end of high school the students should get to a place where they're automatically noticing and questioning the right things as they read through, the same way that people notice clues and try to guess whodunnit when reading a mystery novel.

I know that literary analysis is not limited to figuring out what's going to happen, but focusing on what's going to happen next makes the subject matter far more interesting, relevant and compelling to those who aren't already interested. "Remus and Tonks are totally going to hook up - look at all the parallels in the scenes where they were introduced to Harry!" is far more interesting than "Let's compare and contrast the scenes where the supporting characters were introduced to Harry." It's the English-class equivalent of using casino games to teach concepts in stats class.

What Facebook should do about employers who demand prospective employees' Facebook passwords

Facebook should put a clause on their terms of service stating that users may not share their password with anyone else without first informing Facebook that they intend to do so. They should create a special form you can fill out for the express purpose of informing Facebook that you intent to share your password with someone. This form should request enough data that Facebook will be able to find that individual's Facebook account.

Then Facebook should use this information to either a) ban all employers reported through this mechanism, or b) set all their privacy to the lowest possible setting without the option of raising it back up.

Fair warning would be set out in the terms of service ("By using this service, you agree to.."), and they could use selective publicity to very loudly announce that you have to report to Facebook if your employer requests your password while being more discreet about the consequences for the employer. Facebook already has a reputation for changing privacy settings and terms of service on its users, so it may as well use this precedent for good.

What if you could join other people's pension plans?

Given the trend away from defined-benefit pension plans and the resentment by some people who don't have defined-benefit plans to those who do, I wonder if it would be possible to create a mechanism for anyone to join any existing pension plan.

Outside members would pay in however much they wanted to (and perhaps could use the contributions from their defined-contribution plans), and get returns commensurate with those contributions on the same scale as employee members. They'd be charged a management fee for this (akin to mutual funds), which would cover the cost of administering their membership plus a small profit. The employer would not pay anything towards the outside members, of course, they'd just be along for the ride.

Here's an example of how it would work, using numbers that make the math easy and don't reflect the ratios of actual pension plans:

An employee of Acme Inc. who earns $50,000 a year contributes $5,000 a year to the pension plan and the employer also contributes $5,000 a year to the pension plan, for a total of $10,000 in contributions a year. The employee then gets a pension of $1,000 a year for each year of service when they turn 65. So if they have 35 years of service, they get a pension of $35,000 a year.

If an outsider joins the Acme Inc. pension plan and contributes $10,000 a year for 35 years (plus the management fee), they'll also get a pension of $35,000 a year when they turn 65. If they choose to contribute only the $5,000 that the employee would be paying in, they'd get a pension of $17,500. If they choose to contribute $20,000, they'd get a pension of $70,000.

Possible variations: employees can also choose to pay more in and get a bigger benefit. So if the employee in the first example chooses to pay in $10,000 instead of $5,000, the employer would still pay in the same $5,000 for a total contribution of $15,000, and, after 35 years, a pension of $52,500.

This would be advantageous for everyone who doesn't have a defined benefit pension plan, because they could buy into a professionally-managed pension plan instead of having to figure out how to manage their retirement planning themselves.

It has the potential to be slightly advantageous for the employees, because they have more money being paid into their pension plan, plus they have outsiders who are now invested in not cutting back their pension plan. If they're public sector, they also have the advantage of less resentment from the public, because anyone can just join in.

It has the potential to be slightly advantageous for the employer, because they would be making a small additional profit from the management fees. In addition, people would be more likely to seek out pension stability during difficult economic times, and work tends to slow down during difficult economic times, so the employer would get this extra income (and a bit of extra work processing applications for its employees) when things slow down. The employer would also be seen to be providing a valuable public service and could probably swing some tax writeoffs from their pension management expenditures (if there isn't already some provision for that, it seems like the sort of thing that would be implemented shortly after joining other pensions became possible.)

It would be advantageous for the plan itself, since there are more investment opportunities and better rates if you have more money to invest.

It would be advantageous for employees who are downsized from the employer, since they'd have the option to keep building up their pension even if they can't find equally pensionable work.

And it would be advantageous for all workers everywhere, because it would lessen the idea (among those very loud people who have this idea) that providing a defined-benefit pension is wasteful and irrational, and call the bluff of people who think that it shouldn't be provided to some workers because it isn't provided to all workers.

Potential pitfall: it might dissuade employers from providing new defined benefit plans.
Potential mitigation: a) Is anyone even providing new defined benefit plans? b) Would it matter if you could just buy into an existing plan?

Potential pitfall: Would it give outsiders control over the plan? I've read that some employers won't let the employee proportion of the contributions exceed 50% (even when they employees offer to pay more to keep the plan afloat, the employer says no) because that would mean they'd have to turn control of the plan over to the employees.
Potential solution: Outsiders sign a contract saying they don't get a share of control over the plan, they're just along for the ride.

How the Levi's ad campaign could have been made to work

I've been reading about the hilarious misfired Levi's ad campaign, and I think I see what they were trying to do and how they could have done it better.

Different people who wear the same size have different builds. For example, some people carry front-to-back, and some people carry side-to-side. Some people have long legs and a short torso, and some people have short legs and a long torso. Some people's hips curve in a smooth and gentle slope from the narrowest point of their waist to where the femur meets the pelvic bone, and some people's hips go straight out to the side at the top of the pelvic bone, slightly back inwards below that where there isn't much going on, then out again where the femur meets the pelvic bone.

I think what Levis was trying to suggest is that these jeans will fit all of these variations, or at least more of them than the average pair of jeans. Which would be useful! And it's possible that the models they use do in fact have these variations in their bone structure. But we can't tell, because of the pose. The pose only highlights their similarities, which makes it laughable.

Here's how they could have done it better:

Get an assortment of people whom the best-selling jeans on the market don't fit well. Make a video of them trying on the best-seller, focusing on the areas where it doesn't fit well. Then show them trying on the new jeans and focus on how they fit better in the problem areas. They could even get several models who all wear the same size jeans but have all different fit problems with the best-seller, and show them each trying on the same single pair of jeans (à la Travelling Pants), handing it from one to the next so the viewer can see that they're actually the same pants. If they don't want to show the models in their underwear, they could be in dressing-room booths with neck-to-knee doors.

The print component of the campaign could consist of a series of ads each highlighting one common fit problem, and include a link to a youtube page where you can see them actually putting on the new pants and comparing them with the old pants, to prove they're not photoshopped etc.

Of course, this ad campaign would only work if the pants actually do what they say they do. But if they do, they deserve to be well-advertised. And if they don't but claim they do, they deserve to be an object of ridicule.

Better spin on the deal-breaker personal ads

I previously came up with the idea of deal-breaker personal ads, and they've been festering in my brain, occasionally being improved.

Today my shower gave me a better way to spin them: call them "Things you need to know before you date me" or something similar. On a website, they wouldn't appear in the initial personal ad, but you would see them before messaging a person. If you find the deal-breakers unappealing, you simply don't message that person.

Things They Should Invent: career guidance that asks you what DON'T you want to be when you grow up?

At lot of the career advice I received as a child led me to respond "No way! I do NOT want to do that!" The usual response by the grownups around me was to try to convince me that I should be more open-minded about such things, or to try to convince me that I really could do it if I work hard and put my mind to it.

What they really should do when a student is resistant to a particular career path is determine what exactly they don't like about it, and use that information to guide them towards something more suitable.

For example, many adults tried to convince me to go into engineering. If they had thought to ask, I would have told them that I didn't want to go into engineering because you had to make actual things that actually worked. With suitable leading questions, I could have given the example of enrichment workshops where we had to make bridges or rube goldberg machines out of paper and glue and cotton balls and string, and while I had a solid grounding in the necessary theory and some innovative ideas, I found making the things actually function was impossible, and far more frustrating than anything else I faced academically. A knowledgeable teacher or guidance counsellor could then point me towards something that uses the same strengths that lead them to think I'm suitable for engineering, but is less tangible.

Aptitude tests kept giving me a set of possible career paths that included psychologist and clergy person. I didn't want to do either of those because they're such intense people work that need far more emotional intelligence than I have (plus, for the clergy thing, I'm an atheist). My guidance counsellor's next step should have been to look at things that use the same aptitudes, but don't require people skills.

For a time, it was trendy to encourage students to go to college instead of university. While I have nothing against college in principle, college programs train you in a specific career, and none of those career appealed to me. Meanwhile, university programs train you in an academic subject, so I could study something I like and am good at rather than train for a career I find unappealing. For example, college-encouragers would always tell me "You don't have to go to university, you know. You could go to college and do Travel and Tourism! You like languages!" Yes, but I hate travel and tourism! Why would I want to commit at 18 to a career in something I hate rather than spending the next four years studying something I love? In any case, a useful response would have been to either identify college programs that would be more appealing to me, or to recognize that I'm well-suited to university and look for useful programs there.

A student's disinclination towards a particular field is just as informative as their enthusiasm for a particular field, and it shouldn't be written off just because it's negative. Especially when combined with the What can you do better than others? method, asking students what they don't want to do and why could go a long way towards pinpointing the right field for them.

Journalism wanted: why are burqas made from synthetic fibres?

Over the past decade or so, I've read several different articles by different journalists visiting Afghanistan who described their respective experiences wearing a burqa. (Most recently here.) And most, if not all, of these articles mentioned that the burqa was made of some synthetic fibre that doesn't breathe.

How did that come about?

Conventional wisdom is that Afghanistan doesn't have much in the way of infrastructure. A lack of infrastructure should make manufacturing synthetic fabrics difficult, so I would expect people to wear natural fabrics made in traditional ways - whatever it was that people did in the centuries and millennia before industrialization. Synthetic fibres also seem inconvenient for burqas (something that breathes would be better), and more convenient for other things. So why are they using it for burqas? This would suggest that synthetic fibres are more readily available than natural fibres. How did that happen in a country with so little infrastructure?

Obviously not all burqas are made of synthetic fibres. Some of the burqas available for sale on the internet in English are available in cotton and sometimes even silk, although I'm certainly not assuming that what I can google up in English is representative of the general burqa market. I've also seen a number of newspaper articles mentioning in passing (for the purpose of explaining to readers what a burqa is) that they're made of cotton; it's quite possible the people writing these articles have no first-hand experience with burqas or are just repeating what they've googled up. But every article I've read by a journalist who actually wore a burqa in Afghanistan has them describing it as made of synthetic fibres that don't breathe. (Unless they're purposely giving synthetic ones to journalists for some reason?)

There's a story in there somewhere. Even if it turns out to be obvious to those familiar with the Afghan garment industry, there's a story in there for ignorant westerners like me.

SOPA protest idea

I don't know offhand how technologically feasible this is, but just putting it out there: what if the major sites going dark to protest SOPA instead blocked access to their sites from users at .gov addresses? It seems like it could be done on the same principle as geoblocking.

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.