The Icy Hot mystery

As I've blogged about before, I absolutely adore Icy Hot for muscle stiffness, but I've noticed something odd.  When I apply Icy Hot to a joint, it makes the adjacent joint a wee bit stiffer.

For example, when I apply it to my shoulder, it makes my elbow a bit stiffer, in that I feel a little something in the elbow and I feel the need to crack it more.  (And when I do crack it, it's louder).   When I apply it to my knee, my snapping hip syndrome gets louder and I become aware of an old injury in the metatarsal area.

If it makes a difference, I have observed this when using the Icy Hot cream, as opposed to the patches.  I haven't used the patches since I discovered the cream, so I can't tell you whether or not it also happens when I use the patches.

This atteinte of the adjacent joints is nearly negligible compared with the relief that Icy Hot brings me, but it's still very mysterious.  Any thoughts?

Why would police have to search a hospital patient?

From The Ethicist:

My emergency unit handled a man who had been shot in the leg in the early hours of the morning. The trauma surgeons refused to have him transferred to the ward for wound management because they believed the victim would be pursued by his assailants, thereby posing a safety risk to staff members and patients. The police in the E.R. declined to pat down the injured man for weapons, as they were not legally empowered to do so. The man was retained in emergency for 12 hours. The emergency unit, which has an open-door policy for all comers 24/7, would most likely be the first place that assailants would look for an injured man. Are there ethical ramifications with the transfer of violent risk?

I was surprised that the letter-writer was focused on whether the police could pat down the injured man, because it seems to me like the medical professionals could undress him (and thereby disarm him) or otherwise determine what he's carrying in the course of medical care. I don't know how medically ethical this is (which is probably why it wasn't mentioned in the Ethicist column), but from a purely logistical perspective it seems perfectly feasible.

He's been shot in leg, so it's perfectly reasonable to remove his pants. And people usually remove their footwear as part of removing pants. They could then put him in a hospital gown so he's not sitting around undressed, and logistically they'd probably have to remove, at a minimum, all but his bottom layer of shirts - perhaps all his shirts.  If the hospital gown isn't necessary, they could also ask him to take his jacket/sweater/everything but t-shirt off  to take his blood pressure or something.

Once he's down to a t-shirt and undies they'll probably be able to tell if he's carrying a weapon.  And if they can't, they could do the "put the stethoscope on the patient's chest and have the patient breathe deeply" thing, which will allow them to lift the patient's shirt enough to see if there's anything underneath.

And all that's before we even get into the possibility of checking the patient's body for more wounds, which seems like something you might do when treating a patient who's been in a gunfight! Or x-raying a gunshot patient to verify the location of all the bits of bullet.

If the patient isn't searched by police officers and instead simply receives medical care from medical professionals, he's more likely to perceive the hospital as a safe place where there's no threat to him.  And the police in the ER would hopefully be able to keep out the people who are trying to kill the patient, so the patient would have no reason to draw any weapons he might have on him.

Why did serving sizes get big?

Conventional wisdom is that food serving sizes are bigger than they used to be, particularly in restaurants, and that this is a leading cause of obesity. You can google up all kinds of articles and graphics and such giving examples.

What I don't understand is why restaurants and other food sellers would have started increasing their serving sizes in the first place.  You're running a business selling people food.  Your customers are accustomed to getting a certain amount of food for the money they pay.  If you increase the amount of food in a serving, you're shrinking your profit margins for no reason.

A quick google turns up explanations of how large sizes at fast food restaurants came to be - they worked out that people aren't going to order two servings of fries even if they could eat more, but they'd feel that a large is good value because it costs less than two standard sizes, and the additional mark-up in retail price was significantly more than what the restaurant paid for the ingredients.

But that doesn't explain why serving sizes also increased in non-fast-food restaurants that don't have multiple size choices, or why restaurants with multiple serving sizes keep phasing out the smaller size (which was once upon a time the "regular").

Journalism wanted: why aren't Hydro workers electricians?

I just blogged that Hydro workers should be allowed to reconnect homeowners' equipment in order to facilitate power outage recovery.

Then I read an article about what the Hydro CEO was doing during the outage, which mentions in passing:

Meanwhile, workers report that, after finally restoring power in many neighbourhoods, they are being forced to disconnect some houses because of damage done to stand pipes, the hollow masts usually mounted on rooftops that serve as a conduit for power cables to enter a dwelling. A bent or broken stand pipe poses a risk of fire, and it’s the homeowner’s responsibility to have it fixed by a qualified electrician.

Hydro workers are not electricians.

 (My emphasis.)

So why aren't Hydro workers electricians?  They're working with electricity.  They're connecting bigger wires than electricians usually work with, so it seems like they should be able to be electricians.  Are they actually unable to do the work of electricians?  Or is this merely a certification issue?  Or is it a jurisdiction issue?

 What would it take for Hydro workers to be electricians?  Would they have to learn new skills?  Or just get an additional certification?

 I hate it when I walk away from a newspaper article with my questions than I went in with.

Why do they start selling xmas food so early?

I've already complained about the habit of starting with xmas decorations and whatnot at the beginning of November, but one thing that particularly baffles me is that the grocery store started with the xmas food at the beginning of November.

By "xmas food" I mean food that is intended to be served at holiday parties and food that is intended to be given as a gift - cheese platters, assorted nuts in decorative boxes, those Italian cake things, etc.

I doubt a significant portion of the population is having holiday parties in early November.  And people are going to want to serve or gift reasonably fresh food (or at least convince themselves that they are doing so) so no one is going to buy pastries nearly two months ahead of time, and they're certainly not going to buy a cheese platter that early!

Who's their target audience here?  Do these things even sell early on?

Why is Facebook crawling blogs?

Shortly after I post each blog post, I get a hit from something called Facebook Bot, which statcounter says is a bot crawling my site, presumably to index it.

Why does Facebook care about indexing my blog contents?  I know they have a web search function, but that's powered by Bing, so it would show up as a Bing crawlers.  I don't have any Facebook widgets or anything, my blog isn't connected to any Facebook profiles (unless I have an imposter out there), so why would Facebook care about my existence enough to index my every update?

Options for Gmail's "new compose"

I'm completely baffled that Gmail seems to think we want to compose our messages in a little window that hovers over our inbox where you can still see the inbox in the background (even in "full screen" mode).  I've been using email for half my life and not once have I thought while composing a message "You know, it would be really convenient if I could see my inbox right about now!"

However, I have discovered a couple of options for if you find having your inbox in the background distracting:

1.  Ctrl+click on the Compose button.  This will open the compose window in a new tab, with no distracting inbox in the background.

2.  Use Basic HTML view.  You can get to Basic HTML view by clicking on the link at the bottom right of the Gmail loading page (the one with the horizontal blue bar) or by going to https://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=html. Basic HTML view still has a normal compose page.

The tale of the GO bus skeptic

The scene: I'm sitting in a GO bus, putting on my seabands in the hope of warding off motion sickness.

Guy next to me: "What are those things?"
Me: "They prevent carsickness. I put them on my wrists, and this sticky-outy plastic bit presses into an acupressure point that relieves nausea."
Guy next to me: "Those are a scam, you know!  They're totally unproven, they don't do anything at all, it's all in your head!"

Now, it is true that I can't say for certain that the seabands work.  I've never thrown up while wearing them, but I also haven't thrown up on many many occasions when I wasn't wearing them.

But this guy was about to sit next to me for a long bus ride. If it were true that the anti-nausea measures I'm taking are entirely psychosomatic, he would have an immediate personal investment in my believing in them!  Why would you try to convince the person next to you on a long bus ride that their psychosomatic anti-carsickness measures are all in their head?

Journalism wanted: how on earth do fish die in a flood??

Mentioned in passing in an article about the exciting adventure of Calgary zookeepers trying to rescue giraffes from a flood with hippos the loose:

On Tuesday, several of 140 dead tilapia that zoo staff couldn’t save were still scattered on the muddy, wet floor of the giraffe and hippo building. Six piranhas and at least two of the zoo’s 12 peacocks also died in the flooding.

Tilapia and piranhas are fish!  How on earth do fish die in a flood???

It says they're scattered on the floor, which suggests that the water receded and left them behind.  Is that normal?  Does that mean that fish in the ocean have to follow the water when the tides move?  Why didn't the force of the water pull them along?

In any case, you can't just mention in passing that fish died in a flood and not explain.  It's a great big question mark, even if it's not nearly as exciting as rescuing giraffes from hippo-infested waters.

Why board up houses when you're going to tear them down anyway?

A group of houses on my street have been bought by a developer who plans to tear them down to build condos.  I have no objection to that - it's a highrise neighbourhood.  However, they've boarded up the windows of the houses, which makes them look run down and derelict and creates a dead zone on the street.  (This is particularly frustrating since they hadn't even submitted their development application to city hall when they started boarding the houses up, so they created this dead zone without making any progress towards renewal.)

Why would you board up houses that you're going to tear down anyway?  Are you worried that someone will break in and start wrecking them before you can start wrecking them yourself?  Why not just put plain solid white cheap blinds/curtains in the window (or even board them up on the inside with a piece of wallboard or something else white) so they won't look so conspicuously abandoned to passers-by?  That would actually probably reduce the likelihood that people would mess around with them - if you see a house with the blinds closed and no one going in or out at that exact moment, you assume someone is home and just not going in or out at that exact moment.  You'd have to pay close attention and perhaps even stake it out to notice that it's empty, whereas the boards make it look abandoned from a distance.

I don't care that they're tearing down houses or that they want to build a big condo tower, but I really resent that they're doing this in a way that makes it look so empty and abandoned.  My neighbourhood feels very safe at all hours of the day and night, and this is because it's alive. There are people walking around, going in and out of homes and shops and restaurants.  When I'm walking around alone after dark, if I ever feel unsafe, I can duck into any of the many businesses that are still open or even into another residential building if I can manage to follow someone in.  If a bad guy is following me, they don't know where I might be going, which door might have witnesses behind it who are expecting me.  But these boarded-up houses are clearly not where I'm going.  They clearly don't have someone inside waiting for me.  They're just a dead zone that doesn't contribute to the life of the street.

Why go to all the trouble of boarding up the houses and making them look derelict when you could just do nothing and leave them looking unremarkable?

So why isn't it acceptable to submit the same paper for multiple courses?

From The Ethicist:

When I was in college, I’d sometimes write a single paper that would satisfy assignments in more than one course. For instance, I once wrote a paper on how “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” expressed satire; I submitted it for assignments in both my poetry course as well as my completely separate satire course. I did not disclose this to either professor. When I share this with people, half call the practice cheating, and the other half call it genius. My niece told me it would certainly be grounds for expulsion at her college. In my mind, I was adding a level of intellectual complexity to my studies. Was this an ethical practice, or was I cheating?

The all my universities made it quite clear that this is not allowed, but I've never understood why. It's your own work, so why does it matter if you've done the work a little earlier before the deadline than perhaps they anticipated? 

Some people in the comments thread suggested that it's because schools want you to do a certain amount of work to get your degree, but I don't think that's actually the case. You get your course credits, and by extension your degree, by demonstrating mastery of certain material or skills. They evaluate this mastery through projects and exams, but the amount of work you put in is irrelevant.  If you can knock off an A+ term paper in half an hour, you have clearly mastered the material and deserve your A+.  Conversely, if you do the standard amount of work - even if you do twice the standard amount of work - but still can't produce a paper that meets the standards for a passing mark, you haven't mastered the material and don't get to pass. If you can prove to both professors that you have mastered the material of their respective courses by turning in the same piece of work, the fact remains that you've mastered the material.

Other commenters suggested that a single paper could not possibly meet the needs of two assignments, and, before we even get into the question of ethics, would need to be rewritten from the other perspective to be suitable for the other course.  This may well be true, but that doesn't make it a question of academic ethics.  If a student chooses to submit a project that doesn't meet the project requirements as perfectly as perhaps it could, they'll get a lower mark.  Voilà, natural consequences.  No need to bring the code of ethics into it.  

The professor who taught my humanities gen. ed. course, an older, bearded, sweater-wearing gent who called male students by their surnames and female students "Miss Surname", had a policy that you can go to the washroom whenever you wanted during the exam, unescorted.  His reasoning was that if you can find answers in the washroom, more power to you.  His exams were designed so students have to analyze and to make cogent arguments supporting their point - things you can't put on a crib sheet.

Similarly, the attitude should be if you can reuse work, more power to you.  If schools want to discourage this, perhaps they need a more robust anti-requisite system, or more stringent academic standards, or a system that permits students to test out of courses where they've already mastered the material. But if you have two courses that are asking students to submit similar assignments to prove similar bodies of knowledge, then there's no reason not to permit them to do the same work.  And manipulating the academic code of ethics to ban this so they don't have to address flaws in the curriculum is kind of, well, inethical.

Are children really unfamiliar with pregnancy?

I was very surprised to see that some people thought the word "pregnant" shouldn't be used in an elementary school yearbook for fear that the kids might ask what it means.  My experience was that children were familiar with pregnancy essentially because they were children.

When you are born, your parents are, by definition, part of the cohort that's getting pregnant and having babies.  It's therefore very likely that many of the adults around you - your parents' friends and siblings and cousins - are also at this stage of life.  This means that there's a good chance that within the first few years of your life, one or more babies will be born to the people around you.  It might even be your own younger sibling!

And it's most likely that your parents will explain the concept of the new baby to you.  They won't just one day go "Hey, look, a baby!"  They'll probably tell you that Mommy or Auntie Em is pregnant, which means she's going to have a baby.  And they'll probably even tell you the baby is growing in her belly so that's why her belly is getting fat.

And if this doesn't happen to you, it will probably happen to one of your friends, who will then announce to you "I'm going to have a baby brother and he's growing in my mommy's tummy!"

Myself, I don't remember a time when I didn't know what the word "pregnant" meant.  My first cousin was born when I was 1.5, and my sister was born when I was a few months short of 3. I have memories of the cousin being a baby and I have memories where I knew that my mother was going to have a baby, but I don't ever remember actually learning what "pregnant" means.  For as long as I've known, it's just meant that a baby is growing in a mommy's belly.  It didn't seem sexual or adult (because I didn't know what sex was), it was just a point of fact.

So I'm very surprised that parents would think that elementary school children need to be protected from the concept of pregnancy.  In my corner of the world, children were familiar with pregnancy by virtue of the demographic realities of being children.

Laptop batteries: WTF?

I'm very frustrated by the mixed messages I'm getting about laptop batteries.

My recent computer troubles turned out to be due to my battery being dead (which involved a weird and roundabout diagnosis!).  All three Dell techs I spoke to in the process told me that you shouldn't keep your laptop plugged in all the time (which I normally do because most of the time I'm using it at my desk), you should instead allow your battery to discharge fully and then recharge it.

However, Dell's laptop battery FAQ says this is unnecessary and the battery will behave nicely even if you leave it plugged in all the time.  But their Alienware battery FAQ says the opposite. 

I did start charging and discharging the battery once I got my new battery, but I find it very inconvenient. I also noticed that there's a "Disable Battery Charging" setting, so I was wondering if using this setting and leaving my computer plugged in would save my battery from any negative effects of having it fully charged and still plugged in.  I asked Dell's twitter account, but they directed me back to the FAQ that said this was unnecessary.  And this right after they posted the Alienware FAQ that said the opposite.  (My computer isn't an Alienware, but I believe it has the same kind of battery.)

I also had the idea of just taking the battery out completely and using the laptop on AC power only until I need to move it.  One of the Dell techs I talked to told me this would work, another told me it wouldn't work.

The internet contains arguments supporting and opposing every possible approach, including things like "maintain a battery charge of 70% at all times" or "take your battery completely out of your laptop for normal operations, but discharge and recharge it once a month." All of these arguments can be found from credible sources and backed up by scientific explanations.  I could write a paper with quality citations in support of any possible approach to battery management.

And I still haven't the slightest idea which approach is actually correct.

My intention when writing this blog post was to put the question out to my readership, but that will just be more sensible people giving soundly-reasoned explanations on the internet.  I seriously don't know what to do.

Opinions are welcome, even though I'm tired of opinions.  I'm particularly interested in:

- What is your own battery management approach, and what kind of battery lifespan do you get?  (By "battery lifespan" I don't mean "how long until your battery drains and you have to recharge it?", I mean "how long until you have to buy a new battery?")

- Would using the "disable battery charging" function while leaving the battery in the computer and the AC adapter plugged in eliminate whatever harm might potentially be caused by leaving the AC adapter plugged in when the battery is fully charged?

- Any experience with just taking the battery out?

Update:  I have since learned that the "disable battery charging" function gets better battery lifespan.

More information please

Mentioned in passing in an article about the 65th anniversary of Israel:

Nor will many of Israel’s ultra-Orthodox Jews participate in the celebrations. They regard the establishment of the Jewish state ahead of the advent of the Messiah, who alone can and will redeem his people, as an affront to God.

So if they think it's an affront to God, why do they live there?

Why is a single provider for chaplaincy even an option?

Headline in the Globe and Mail: Corrections Canada seeks a single provider for prison chaplaincy services.

Why is this even an option?  By which I mean, before we get into matters of religion or philosophy or principle, does an organization that's capable of serving as a single provider for nationwide prison chaplaincy services even exist?  If so, why?  Given that Corrections just started doing this, who are their other clients?

They'd essentially have to be a multidenominational temp agency for clergy. Is there such thing?  Or is someone going to scramble to put one together as the result of this announcement?

Why don't you get the bends when you ride the subway?

From an article about digging the tunnel for the Eglinton LRT:

The tunneling crews that built New York City’s subways and sewers around the turn of the last century only spent part of their shifts digging tunnels.

Half their workday was devoted to decompression, so the urban miners working beneath the earth wouldn’t die from “the bends,” the atmospheric pressure-related illness that afflicts deep sea divers if they surface too quickly. It meant that every shift had to have two crews on at once — one digging, one decompressing.

So why don't people have to go through decompression to ride the subway?

"It's just gas."

There exists the idea that newborn babies don't really smile to show that they're happy, it's just their face happens to land in that position sometimes.  A common explanation is "It's just gas."

I can't tell you if this is true or not.  There are people on the internet who confirm this statement and saying that it's a common misconception that babies really smile, and there are people on the internet saying it's a common misconception that babies don't smile and they totally really do.

But the pervasiveness of this idea that babies don't smile means that once upon a time someone discovered it or thought they discovered it, and then they - and many other people - perpetuated the idea.

Why would someone do this??

If you, as the adult, think the baby has smiled at you, you're happier.  You feel "Awww, she likes me!" and that brightens your day.  Your happiness may make the baby feel happier, safer, or more relaxed, or it may be neutral, depending on how well the baby can read your moods and how much they affect her moods.

If you think the baby likes you in general, you're more likely to want to engage with her, and more often, so you can see her smile again.  Engaging with the baby is good for her social development and her language development, and will probably help her get to know you better and build trust with a loving adult.  Plus, if you genuinely feel that the baby likes you, you're more likely to respond sympathetically to her.  When she's crying, you're more likely to go "Awww, poor baby!" rather than "Shut up, you ungrateful little brat!"  This will make her feel safe and secure and loved, which is good for her long-term social and psychological development.

In short, thinking that the baby has smiled at you makes life a little happier for everyone and, even if it's not true, there's no downside. Conversely, if you think any sign of affection from the baby is just instinct or fluke or gas, the best possible outcome is neutral, and the worst is neglect.

So why would someone do science with the goal of proving that the baby doesn't really like you?  Or, if they discovered this by accident, why would people work so hard to perpetuate it?  Even if the truth is that the baby doesn't actually like you because she's too young to like you, there's nothing lost and a certain amount gained by being deluded into thinking she likes you.

Why would you write a newspaper article if you don't have enough to say?

Recently in the news: school board director Chris Spence plagiarized parts of an article he wrote for the Toronto Star.

Here's what I don't get: if he had to resort to plagiarism, why was he writing a newspaper article in the first place?  Unlike students who plagiarize, he didn't have to write an article.  It wasn't an assignment.  He wouldn't flunk if he didn't do it.  Unlike Margaret Wente, it wasn't his job.  He has a whole job that, I'm sure, keeps him fully occupied. How did it even occur to him to write an article if he had so little to say that he had to plagiarize?

I'm pretty sure that people have to proactively submit op-eds to newspapers rather than the newspaper soliciting them, so he could have just not done it and no one would have noticed.  Even if the paper did solicit an article from him, he could have just said "I'm terribly sorry, but I'm afraid I'm just too busy with my duties as director of TDSB to write an article.  However, I'd be happy to give an interview."

So why did he do it?

Teach me about optican economics

Optical stores, at least large chains, often have major discounts that only apply if you buy a complete pair of glasses (i.e. frames and lenses).  They won't ever give you a discount if you just have new lenses installed in a pair of frames that you already own.

As a result, there are times, with major sales and less expensive frames, when  you could get a complete pair of glasses for less than it would cost for just the lenses.  For example, using numbers that make the math easy, if the frames cost $100, the lenses cost $200, and there's a 50% discount happening, you could get a complete pair for $150 where they would charge you $200 to put exactly the same lenses in a pair of your own frames. 

I understand that the lenses are custom-made and frames are mass-produced, so the margins are far greater on frames.  But what do they gain by charging me less for buying more things?

Why does it take businesses so long to answer email?

I've noticed a disturbing pattern: whenever I send an email to a business, it takes them ages to respond.  I sent two emails - simple inquiries, the sort of questions they should expect to be asked every day - last Wednesday.  One was the equivalent of "Do you have widgets in stock, and, if so, how much do they cost?"  The other was "I bought a widget and it was missing a part. What should I do?" Still no reply.  One was sent to a general email address listed on their Contact page, the other was sent through a form on their website.

This is hardly the first time.  It has happened dozens of times in my life, including nearly every time I email Rogers. 

When I email very small businesses, they reply within a day or two.  So why on earth can't larger businesses?  If you don't have enough staff to reply to or escalate every email you receive within one business day, you're understaffed!