Showing posts with label things i don't understand. Show all posts
Showing posts with label things i don't understand. Show all posts

Tuesday, January 13, 2015

Things I Don't Understand: shiny glass computer screens

My first flat computer monitor (and, in fact, every subsequent monitor) was a 17" LCD monitor with a screen that's made of plastic (or, at least, something softer and less shiny than glass).  I don't know what this kind of monitor is actually called, but I like it.

But I've noticed that more modern computer monitors, especially those with wide screens, have screens made out of a shiny glass. If you go into a store and shop for monitors, you find a lot of monitors made out of very shiny glass, and far fewer made out of the less shiny plastic.

I don't understand why they do this. The shiny glass screen greatly increases glare, and seems like it would get dirty far more readily.  I don't like it at all, but it seems more and more difficult to get a plasticky less-shiny screenof the style that has far less glare and doesn't get dirty as easily.

Why did they change it?  What's the advantage?  Why are the less-shiny plasticky screens harder and harder to find?

Wednesday, December 17, 2014

Things I Don't Understand: smoothies

People talk about smoothies like they save time, but they don't!  Preparing fruits etc. to go in a smoothie requires at least as much preparation as to eat them raw.  If you're going to eat a whole raw apple or peach, you just wash it and eat it, throwing out the core/pit at the end.  But if you're putting it in a smoothie, you have to cut it open and remove the core/pit.  And that's before we even get into the question of whether you need to cut things up somewhat before putting them in the blender (depends on the nature of the fruit and the nature of the blender, I'd imagine).

In addition to the utensils, dishes etc. required to prepare the ingredients and serve the smoothie, you also have to wash the blender that you make it in, which is probably harder than washing the rest of the stuff given the thickness of the smoothie.

And the texture of the smoothie is another thing - it's too liquid to feel like you're eating so you don't get the satisfaction of "Yay, I just ate some food!" but it's also too thick to drink easily and mindlessly. 

Unless you, like, don't have teeth or something, I see no advantages whatsoever and every disadvantage over eating actual food.  But the vast majority of people who think smoothies are the be all and end all of healthy eating appear to have teeth.

What gives?

Wednesday, September 24, 2014

Why was Rob Ford able to kill Transit City unilaterally?

On his first day as mayor, Rob Ford came into work early and killed Transit City.

With all the other things that happened since then, I've forgotten how this happened and why it was possible.  I was under the impression that it needed to be voted on by Council, and googling around the idea I see lots of people saying that he shouldn't have been able to do it unilaterally and it should have been voted on by Council.

But he did it and, at the very least, set transit back a year until Council was able to reinstate it a year later.  Why was he able to do that?  Why did it take Council a year fix it?

I feel like I should understand this before I vote for the next mayor. Will the next mayor be able to do similar things unilaterally?

Wednesday, September 10, 2014

The mystery of RN #61683 CA #23638

I recently tried a different style of Jockey underwear (updated my comparison post accordingly), and when I looked at the tag to see the style number I saw it said "CA #23638".  That number seemed familiar, so I checked my other underwear (in the other style) and it had the same number.  Okay, I figured it must be the other number on the tag that designates the style.  RN #61683 But when I looked at the other underwear, it also had the number.  These are the only numbers on the tags, and they're exactly the same on two different styles of panties made in three different countries!

So I went a-googling, and discovered people listing RN #61683 CA #23638 as the style number for all manner of Jockey products, from boxer briefs to t-shirts!

So what do these numbers mean?  Why bother printing them on the label if they apparently mean the same thing as "Jockey"?  And why isn't there a style number?

Friday, August 15, 2014

What do you do if someone decides to Talk To you?

With Robin Williams's death in the news, we're seeing a reinvigoration of the notion that if you're feeling depressed or suicidal, you should talk to someone, tell someone.

But what do you do if you're the someone the depressed or suicidal person chooses to talk to?

I totally understand that it's a big deal for the person to work up the nerve to Talk To you, and based on the combination of their impaired state and the cultural/media representation of the importance of Talking To Someone, they'd totally expect the act of Talking To you to trigger the solution.

But I genuinely have no idea what the next step is.  Get Them Help?  How?  I never learned this stuff. They issued my grownup card just because I can translate well and pay my rent on time.  I don't know how to solve real problems.

They really should publicize this information!  If they're going to tell people to Talk To Someone, they also need to tell all the Someones out there what the next couple of steps are!

**

This also reminds me of when I was a kid, they'd tell you that if you ever find a needle (drug needle, not sewing needle) in the street or the playground, you should tell a grownup.  Fair enough.  But when I got my grownup card, they never told me what to do if someone finds a needle.  I seriously have no idea.

**

Also, what are you supposed to do when someone comes out to you?  My emotional response is "duly noted" (and perhaps reconsidering any romantic pursuit strategy, as applicable), but what kind of response is actually useful?

Sunday, July 13, 2014

Do police normally photograph the genitals of child pornography victims?

There was recently a story in the news about a 17-year-old boy who sent sexually explicit photos to his 15-year-old girlfriend, and as a result faces child pornography charges.  And, in order to prosecute these charges, police wanted to photograph this young man's erect penis.

The question of the appropriateness of the charges and police action have already received extensive coverage, but there's actually a bigger, more serious issue here:  do they routinely take photographs of the genitals of actual child pornography victims, i.e. minors who were forced or coerced or manipulated or tricked or exploited by adults into appearing in pornography?

In other words, if a grown adult had taken a picture of this teenager's penis for prurient purposes, would the police still be trying to take a picture of his penis for evidence purposes?

According to the article, the only things this kid is charged with are possession and manufacturing of child pornography (i.e. pictures of his own penis).  And it says that the police want to take pictures of his penis "for comparison to the evidence from the teen’s cell phone", which suggests that they intend to prove that the pictures on the teen's cell phone are child pornography by proving that they are in fact pictures of the teen's penis, as determined by official comparison with the official pictures of the teen's penis taken by the police.

It's certainly not implausible that there may have been, or may be in the future, a situation of actual child pornography (i.e. where a minor was forced or coerced or manipulated or tricked or exploited by adults into being photographed or filmed for prurient purposes) where the minor victim's face is not shown.  In cases like this, do the police also take nude photos of the minor victim for the purpose of official comparison with the pornography they've seized as evidence, in order to prove that the materials they've seized as evidence is in fact child pornography?

If so, this is a much larger problem that needs to be solved!

Monday, May 12, 2014

Teach me about animal shelter economics

From The Ethicist:
Here is an ongoing argument among my friends: Group A says you should adopt a pet only from a no-kill shelter to support the shelter, while Group B says you should adopt a pet only from a kill shelter to save the animals from death. Which is preferable?
The question to which I don't know the answer:  to what extent does adopting an animal from a specific shelter actually support the shelter?

If these were regular businesses, it would be obvious.  For example, there's a Shoppers Drug Mart and a Rexall in my neighbourhood.  If I decided to stop shopping at Shoppers and shop exclusively at Rexall, Shoppers would make less demand and profit and Rexall would see more.  If everyone made the same decision, Shoppers would cease to exist.  If Shoppers saw that everyone was shopping at Rexall, they might think "What is Rexall doing that we aren't?" and try to emulate that.

But do animal shelters work that way?  If people adopt their animals, they have room for more animals.  If people don't adopt their animals, they don't have room for more animals unless they kill some. That part is clear. 

But does adopting the animals serve as an economic incentive? If nobody adopted from the no-kill shelter, would the no-kill shelter cease to exist?  Would it be incentivized to become a kill shelter? Would anything else bad happen to it or to its animals?

Conversely, if nobody adopted from the kill shelter, would it cease to exist?  Would it be incentivized to become a no-kill shelter?  Or would it just keep on killing animals it can't fit?

It seems to me that the primary factor in whether animals end up in a kill or no-kill shelter would be which shelter people choose to surrender animals to.  It doesn't seem like adoption decisions would enter into it. What am I missing?

Friday, May 09, 2014

When and why did people start using backwards smilies?

I first learned about smilies in the early 90s, on BBSs.  I learned that a happy smiley is :) and a sad smiley is :( .

But in recent years, I've seen people doing their smilies backwards.  So if they want to make a happy smiley, instead of  :) they put (:  .You have to tilt your head to the right instead of tilting it to the left.

Having used smilies for 20 years, I don't tilt my head any more.  I just skim and quickly process a) the fact that a smiley is present, and b) the direction of the parenthesis.  So when I see a backwards happy face like (:  my first thought is that it's a sad face, because for the vast majority of my life a smiley with a left parenthesis has been a sad face like :(

How did these backwards smilies come about?  Why do people think they're superior to regular tilt-your-head-left smilies?

Sunday, April 13, 2014

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?

Sunday, February 16, 2014

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.

Saturday, January 25, 2014

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").

Wednesday, January 01, 2014

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.

Thursday, December 19, 2013

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?

Wednesday, September 11, 2013

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?

Wednesday, August 14, 2013

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.

Monday, July 22, 2013

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?

Thursday, June 27, 2013

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.

Friday, June 07, 2013

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?

Saturday, June 01, 2013

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.

Monday, April 29, 2013

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.