Secularism: ur doin it wrong

At first I wasn't going to blog about Quebec's Charte des valeurs. I've already written many times about how assholic it is to force people to expose more of their bodies than they're comfortable with and was weary of having to cover the same ground again, and most of the media coverage of this story has already taken that approach so I was weary of having to repeat myself and didn't think I had anything to add.

But in the shower, it occurred to me that it's interesting to look at it from from the other side: instead of looking at what's banned, let's look at what's allowed.

Here's an English-language version of the visual aid that's been circulating.

Look at the "banned" items in the bottom row.  Apart from the giant cross in the left-most picture, all these items have a practical and/or theological function.  They all have the practical function of covering a part of the body that the wearer wants to be covered (with the possible exception of the yarmulke - I'm not clear on whether covering that part of the head is necessary, or whether it's the yarmulke itself that's necessary.) They all also have the theological function of being something the wearer needs to do to avoid going to hell, or whatever the equivalent in their religion is.  (I have heard that the hijab per se is not necessary, just that covering the head is necessary.  And I have heard that the hijab per se is necessary.  So let's split the difference and say that some people believe it is theologically necessary.)

Now look at the "allowed" items.  They're all small pieces of jewellery that display the wearer's religious affiliation.  They have no theological function, and they have no practical function other than displaying the wearer's religious affiliation.  They aren't a part of the actual practise of the wearer's religion, they aren't going to help send the wearer to heaven or prevent them from going to hell (or whatever the equivalent in their religion is).  They are simply a gratuitous display.

If Quebec wants to create an image of secularism, the place to start is by eliminating gratuitous displays of religion that serve no purpose.  Banning the functional while permitting the gratuitous eliminates all credibility.

Analogy: Suppose I have a car, and suppose you have a baby. We have an awesome, supportive friendship full of mutual assistance, which includes me lending you my car on those occasions when you need a car.  But then one day I tell you "You aren't allowed to put your baby's carseat in my car.  As you know, I am a Voluntary Human Extinctionist, and displaying the carseat would come across as promoting breeding."  But, before you can even open your mouth to protest, I add, "But it's okay if you want to put your Baby On Board sticker on the car, because that's just small."


Update: I was so caught up in imagining how awful it would be to be forced to expose more of my body than I'm comfortable with in order to keep my job that I failed to notice two very important things pointed out in this article:

The Charte wouldn't (my emphasis):

1. Remove religious symbols and elements considered "emblematic of Quebec's cultural heritage." That includes: the crucifixes in the Quebec legislature and atop Mount Royal in Montreal, the thousands of religiously based geographic names (e.g. Saint-Louis-du-Ha! Ha!) and the names of schools and hospitals.

[...]

4. Ban opening prayers at municipal council meetings, which was recommended by the 2008 Bouchard-Taylor Commission report into cultural accommodation. The Quebec Court of Appeal ruled in May that such prayers do not necessarily violate Quebec's current human rights legislation.

Yeah. So they're forbidding people to wear as much clothing as they'd like to in government buildings because it might be interpreted as a religious symbol, but they're allowing actual religious symbols actually on display in government buildings.  They're forbidding individuals who happen to work for the government in one capacity to practise their own religion with their own body, but still permitting situations in which individuals who work for the government in another capacity are forced or coerced or pressured to participate in the collective practise of a religion to which they may or may not subscribe in order to do their jobs.


So let's revisit the analogy.  I own a car that I lend out to my friends in a spirit of mutual assistance, but I forbid people to put their children's carseats in my car because "displaying" the carseats would counter my stated Voluntary Human Extinctionist principles.  However, I permit the "Baby On Board" sticker on the basis that it's small.

But now, with this new information, it comes to light that I have a gaudy, brightly-coloured children's playground in my front yard.  Because, like, it's always been there.

Also, since I lend out my car to my friends so often, I'm gathering together a circle of friends to give me their input on the next car I purchase.  However, if you want to be part of this circle, you have to donate gametes to help me in my attempt to conceive a child of my own.

But you still aren't allowed to put your baby's carseat in the car.  Because that would promote breeding.


Not so very good for the credibility, is it?

Mme. Marois suggests that the Charte will unite Quebecers.  I believe it will, against her.  You don't win over the secularists by allowing gratuitous displays of religion in the name of secularism.

Is there a name for the opposite of the Dunning-Kruger effect?

In one of my very first translation classes, the prof asked us to think about how we'd translate a short English sentence into French.  The sentence was grammatically simple and contained three words that rhymed. (I'm not posting it here because it will become googleable and ruin my prof's whole lesson plan.)  The point of this lesson was to discuss the various factors that many need to be translated.  Are we after the meaning of the sentence?  Are we after a rhyme?  Do we need to convey its brevity and simplicity?

My classmates seemed to find this a reasonably easy request and immediately began discussing it.  But I was panicking, because I didn't even know how to say one of the three key words in French!  I felt in over my head and desperately out of my league!  It was only the first or second classes ever, and already I couldn't handle it even though every else could!

So I frantically and stealthily looked up the word I didn't know in the dictionary, and discovered that if I used the first word in the dictionary entry and the most straightforward translation of the two other key words, I could have two out of the three key words rhyme.  And if I replaced the third word with another word that would fit nicely into the sentence and create a similar image, I could have all three rhyme.

(As an analagous example, suppose looking in the dictionary led me to "Bite the red kite."  If the rhyme scheme was more important than the meaning of the actual words, I could use "Bite the white kite.")

It seemed so glaringly obvious!  This was quite clearly the correct answer!

But why weren't any of my classmates coming up with the same thing?  They were coming up with all these things that were way different and no one had even touched on the words I had in mind...this must mean there's something wrong with my idea!  So I said nothing the whole class and felt in way over my  head.

This memory came to mind in the shower the other day, 13 years after the fact, with 10 years' professional experience under my belt.  And I realized: my idea was perfectly good!  It may well even be the optimal translation! It was more effective at rendering both the meaning of the original and the rhyme scheme than what my classmates were suggesting, even after 10 years' experience I can't think of anything better, and, even if something better exists, any competent translator would agree that my idea was a perfectly valid attempt.  And I was still a teenager at the time!

I was so afraid at that time.  I was surrounded by people who had been to immersion and on exchanges and could use slang and real-life accents, and I felt so hideously incompetent in comparison.  But I knew my shit, way better than I could even have imagined.

(Which makes the conventional wisdom that teenagers and young adults think they know everything all the more frustrating.)

Analogy for why social media is not a replacement for RSS

One of the things I found most bizarre in all the discussion surrounding the cancellation of Google Reader is that some people (including, apparently, some who work at Google) seem to think that social media is a suitable replacement for a feed reader.  As though we're perfectly content with reading whatever our internet friends choose to share and have no need whatsoever to curate our own reading list.

Today my shower gave me an analogy:

I've just caught up on the Inspector Gamache series, and am waiting with bated breath for the next book to come out in August.

So suppose, on the release date in August, I walk into a bookstore and ask "Do you have the latest Inspector Gamache book?"

The bookstore worker answers, "Here are some books I read and enjoyed recently!"

That doesn't solve my problem, does it?  I want to know what happened with Inspector Beauvoir.  I want to know how (or whether) Peter and Clara's marriage is holding up. I want to find out who leaked the video.

The books the bookstore worker read and enjoyed recently won't address these needs.  They may well be good books, I may well enjoy them, they may well end up being new favourites that I end up following diligently.  But, even if I read and enjoy them all, I will still want to read the next Inspector Gamache.

Analogy for why you don't need to give up your stuffed animals

I previously blogged about how when I was a kid I thought I'd need to give up my very favourite stuffed toy just because none of the adults around me used stuffed toys, but once I grew up I realized that you don't ever need to give them up, even if you don't need to use them any more.

Today my shower gave me an analogy:

As we grow up and grow older, we need our parents'  help less and less.  When we're well into adult life, sometimes months or even years go by when we don't need their help at all.

But we don't respond to this development by murdering them, or by casting them off on an ice floe to die.  We respond by leaving them mostly to their own devices while we handle our own problems without interrupting their well-deserved retirement. But (as long as they're still alive) we still retain the option of going to them if we need their help.

Things They Should Invent: dictionary of connotations

I recently had a disagreement over a word.  I thought that it was neutral, linguistically unmarked, and derived directly from the verb in question (analogous to how a cook is a person who cooks, or a grave-digger is a person who digs graves).  But my interlocutor  thought it was negative, and wanted us to use a less negative word, but couldn't actually suggest one.  I wasn't able to suggest one either, because I didn't feel that the original word was negative (or positive), and it's very difficult to come up with a synonym that has a different degree of a characteristic that's absent in the original word.  It would be like if someone asked you to provide them with a cake recipe that's less extroverted, or a career path that's not quite as purple.

In any case, the problem was that we were at an impasse over whether this word had this connotation, and there was nothing either of us could to to prove our position to the other.

Proposed solution: a dictionary of connotations.  You look up a word, it tells you all the positive and negative connotations.  In this situation, we could have looked up the word to see definitively if it has the connotations in question, much like how you'd look up a word in the OED or the Petit Robert if you're disagreeing on the meaning.

It would also be useful in preventing inadvertent racism.  Most of the racist things I've uttered in my life have been because I didn't know they were racist, because I don't spend much time around people who are being racist so I don't know all the slurs and stereotypes.  (The remaining times I've been racist have been when I learned some non-neutral words for concepts without having learned the neutral words, so I didn't have the vocabulary to express what I wanted to neutrally.)  It would be enormously helpful to have a reference where we can check these things without having to google for racism.

How to organize hair accessories

I was sorting through a drawer, and I noticed it contained a lot of loose hair clips, and a lot of loose hair elastics.  I was considering getting some kind of container or organizing device, and then I had a brainstorm:

I grouped all the like clips together, then I wrapped all the like hair elastics around each bundle of clips. The elastics keep the clips together in bundles, and the clips provide something to wrap the elastics around without stretching them out, so they won't rattle around loose and sink to the bottom of the drawer.

This takes up less space than any organizing device, the hair accessories are far more readily visible in the drawer than when they're loose, and I can tell what I own at a glance. 

Flawed analogies for street harassment

There are some people in the world who think catcalling and street harassment aren't actual problems.  For the purpose of brevity, I'll call them harassment minimizers (HMs).

Sometimes, when the HMs are male and straight, they'll make some comment like "I don't know what you're complaining about, I'd be thrilled if whenever I walked down the street, groups of women would shout how hot I am and how much they want to have sex with me."

However, this is a flawed analogy.

What do we know about the harassers?  We know two things:

1.  They're harassing people.
2.   They're male (because they've only ever been male in my experience, and this conversation only ever happens with male HMs talking about male harassers).

We know nothing else about them because all the harassment is in the way of us knowing about their hopes and dreams and aspirations and deepest innermost souls.

If I were to evaluate the harassers as viable sexual candidates, I'd see one benign factor and one dealbreaker.  The fact that they're male is benign; the fact that they're harassers is a dealbreaker.

If a straight male HM were to evaluate the harassers as viable sexual candidates, he'd see one benign factor and one dealbreaker.  The fact that they're harassers is benign (since, being a harassment minimizer, he doesn't see harassment as a problem); the fact that they're male is a dealbreaker (since the HM is a straight male).

So the HM's analogy where he'd be happy to have women shouting at him in the street is flawed, because he's taking the one factor that's a dealbreaker for him and changing it to something that isn't a dealbreaker for him.

For the analogy to be sound, he needs to retain one dealbreaker factor and one benign factor.  Therefore, the more apt analogy would be to keep the characters and behaviours the same.  So a straight male HM trying to analogize himself into the shoes of someone being harassed by male harassers should also envision himself being harassed by male harassers.

To change the gender to female would be like if I said "I don't know why it bothers you to have strange men on the street loudly speculating on your sexual proclivities and rudely propositioning you, I'd be thrilled to have kind, gentle, charming, gallant men expressing their esteem for me in ways that I feel are wholly appropriate and not at all uncomfortable."

Analogy for gun people

I recently tweeted: "The weird thing about gun people is they seem to assume that the bad guys are less competent and more chicken than the good guys."

Much pro-gun sentiment seems to be based on the idea that if you have a gun and some bad guy starts doing something bad near you, you can threaten him with your gun and he'll run away, or you can shoot him to stop him from shooting people.

That line of thinking seems to be based on the assumption that the bad guy is likely to drop his gun if you point your gun at him, and/or that you're a better shot than the bad guy. Why would you assume that? His drawing his gun caused you to draw your gun. Why would you expect the opposite reaction from him? The argument for the good guy being a good shot is generally that people apparently practise shooting. So why would you assume the bad guy doesn't? He probably has more time to do so, since guns most likely are a bigger part of his life, whereas the rest of us have to spend time on all the business of being upstanding citizens.

This morning, my shower gave me an analogy for this concept:

I am smart. Therefore, if a bad guy ever does anything bad in my general vicinity, I'll just outsmart him.

Not that simple, is it?

What if they deliberately inflated grades in gym class?

Every once in a while, people talk about making gym class mandatory throughout high school to improve the population's fitness. As I've blogged about previously, before we even get into the instrinic humiliation gym class, making it mandatory every year would be rather harmful academically.

First of all, having another required course to take every year eliminates the option of taking some other course that might be academically useful. Imagine if you're trying to get into some demanding university program, and you don't have room for Biology AND Chemistry AND Physics AND Calculus AND Computer Science because you have to take gym.

Secondly, making the class mandatory brings down the average of students who aren't particularly good at athletics (who should be the target audience of any such initiative, as those who are good at athletics are much more likely to already be involved in athletics). This would be harmful to non-athletic students' university and scholarship applications. For example, I did my very best in gym class every day, and all I got to show for it was a begrudging C. (And I suspect the teacher was only passing me at all because I was doing my best). In comparison, simply showing up in calculus or physics class and not putting in any effort would earn me a B, and simply showing up in French or German class and not putting in any effort would earn me a low A (and doing my best would get me a high A in all these classes). So, if the class were mandatory, it would lower my average, make me less attractive to universities and reduce my scholarships, all in service of a subject that's not only irrelevant to my future academic and professional career, but actually prevents me from taking another course that is relevant to my future academic and professional career. That's downright punitive!

But what if, instead of making gym class mandatory, they made it an easy A? Suppose showing up and doing the sport of the day was enough to earn you a low A-. Students are graded on a curve relative to each other within the A range of percentages, but the lowest mark you can possibly get for showing up and participating is a low A-.

This would give all students who can't normally earn an A effortlessly incentive to take gym every single year, to bring their average up for university. Students would still retain their positions relative to each other because the better performers would get high As and the worse performers would get low As, but gym class would have a positive effect on many people's averages, and no particular detrimental effect on anyone's average.

Inflating the grades may also be useful from a public health perspective (which is relevant since the whole idea of making gym class mandatory comes from a public health perspective). Because my very best efforts got me only a begrudging C, I reasonably conclude that my objective skill in sports is mediocre. If someone asked me to be part of their sports team, I'd be reluctant to do so (again, putting aside personal inclination) because I'd assume I'd be a liability for the team. However, if my best efforts had gotten a respectable B, I'd assume I'm more or less average and therefore no more of a liability than anyone else. You can see how this might affect a person's inclination to play sports later in life.

In all of this, there's still the question of Kinesiology class. I don't know how it works now, but when I was in high school, the OAC (Grade 13) gym class was called Kinesiology, had a stronger classroom component than the gym classes in the lower grades, and was preparation if not prerequisite for studying Kinesiology in university. I googled a few university Kinesiology programs, and they had multiple academic prerequisites (none of which were a high school gym or Kinesiology course), which suggests that, if high school Kinesiology still exists, the classroom component is academically relevant and would suffer from being inflated. Therefore, I propose that, if there is academically relevant material, only the in-gym component should be subject to grade inflation. That way, the students' relative marks will reflect their grasp on the academic material.

Understand, I'm not actually objectively advocating for inflating people's grades in gym class. However, from time to time, people advocate for using gym class as a public health tool, most often by suggesting that it should be made mandatory every year throughout high school. If they're going to insist upon manipulating the curriculum to achieve public health goals, I think grade inflation would be more effective and more just.

Analogy for my non-thankfulness philosophy

I previously blogged my theory that we should not feel thankful for basic human rights or basic standard of living, instead feeling entitled to such things and taking them for granted.

Today my shower gave me an analogy:

Suppose I'm about to get married, and you ask me why I was going to marry that particular person. Starry-eyed, with little hearts circling around my head, I answer "Because he never hits me!"

That's not a good reason, now is it? Of course, it is something one should expect in a spouse. But it's so baseline that we should be taking it absolutely for granted and not even noticing it.

Now let's suppose I'm so genuinely thankful that my husband doesn't hit me that I express this at the slightest provocation. My husband might start to develop the sense that he's doing me a great favour by not hitting me, so he might feel less inclined to do me other favours like not flushing the toilet when I'm in the shower, or wearing headphones if he's going to stay up gaming on a night before I need to get up early for work the next morning. If a friend asks me for relationship advice, I might say something like "Does he hit you? No? Then what more can you ask for?", completely disregarding the fact that she's more comfortable and relaxed when she's alone than when her man's around. If I have a child, I might try to instill what I consider good relationship sense in her by talking about how thankful I am that my husband doesn't hit me and how important that is in a relationship. And, by doing this, I might be making her feel like she's being too picky for rejecting a prospective spouse whose life goals are incompatible, because she feels like she should just be grateful he doesn't hit her.

In short, what influence I have would be lowering the expectations of the people around me, encouraging them to accept lower standards. Whereas if I take for granted that he doesn't hit me, I'll instead be gushing starry-eyed about how how he's the best friend I've ever had and how I'm a better version of myself when I'm around him. What influence I have would encourage those around me to seek out similar compatibility in their relationships. And my hypothetical child, having grown up in a context where being hit by one's spouse is unheard of, would react with utter disbelief the first time she hears of such a thing. "He HIT you??? WTF? People just don't DO that to people they love!"

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.

Further analogy for why "demisexual" is problematic

I blogged before about why I dislike the term "demisexual". The analogy I made in that post (what if parents of only one child were described as semi-parents?) is likely effective for communicating why the term is problematic to people to whom the term doesn't apply, but today in the shower I realize it isn't quite apt for those of us to whom the term does apply, because of its focus on the idea of having fewer partners than average. The number of partners is less important (to the analogy and to the concept) than the nature of the relationship.

So here's another analogy that reflects that:

Some people really like to have home-made, sit-down meals. They like to choose fresh, organic, high-quality ingredients, prepare multiple dishes from scratch, set the table, sit down, and savour.

Not everyone does that. It takes work and it takes time. You aren't going to get your dinner as quickly or multi-taskably as someone who is content to scarf down whatever's handy while catching up on Twitter. For those of us who are happy to scarf down whatever's handy, it sounds downright tedious and rather old-fashioned, and we bristle if anyone suggests we should change our perfectly contented lifestyle and start preparing full sit-down dinners when prepared foods and pre-made salads and take-out are readily available.

But no one would ever suggest that the people who like to prepare full sit-down meals have any less interest, enthusiasm, or passion for food.

Wherein I receive an astounding act of social generousity

Something funny happened to me the other day.

It was warm and sunny out, and I was walking down Yonge Street wearing a simple black outfit and these shoes.

A lady standing with a group of people nearby left her group, headed over in my direction, walked up to me, and said:

"Where did you get such UGLY shoes?"

This was hilarious for a few reasons.

First, she left her group to come tell me my shoes are ugly. Rather than just pointing and laughing with her group or taking a stealth photo to share on facebook, she interrupted her day and sought me out to tell me my shoes are ugly. If the sight of someone walking down the main street of a major city in mildly unconventional footwear so vexes you that you have to stop what you're doing and intervene, I don't think you're going to make it in the city.

Second, her dress and appearance had no particular redeeming qualities. She was a poster girl for the concept of "she's let herself go". She was probably a poster girl for this concept ten years ago. Her clothes were ill-fitting and poorly made walmart-wear of the sort that you can't tell if they're from last summer or last decade, her shorts were riding up between her legs exposing her cellulite, and her hair was cropped short and plastered flat against her head with no hint of having been washed or combed in the past 24 hours. Normally when I see someone who takes so little care with their appearance I think nothing of it, simply assuming they have better things to worry about. But this lady had proven that she clearly doesn't.

Third, these shoes have gotten me the more compliments than anything else in my life, and by "anything" I mean not just fashion choices but actual achievements as well. Even if you do think they're ugly (and that's entirely your prerogative), they are a clear fashion win, moreso than anything else I've ever worn.

Between my bullies and my judgmental family members I've received more than my fair share of disses in my life, but I've never received one that was so off-target from someone who was so very clearly less cool than me. That made the whole thing utterly hilarious and not at all hurtful, and I left the interaction with a smile on my face.

I didn't blog about this when it first happened because I've been getting great mileage out of it. I've told it to all different people, and it gets a laugh every time and we all leave the conversation with smiles on our faces. But this morning in the shower I realized that this random shoe-hating lady has actually given me a very generous gift: a hilarious story!

The story works fantastically because it makes me look good ("My shoes are so awesome they offended some frumpy judgey lady, and I handled the situation with complete sangfroid!") and it makes whomever I tell the story to feel good about themselves ("At least I'm nowhere near that awful!"). If I were the kind of person who liked to brag about my personal possessions, this would give me the perfect opportunity to show off my awesome red shoes.

In fact, every decision that lady made pertaining to our interaction improved the story. By opting not to make any effort with her appearance that day, she made certain that I wouldn't feel any insult and added humour to the story, bolstering my audience's feeling good about themselves upon hearing the story. (It wouldn't be nearly so effective a story if she had been more conventionally attractive.) And by cleverly phrasing her question as "Where did you get such ugly shoes?" she gave me the perfect set-up for a good reply (a big smile and the name and location of the store). If she'd chosen to phrase it "Your shoes are ugly," I probably wouldn't have been able to immediately come up with an appropriate reply (something along the lines of "Thanks, you too!") She was generous enough to sacrifice her appearance, face (in the sociological sense), and dignity so that we may live in a world that contains amusing anecdotes.

So thank you, shoe-hating lady, for your noble sacrifice. It has brought amusement to dozens of people.

This morning's shower revelation

When I was first diagnosed with GERD, I chafed at the dietary restrictions. After extensive thought, I came to the realization that what I really want is to be able to eat whatever I want, whenever I want, for 100% of my life. Even if it shortens my life, I'd rather eat what I want and live to 50 than comply with all the dietary restrictions and live to 100. Unfortunately, since the disease presents as difficulty eating, it's not that simple. Nevertheless, I have been rather lax in following the rules out of my usual combination of laziness and gluttony.

In the shower this morning, I realized that perfect compliance with the dietary restrictions would actually be the worst possible approach. My goal is to eat the way I want to for 100% of my remaining life. If I followed every single dietary restriction, I'd be eating the way I want for 0% of my remaining life. I still don't know how to reach the optimal balance (where I die of something that lets me eat before I die of something that prevents me from eating), but I do know that perfect compliance isn't it.

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.

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.

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.

Analogy for banning niqabs (or any other clothing, for that matter) at citizenship ceremonies

I was so outraged that this is being done in my name that I couldn't blog about it for days. But my shower gave me an analogy:

Suppose there's an elite search and rescue team. Throughout its history, the vast majority of the team members have been male, although there's never been any rule or practice preventing women from joining.

The first step to joining the team is a physical fitness test. Everyone takes their test at the same time, and, because it's such an elite search and rescue team, these tests sometimes attract VIP visits and media attention, and applicants' families and friends often come along to watch. There has never been any dress code for the tests, but it's ended up that the vast majority of the candidates don't wear a shirt when taking the test. So, even though there are no gender or clothing rules, it's not at all uncommon to see an entire test group full of shirtless men. Some of the women who take the test also do it shirtless (Maybe they like the tradition? Maybe they're more comfortable that way? No one has ever thought to ask.) and some wear shirts. We don't have any data on how many do or don't wear shirts. (For that matter, we don't have any data on how many men, if any, wear shirts.) We actually don't even have any data on how many applicants are women. The statement that's it's dominated by shirtless males is based solely on visual observation.

Then, suddenly, the head of the search and rescue team announces that all fitness tests must be taken shirtless. In support of his statement, he cites a story told by one of his colleagues about how he was observing a fitness test and saw a group of women wearing shirts. The colleague told this story in a tone of voice that suggested he thought it was a problem, but the best reason given is that wearing a shirt is not what most people do. There's no logistical reason why a shirt would get in the way (they do need to briefly listen to applicants' lungs with a stethoscope before the test - although some question whether that's even medically necessary - but that could easily be done around a shirt or behind a screen away from the crowds and cameras), and there's no other dress code for the tests.

On top of all this, they announced the no-shirt rule at the last minute. There are thousands of applicants already in the system, who have spent years getting in shape and training their dogs and learning how to climb mountains and fly helicopters and scuba dive so they can fulfill their lifetime goal of being a part of this team, all without any idea that they might suddenly have to perform in front of a crowd and cameras in less clothing than they feel comfortable wearing.

Isn't that just assholic??? It's disproportionately cruel and humiliating to the people affected, and for no good reason. It's not going to give people a sense of belonging, it's going to give them an urge to flee.

The new recruits will grow comfortable as members of the search and rescue team on their own, as time passes and they collect empirical evidence that they are welcome and valued members. As we all know from our private lives, if you want to make someone feel comfortable about wearing less clothing, you don't start by removing their clothing; you start by making them comfortable. There's no reason to force people to do something they're uncomfortable with in front of a large audience on their very first day just for superficial visual consistency.