Dogger!

There is currently a doggie wearing a birthday hat in the Blogger logo. Apparently this is because Blogger is seven years old, and one dog year equals seven people years. Whatever, I like doggies and any excuse to have more doggies is a good thing!

Post your printer recommendations here

I want a new printer. Mine is seven years old, loud, big, awkward, and runs out of ink at the slightest provocation. I want a quiet, unassuming printer that is efficient enough that I can print whenever the fancy strikes me, without worrying about whether the print job is worth using up the ink.

Anyone have any thoughts?

As usual, Rebecca Eckler misses the point

The problem is not that people are finding parenting boring (This link takes you to a Google page. Click on the URL link provided under "If the URL is valid, try visiting that web page by clicking on the following link" to see a Globe and Mail article).

The problem is that the people who find parenthood boring are talking about it in the media and on the internet, using their own names or their "real life" internet names. This means that when their children are old enough to google, if they aren't already, they will google their parents (and you know that it will eventually occur to them to google everyone they know) and find these comments by their parents about how they're boring. And when they do this, they'll still be young enough that "raising kids is boring" will sound exactly like "my kids are boring people" and that will be enough to seriously hurt the kid's feelings. Not to mention what will happen if one of their peers stumbles upon it first!

Everyone has the right to find anything as boring or interesting as they want. Boredom isn't something you can control, and you aren't evil for getting bored. However, it is very cruel to announce to the whole world that your kids are boring (and that is how your kids will interpret it when they find it, and they will find it). If the thought of parenting sounds so boring that you just can't keep your boredome to yourself, don't have kids. It's that simple.

Monkey monkeys!

Telus is using the monkey monkeys in its ads again! I love the monkey monkeys!

Advice for parents

Here's something I overheard today. It's remembered and then translated and then paraphrased un peu so as not to be too ponderous in English, but I think the message is a good one:

Every time you feel like taking credit for your child's achievements or virtues, don't. Instead, take it as an opportunity to praise your child for their achievements or virtues.

Open letter to Google

Dear Google:

You should be honoured. Website names rarely get verbed. The only other ones I can think of are EBay, LiveJournal, and YouTube. Your predecessors, Yahoo and Altavista, didn't get to be verbs. Blogger doesn't get to be a verb because blog was already a verb when it was created. Even the venerable Amazon doesn't get to be a verb. Every person who verbs your name is another person who has you linked inextricably with search. It's free marketing, and testament to your permanent impact on society as a whole. Besides, there's no room for language police in the English language.

Things They Should Uninvent: Ad hominem (self-)righteousness

I think the major problem in politics today is people who act as though they're automatically right because of who they are, or who treat other parties as though they're automatically in the right because of who they are. I see this in Canadian politics, US politics, Middle East politics, everywhere. So much policy-making is permeated by a sense of "We're the good guys, therefore our opinions in this matter are automatically correct," or "They're the good guys, therefore their actions are automatically virtuous," or "I define myself to be on your side, therefore anything I think of will automatically be to your benefit."

I think it would be a lot better if all our politicos presented every idea as though they had no particular credibility based on who they are or based on their record. All policies and all ideas must stand up on their own merits, and don't get any bonus points even for being thought of by the smartest, most innovative, most virtuous person in the world.

10

They're talking about lowering the age of criminal responsibility to 10 (right now it's 12).

Now, I distinctly remember how my mind worked at age 10, and I'm certain I had the necessary sense of consequences to be held legally responsible for my own actions. In fact, I thought I was legally responsible for my own actions throughout childhood - I didn't learn about the age 12 threshold until I was already 12 - which made me really uncomfortable in situations where my parents wanted to bend the rules a bit. At any rate, my ten year old self could have handled going to court just as well as my adult self could, I think. (I've never actually been to court IRL, although I sometimes translate court proceedings and have seen a few movies and TV shows.)

However, I'm concerned about the utter vitriol that some people who support lowering the age are spewing. Some commentators seem to think that all kids are evil, vicious little brats and are embracing this as a way to give them the punishment they deserve. Like I said before, I distinctly remember being that age so I know with absolute certainty that they aren't sweet innocent angels, but neither does the entire age group deserve to be punished for some inherent evil. The malicious and punitive attitude coming from the people who support lowering the age makes me wonder whether doing so is at all sound from a criminological and child development perspective. We don't want a situation where the punishment for criminal activity just makes kids into more effective delinquents. I sincerely hope any changes are subject to thorough review by criminology and child psychology experts, to make sure the process actually rehabilitates kids instead of just making things worse. I wholeheartedly support everyone being responsible for their own actions, but we don't want the anger and hatred of the loudest commentators to create a punitive system that just produces hardened thugs.

Also, there is the problem that when you're a kid and the adults around you (even if it's just a very loud minority) act like you're an insolent little brat who deserves to be punished even though you haven't done anything wrong (or anything nearly as wrong as they think you have), you come to think that all adults actively want you to be miserable and therefore are out to get you. This leads you to the realization that adults are not to be trusted, and then you don't confide in adults when you have a real problem that requires adult advice or help. When I was a kid, my father kept saying that he should spank us pre-emptively so we wouldn't be bad when we went out. He never actually did that, that I can recall, and in retrospect it may (or may not) have been some weird attempt at humour, but it didn't feel like that at the time. It felt like he actively wanted us to be miserable and humiliated, like it gave him joy to punish us and he was looking for the slightest excuse, and as a result I told my parents very little. I didn't tell them about most of the bullying I suffered for fear I'd get a lecture that I deserved it. I didn't tell them when I was sexually harrassed for fear they'd punish me for somehow inviting it. I didn't tell them that I lost all my friends at the beginning of grade 9 because they chose to take up smoking, for fear that they'd punish me for knowing people who smoked. Luckily I didn't have any serious problems in these "controversial" areas that would have required adult intervention! In retrospect I don't think they would have punished me for these things (although I'm not absolutely certain about that), but that's the mindset created when a kid thinks that grownups enjoy punishing her. I'm worried that if this ugly, punitive attitude permeats the youth justice system and trickles down to kids through the current media coverage, an entire generation will distrust their grownups the way I distrust mine.

I'm all for personal responsibility for one's actions and natural consequences, and I do think a 10-year-old can deal with that, but this must be done carefully, mindfully, calmly, with input from experts and professionals, and without influence by extremists - either those who think 10-year-olds are sweet innocent angels, or those who think 10-year-olds are evil incorrigible little demon spawn.

Further thoughts:

- There needs to be some kind of mechanism to protect children from the legal consequences of actions they do at the behest of their parents. I don't agree with parents being legally responsible for actions that the children take independently, but if the parent instructs the child to do something illegal, the parent should bear the full legal consequences. My parents never asked me to do anything illegal, but they did ask me to do things that I thought were illegal in my youthful overestimation of what the police would arrest you for, (e.g. my mother would ask me to wait in line with the grocery cart while she ran to grab one item she'd forgotten, and I thought the police would come and arrest me if I got to the register before my mother came back, because I didn't have any money on me to pay for the groceries) and I know that it's very hard for a 10-year-old to deal with a divergence between "being good" by obeying one's parents and "being good" by obeying the law.

- It's kind of. . . inconsistent? (not the exact word I'm looking for, but as close as I can come) to lower the age of legal responsibility while raising the age of consent.

Attn: billionaire philantropists, I have a mission for you

The Star mentions in passing that many major drug research companies are kind of quietly hoping someone else discovers an HIV vaccine, because there would be massive pressure to give it away for free.

What would happen if that potential financial disincentive were eliminated? What would happen if an endowment fund were created to throw massive amounts of money at the people who discover an HIV vaccine on the condition that it's distributed for free?

Imagine, for instance, that everyone involved in the team that first discovers a vaccine gets their salary matched for life. Everyone from the CEO to the student lab techs. Every time they earn a dollar, the endowment fund gives them another dollar. Even if they leave their pharmaceutical job. Or if that isn't reasonable, imagine if everyone on the team gets their mortgage paid off (or a home bought for them if they rent) and free university tuition for their entire family. If the economics of the situation also require throwing some money at the company itself, so be it. My general point is to create a situation where discovering a feasible HIV vaccine would lead to significant financial gain for everyone involved, without hindering access to the vaccine.

Mr. Gates? Mr. Buffett? I'm looking at you!

Things They Should Invent: combined dental and manicure services

I went to the dentist today. As I was sitting there getting my mouth poked at, I mentally went through my to-do list for the rest of the day, and remembered that I really should redo my nails today. Then I realized, I'm already sitting still, doing nothing, and being poked at for an hour, so why not have a manicurist poke at me too? It would certainly save me some time! I don't usually get my nails done professionally, but once every six months during time when I'm already doing nothing? I'd splurge for that!

Hezbollah has a lot of rockets

Hezbollah and Israel have been throwing rockets at each other for, what, a couple of weeks now? That's a lot of rockets. It doesn't surprise me that Israel has a lot of rockets because they're a whole country, but how did Hezbollah get all these rockets? Do they have their own arms factories? Do they buy them? If so, how do they get through customs? Or are they all smuggled in? Where do they keep them? What would they do with them if they ever decided to disband? This all never occurred to me before, but after all these days it's obvious that it's not an insignificant number of rockets, and that raises all kinds of questions.

What are your linking etiquette preferences?

I usually use target=_blank in my links, so they'll open in a new window. I do this because it's my personal preference when I'm clicking on a link from a blog. However, I recently read an article saying that's poor etiquette because it takes control away from the user. As a user, I often tend to click blindly without thinking to open the link in a new window before it's too late, but I don't know if that's typical behaviour. So do you prefer your links to open in new windows, or in the same window?

I'm planning a post that will have quite a few links - anywhere between 5 and 20 - and the links will probably be of more interest to most of you than the things I usually link to. It occurs to me that it could be annoying to have 10 different windows open, especially since some of them might be multimedia. But at the same time, it might also be annoying to have to click back to the blog to see the next link (and it's more likely than usual that you will be interested in looking at all the links.) So what which would you prefer: a) target=_blank, which opens every link in its own window; b) target=_new, which opens the links in a separate window from the blog, but all in the same window, so you have to use your browser's back button to page through all the links, or c) no target, so the links open by default in the same window as the blog unless you intervene?

For the purposes of this link-heavy post, which will probably get put together sometime this weekend, I'll go with any votes y'all have left in the comments here by the time I get around to putting the post together. As for my general linking policy, I'm going to mull it over, taking any comments into consideration.

Note: I use IE and am not terribly familiar with the other browsers as it's been a few years since I've had to keep my web design or tech support skills current. If any of these linking practices have different results in whichever browser you're using, feel free to let me know, along with your preferences.

Something I wish I had thought to do earlier

I wish that, when I was a kid and one of my parents was complaining about work or the Damn Goverment or Those People, I wish I had thought to look at them smugly and say "Well, life isn't fair!" with that self-satisfied "Look at me, I'm imparting wisdom, give me a standing ovation!" look that parents get when they're saying something particularly unhelpful to their children.

Unfortunately the idea didn't occur to me until just now.

Stupidest act of falsification ever!

So apparently some pictures of bombed-out Beirut were doctored before they were sent to Reuters.

The Star has before and after pictures.

What's really sad about this is that, to my civilian and unartistic eye at least, it doesn't change the impact of the photo that much.

My first reaction upon seeing the real photo: "OMG, the whole city is up in smoke"
My second reaction upon seeing the real photo: "Oh wait, it's only coming from that one building and kind of drifting around."

My first reaction upon seeing the doctored photo (without comparing it with the real photo): "OMG, the whole city is up in smoke"
My second reaction upon seeing the doctored photo: "Oh wait, it's only coming from that one building and kind of drifting around."
My third reaction upon seeing the doctored photo: "Funny pattern that smoke is travelling in..."

I wouldn't have identified it as a photoshop job myself, I would have just assumed it's some property of bombed-building smoke that I don't know about, but I'm far from an expert. The only people in the world who would be less skilled at identifying a photoshop job than I am would be people who have never used photoshop. (I've only dabbled unsuccessfully, and casually lurked around Fark and Worth1000.)

But the big issue is that the photoshopping doesn't add anything to the picture. It doesn't make it worse, it doesn't change the impact or lack thereof, it's not going to change anyone's opinion or emotional response. It's just more smoke added to a picture that already shows a lot of smoke. So why do it in the first place?

Thoughts from Enterprise

1. Vanishing Point resolves by stating that Hoshi has lost her fear of using the transporter, based on the fact that she stepped on the alien transporter platform at the end of her hallucination.

But that doesn't prove anything! From Hoshi's perspective, she has already died and demolecularized, plus now the ship is about to blow up. The transporter cannot possibly make things worse! However, since this didn't really happen and was all a vivid and horrific hallucination, she now has a tangible reason to fear the transporter IRL - she might get stuck in the pattern buffer and in a psychological nightmare again!

2. Whenever they find a promising-looking uninhabited M-class planet, the crew always wants to go have R&R on it. They want to go camping and rafting and climbing and who knows what else. That's really bizarre if you think about it - imagine if the aliens came to earth with the goal of going scuba-diving or something!

Question I am currently pondering

It's 1929. You are 30 years old. At the very nadir of the Great Depression - the very bottom point in that big economic chart I'm sure we've all seen - you invest some money in the stock market. Your stock choices are typical and representative - you have no particular great insight except that you're sure the economy has no where to go but up. You sit on your portfolio for 35 years until you retire at age 65, when your portfolio provides you with enough income to live at an average middle-class standard of living until you die at age 100.

Is this a feasible situation? How much money would you have to have invested initially? How much would that be in today's dollars?

Annihilated

I've been familiar with the word annihilated for years and years, but I only just now associated the pronunciation with the spelling. I always mentally read the I's as short instead of long, and sort of subconsciously imagined them as two separate words.

Attn: Toronto municipal candidates

If you're a candidate in the Toronto municipal election, listen up! Here's how to optimize your chances of getting my vote:

Somewhere on your website, state explicitly and neutrally how exactly your platform differs from that of your opponents, and do this without dissing your opponents.

I'm neither particularly supportive of nor particularly opposed to my current city councillor. I agree with about half of what he does, and disagree with the other half. As a challenger, you could be better or you could be worse. However, both of your platforms sound pretty much the same right now, so that just isn't helpful to me at all. I don't feel that it's imperative to overthrow the incumbent, but none of you have shown me any particular reason why you deserve my vote over and above the other candidates.

Federal and provincial politics are party-based, so I can make my decisions based on the values demonstrated by each party. However, municipal candidates are not associated with any parties. You're just random individuals and, unless you're an incumbent, I have no basis on which to judge you except the information on your website. So tell me why you're different! I don't want to hear you defaming the other candidates, I can do that myself. I just want to know why your platform is better, what you have to offer me that the other guys don't. Then I can decide for myself whether that corresponds with my priorities or not. Don't be vague and indefinite in an attempt to not lose my vote. Be bold, be specific, tell me what you stand for!

Last time around, I was not able to vote for a city councillor because I could find no information on one of the two candidates' platforms. I would very much like to vote for a councillor this time around, but I don't know what I'm going to do if I don't see any difference between the platforms.

Any media people reading this? If so, I'd love to see a comparison of all the candidates' platforms that emphasizes the differences!

New word!

I hereby coin the word Doppelnamer, to mean someone who has the same name as you. (Yes, I have checked, and it doesn't require an umlaut, unless I've forgotten some rule of German.)