Pseudo-Kosher

Whenever I have cow milk and goat milk in the fridge at the same time, one of them goes bad way before it should.

I'm pretty sure it's not a rule of Kosher not to mix cow and goat milk (they seem like they'd be equally-hoofed?) but doesn't it sound like one?

Currently pissing me off

A good part of my politics are based on the thought "What if [bad thing] happens?" I want mechanisms to be in place so that I, and everyone else, can get through the bad thing without too much damage.

But it pisses me off when people work against me politically on the sole or primary basis that they find the "What if [bad thing] happens?" approach pessimistic, and choose to believe that [bad thing] won't happen, because, golly, it just gets them down to plan for bad things! So because of this, they don't want to sacrifice a negligible amount of money or convenience to help build a safety net.

This is particularly irksome because in my adult life the two things I've been most pessimistic about that people have most tried to change my mind about are the following:

1. What if the Great Depression happens again?
2. What if I buy a condo and then soon afterwards unexpectedly need to access the assets invested in it but the value of the condo has dropped in the meantime?

I've been worrying about these things since...I guess it would be 2003, when I read Ten Lost Years and when I started looking at what goes into buying a condo. People tried like crazy to convince me not to worry about them, not to make life decisions based on these possibilities, and certainly not to waste our tax money insisting on a social safety net that would get everyone through these disasters.

And then, a year or two ago...they kind of happened.

And yet, when I'm pessimistic, people still try to talk me out of it and work against addressing it politically.

Anyone know the Sims 3 food icons?

One of my Sims (dude on the right) wants to make Kate Pistachio's (lady on the left) favourite meal. The internet tells me that you find out another Sim's favourite food by chatting until they start talking about food. So I had them chatting and my Sim's thought bubble showed the cartoon icon (like on the Simology page) for his own favourite food. Then Kate came back with this icon.

But I can't tell what it is!

Anyone know which food that's supposed to be the icon for?

Edit: Never mind, I figured it out by going into Create a Sim and looking at the bit where you can edit their food preferences. (Can't believe I didn't think of that right away!) Apparently that picture's supposed to be ratatouille. So, for the googlers: Kate Pistachio's favourite food is ratatouille.

Are we also not wearing enough hats?

I find it presumptuous and just...weird to say that the IUD is being underused in Canada and is "due for a comeback" just because we use it at a lower rate than in other countries.

I use the birth control method that's best for me (i.e. the pill). The IUD doesn't have the primary characteristics I look for in a birth control method (i.e. hormonal and allows for regular monthly menstruation). It's basic human respect to assume that other people are also using the method that's best for them, and if they aren't they'll take it up with their doctor.

Not meeting statistical averages for birth control choices in the general population isn't a problem; leading people to think that this is a problem is a problem.

Things They Should Invent: extreme public service

I've always thought strikes are ill-advised in situations where there isn't a competitor. If Stelco goes on strike you can buy steel from Dofasco, but if the TTC goes on strike it's not like you can take another subway. And when the strikers are public sector, there is the additional disadvantage of stirring up anti-public-service sentiment among the general public.

So here's my idea for a better kind of job action: extreme public service. Ignore the employer's red tape and make things as easy as possible for the public at the expense of the employer.

This idea was inspired by something I read during one of the TTC strike scares, where someone suggested that an effective job action would be for them to stop collecting/enforcing fares. Anyone can just walk into the subway and no one will stop them.

So how does this apply to the current City strike? Garbage collectors could pick up anything, regardless of quantity or whether it's properly sorted and packaged. Perhaps they could also throw recycling and organics in with the regular garbage so the city doesn't get recycling revenues, but the optics of that might be bad. The people in charge of the ferries could waive fares and let anyone go to the islands for free. Social assistance caseworkers could blindly accept every application and grant them full benefits instead of screening people. (The problem is they might have to warn applicants, in case their files get reviewed later.) The people responsible for issuing permits could issue them for free, and the people responsible for enforcing them could casually neglect to do so. I can't think of anything for child care and elder care workers to do, but there must be something.

I don't know anything about the legality of this. It might be illegal or it might be the kind of thing that leads to disciplinary action from the employer (after all, it's like the opposite of work to rule) but it would keep the public on-side while inconveniencing the employer.

This blew my mind several different ways

From City of Toronto Strike blog (but not terribly related to the strike so you can go ahead and keep reading even if you don't like what I generally have to say about the strike):

Today a couple of 40-ish men approached looking festive in not-quite-matching pink shirts and funky shoes. I approached them as we do to be helpful and to avoid line-crashing, and said, “We’re asking people what service they need access to in City Hall because not everything is open due to the strike.” Tax collection and permits for example, are closed; Service Canada, the library, and marriage licenses are open.

One of the men flushed slightly and assured me in a southern American accent, “We know where we’re going is open.” But he didn’t tell me what they were doing inside.

They were going to get married, but they were embarrassed/hesitant/afraid/reluctant to tell people!

Imagine that headspace! You're getting married - like in just a few minutes - but you feel that you can't or shouldn't tell randoms! Personally, if my marriage was so forbidden or socially frowned upon, and I was literally on my way to get married, I'd be shouting it from the rooftops. "We're getting MARRIED and there's not a damn thing you can do about it! See this piece of paper? Booyah!" But these guys, even though they're in another country where same-sex marriage is totally allowed and on their way to the actual place where same-sex marriages are performed on a daily basis, still didn't feel they could tell people. That's a bit sad, and yet somehow a bit more romantic.

But then think about it the other way around. You're about to get married to your same-sex partner, and in your headspace your relationship is so socially taboo you don't want to openly admit it even in a foreign country. Then you arrive at City Hall only to find demonstrators hindering access! Then it turns out they don't even blink at your same-sex marriage, they just want to make sure you aren't lining up for a service that isn't open, and maybe pass on some literature about why the City's offer is inadequate. That would be cognitive dissonance.

In any case, congratulations, gentlemen, wherever you are.

Sometimes I just want to curl up and cry

I just want to be able to walk down my own street without hearing anti-labour rhetoric that's so hateful it would be modded out of newspaper comment threads. And this in a neighbourhood that's statistically highrise-dwelling and childless.

Things They Should Study: how does commercial sodium content compare with the amount of salt people use when left to their own devices?

Commercial canned soups tend to have an unhealthily high sodium content. Sodium-free or genuinely low-sodium soups tend to be rather bland and people are inclined to want to add salt.

Research idea: give the subjects sodium-free versions of high-sodium commercial soups, instruct them to add salt to taste, and see how the end result compares with the sodium content of commercial soups.

Was Dufferin Mall actually ghetto?

Apparently they've just finished renovating Dufferin Mall to make it less "ghetto".

Was it actually ghetto before? Or is that just how the target audience of the Globe and Mail's Style section would perceive it?

Ever since I moved to Toronto I've been going there a couple of times a year for when I need to go to Walmart, and I would never have described it as ghetto. It's certainly not posh, more serviceable and working class. But that's to be expected from somewhere that I'm going for the express purpose of going to Walmart. I'd never describe it as ghetto - Dufferin Mall:my usual haunts::Bloor line:Yonge line. Surely there are far more ghetto places in the city?

One of these things is not like the others

I don't know the story here, I just found the pic on that list of random articles on the log-in screen of Google Reader, and I thought it was funny.

Things They Should Invent: heat-generating appliances that cool the surrounding room

Cooling appliances, like refrigerators, radiate heat into the surrounding room because they're discharging the heat that they sucked out of the thing being cooled.

Heating appliances, like ovens, also radiate heat into the surrounding room because of the heat that they're generating.

So why not make ovens that generate heat inside the oven partially by cooling the surrounding room? That would be way better in the summer! Maybe they could even have a switch so they could radiate heat in the winter but cool the room in the summer.

Now you're probably thinking "How often do we use ovens in the summer?" But you know what we do use all the time in the summer? Water heaters! We have energy heating our water and more energy air conditioning our home. Why not take the heat being removed from the air and use it to help heat the water?

Things They Should Invent: self-cleaning dishwasher spray arms

Sometimes bits of food get stuck in the little water-spraying holes of my dishwasher spray arms. This is problematic because they then spray bits of food back onto the dishes, so the dishes don't come out fully clean. They're annoying to clean out - I have to detach the arms and remove them from the dishwasher and soak them in the sink and poke at the bits of food with a brush.

It occurs to me that they could be cleaned from the inside out by squirting water out at high pressure. Unfortunately, the only way to do this is to run a dishwasher cycle, which uses a lot of water.

I want a setting where the dishwasher will send just a few good sharp squirts of water through the arms to blast the food particles out. It will only take a minute and won't use nearly as much energy as a full dishwasher cycle.

Things They Should Invent: partial basket of goods CPI

Apparently the inflation rate was negative in June, due primarily to lower gas prices.

I don't know about June specifically but I have been feeling inflation lately. And, as it happens, I don't have a car so I don't buy gas. (I know that gas prices should theoretically also impact the price of consumer goods, but you can see how I'm not feeling it as much as someone who drives a car.)

So this got me wondering what the inflation rate for products and services I actually do buy is.

They could totally calculate this. They know what's in the basket of goods, they know how much each of the goods cost, they're dealing with real numbers that actually happened - they could totally write a program to calculate all this stuff and put it up on a website similar to the inflation calculator.

Things They Should Invent: removable on demand hair dye

The problem with dyeing your hair is that you have to either keep re-dyeing, or grow it out and have trashy-looking roots. Yes, there are temporary dyes on the drugstore shelf, but they're unreliable - sometimes they wash out way too quickly, sometimes they don't wash out at all. I was once walking around with six-inch roots from what was supposed to be a 24-day hair dye, which you can get away with when you're a teenager but doesn't work so well when you're pushing 30. I'd rather like some interesting colour, but it's an expensive commitment to do and maintain to a standard that's suitable for my age and hair length.

So here's what I want: hair dye that is permanent if left to its own devices, but can be washed out with a specific shampoo designed for that express purpose. Regular shampoo won't budge it and if you do it once without maintenance you'll get roots like usual. But then, once the roots are too much, if you don't want to re-dye, you can buy this special shampoo and wash the colour right out so you're back to your natural colour.

Crap!

I invented two things in the shower today, but when I got out of the shower and went to the computer I forgot the better of the two. So I went back and stood in the shower and remembered it again. But then when I got to the computer I forgot it again. So I went to the shower, and it wasn't there any more!

Bliss

Make-up off, comfy pants on, beer in hand, scalloped potatoes simmering in the oven, and no one will ask anything of me for the next two days.

Bliss.

The other other problem with all this anti-labour sentiment

This post arose from, but is now only tangential to, today's Margaret Wente.

No more than six generations ago (and in some cases, far fewer generations than that), every single one of my ancestors was living in poverty - the kind of poverty portrayed in Fiddler on the Roof. They earned a living on farms or perhaps in mines, ceaseless work, starvation a very real possibility. I earn a living in sitting at a computer in air conditioning wearing high heels, and barring some true disaster I'm not going to starve (not because I'm confident in my own perpetual employability, but because there are enough people in the world who are sufficiently personally invested in me that they won't let that happen.)

How we got from my ancestors milking cows in Anatevka to me blogging in Toronto is a very common story. You probably have it in your own family. Free farms, immigration, industrialization, unionization, post-war diaspora and economic boom, education. And the recurring theme throughout this saga in my family, as it probably was in your family, is a better life for the children.

I'll admit I haven't given this much critical thought. It's something I've always blindly accepted - people want a better life for their children. But I think it's generally accepted as a positive value in our society. There's a certain romance about it, it's the sort of thing that's often invoked when trying to sell political platforms. And even if a better life for your children isn't top priority, you'd have to be a real excessive flaming asshole to be actively opposed to it.

In any case, it did work. My ancestors did make a better life for their children. Every generation has had freedoms their parents couldn't imagine (My grandmothers could vote! My parents could plan their family! I can marry a man OR a woman!) and every generation up to my parents' (to soon to tell for mine) has had a significantly better quality of life than their parents did. But, as I blogged about before, the most dramatic change has happened since my grandparents' generation. My grandparents might not have always had shoes; I have a favourite shoe designer. And the reason for this sudden, dramatic improvement within the last few generations is one thing: Good Jobs.

My grandparents' jobs at the plants paid enough that they could support their families and retire with a pension. Hard Work, yes, but they weren't going to starve. Their kids went and worked at the same plants as their summer jobs (apparently this was normal at the time - you could just get your kid a job at the plant), enabling them to earn their university tuition and get white-collar Good Jobs. They supported their children more comfortably (orthodontics, music lessons) and brought us up in a world where living in a safe neighbourhood and going to university after high school is perfectly normal. So we did just that and have been fortunate enough to get Good Jobs ourselves. So far, all our ancestors' hard work and sacrifice has built a better life for us.

But will it last?

As Margaret Wente discusses, these city jobs are Good Jobs. Stability, benefits, pension, a rate of pay where you can breathe. But fewer jobs in general are Good Jobs, because of the economics shifts that happened with the 90s recession. So, as Wente discusses, there are a lot of very loud people who want these jobs to stop being Good Jobs.

But eliminating Good Jobs is completely detrimental to the value of making a better life for one's children. How are people going to raise their children without Good Jobs? How are their children going to support themselves once they're adults? Frankly, I'm feeling this already - and I still have a Good Job! While I do have a few more toys than my parents did at my age, overall my quality of life is never going to exceed theirs, and is very likely to end up lower than theirs. (If I aspired to the same lifestyle as my parents - house, car, children, vacations - I would be certain that my quality of life will always be lower than theirs and I'll have no chance of ever reaching their quality of life. The only reason why my quality of life might ever be in the same league as my parents' is because I aspire to a far less expensive lifestyle.) If they take away the Good Jobs, I'm going to end up worse off than my grandparents were slaving away in the plants. Three generations of hard work (and Hard Work) and sacrifice to build a better life for the children, all down the drain.

Given the amount of anti-labour sentiment and the proportion of parents in the general population, I'd imagine at least some of the anti-labour people are or aspire to be parents. I wonder what kind of career arc they envision for their own children?

Application: I do not think it means what you think it means

I hadn't been following this super closely so I thought it was just some random bit of diplomatic businesses. But it turns out, to my shame, that the reason why Canada wants to require visas for visitors from the Czech Republic is because they say they're getting too many refugee applications from that country. This isn't the first time I've heard this government, in the context of immigration, complain that there are too many applications or too many unqualified applicants. And there's one issue here that I keep coming back to and just can't get past:

They're applications!

In general, in our society, the social contract surrounding an application is "You should totally apply!" If you think you might enjoy blogging about an island in Australia or standing on a plinth in London or having Google bring your most brilliant ideas to fruition, you should totally apply! If you're interested in an academic program or a scholarship or a job, you should totally apply, even if you don't quite have all the requirements. In fact, to fail to apply because you don't think you'd be accepted is generally seen as lazy - or, in the case of a job, irresponsible and lacking in due diligence. Meanwhile, applying even when you most likely won't get in is seen as positive, gusty, showing initiative. It's like the archetype of the little working class kid who convinces the neighbourhood grocer to let him stock shelves even though he's just a kid, and eventually grows up to own a whole chain of grocery stores. If you picture an employer sitting there with a stack of applications from applicants who don't meet the requirements, they'd be bemoaning the lack of qualified applicants, not the glut of unqualified applicants.

What's up with this total violation of the social contract surrounding the nature of application? I can't speak to whether previous governments have done it, but I've only noticed it recently. I know when I applied for EI six years ago, their explicitly stated policy is that if you're not sure if you qualify, you should apply anyway and they'll assess your application. That's how applications work. You have something desirable, applicants apply, you assess the applications. I've never before in my life ever heard of anyone dissing applicants for applying.

Things They Should Invent: popcorn utensil

Buttered popcorn is yummy, but feels unpleasant on the fingers. Popcorn is good to eat at the computer, but (even if it isn't buttered) your fingers get dirty which would get your keyboard dirty.

Someone should invent a utensil for eating popcorn with. Like a spoon, but better.