This is new?

Today's Globe and Mail included an article deploring the fact that there are people trying to get you to sign up for credit cards in TTC stations.

My first thought: this is new? They've been doing it at the further north stations on the Yonge line for months and months - maybe even as long as a year! An ungenerous corner of my mind suspects no one made the effort to care until it started happening south of Bloor.

(So what do I think? It doesn't especially bother me, but I freely admit that that might be coloured by the fact that I already have the credit card in question, so any time they spend trying to attract my attention is entirely their loss. I'd certainly have no objection if it went away though.)

In this blog's ongoing tradition of taking credit for everything...

After thoroughly enjoying Google Pacman on my speaker-less work computer, I came home to realize it has sound. This is inconvenient since I usually leave my browser open and on Google by default, so I asked them on Twitter if we can have a mute button.

Shortly thereafter, a mute button appeared. (It's in the bottom left corner.)

I can't find any googleable or tweeted evidence of anyone noticing the presence of a mute button before I sent the original tweet.

You're welcome :)

This is not an episode of Scooby Doo!

The OED Word of the Day was Holy Ghost. In the Catholicism of my era, we called it the Holy Spirit. I have seen Holy Ghost in older schoolbooks (I strongly suspect they were Catholic schoolbooks from my parents' era, but I'm not 100% certain about this because I saw it before I was aware of different denominations), but I've never heard it in Catholicism in real life.

I can see how the same (currently unknown to me) word might be translated as both Ghost and Spirit by two different translators, but I wonder which is more accurate? Spirit makes better sense to me just logically, but I'm not fully up on my catechism, and I'm not sure if an atheist's idea of logic is applicable when translating such a religious concept.

The OED etymology only went as far back as Old English, at which time the concepts of Ghost and Spirit overlapped more than they do today. But I wonder which word more accurate reflects the original (Greek? Aramaic?) source text?

Things They Should Study: the impact of gender imbalance on future generations

A while back, I read a book called Singled Out: How Two Million Women Survived without Men After the First World War by Virginia Nicholson. So many men died in WWI that there were an enormous number of women of that generation who never married because there were simply not enough men to go around. (I'm trying to find the percentage of missing men but can't - both 10% and 25% come to mind, but there's an anecdote in the book where a teacher at a girls' school tells her class that only one in ten of them will get married.) Apparently this was historically unprecedented (which seems odd to me - there have always been wars - but that's not he point of this post). The book explores the situation of the women who never married, which was rather interesting, but today I found myself thinking it would be interesting to study this situation from the opposite perspective: what impact did this gender imbalance have on marriage and then on future generations?

(To explain what I'm trying to say here, I'm going to have to make a lot of gross generalizations. I'm taking a heterocentric, heteronormative approach, I'm reducing people's appeal as a spouse and as a human being to a number on the classic 1 to 10 scale, I'm presenting as a given the assumption that people are only "worthy" of spouses who are close to them on the 1 to 10 scale, and I'm assuming that children only look to adults of their own gender as role models. I do realize that human beings and relationships are a lot more complex nuanced than that, but I'm just trying to outline the general concept that I think someone should study so it gets silly to insert appropriate qualifiers into every single sentence.)

We can assume that the missing men were distributed evenly over the 1 to 10 scale. So normally only someone who is a 9 or 10 can get with another 10. But with all these men missing, there weren't enough 10 men for all the 10 women, so 10 women ended up with men as low as 8 or even 7. But meanwhile, 10 men never found themselves having to stoop to a 9. So you've got a whole generation of marriages where there are a significant number of wives who are objectively out of their husband's league, but few or no husbands who are out of their wife's league.

The thing is, people might not notice this is happening. The pool of prospective spouses available just…is. It isn't really something you question. For example, I have never in my life met someone, even in passing, who is independently wealthy. (I know that such people exist, I've read about them in books, but I've never met one in real life.) Therefore, if I were to write down everything I want in a prospective mate, it would never even occur to me to write down independently wealthy, any more than it would occur to me to say I want someone with a flying car. That just isn't something that happens in real life.

So because no one notices this is happening, as everyone comes back from WWI and that cohort starts to get married, the 1 to 10 scale gradually gets realigned. 10 women keep ending up with, say 8 men, so eventually a marriage that objectively consists of a 8 man and a 10 woman is assumed to be a fair match. And, as this new normal takes over, people look at the couple, figure they're well-matched by general social standards, there's no way he's a 10 and there's no way she's an 8, so they must both be 9s.

So then some time passes and all these people have children. The children look around, see their parents and their friends' parents and the other grownups around them, and blindly accept these misaligned matches as normal because they don't know anything else. They see the woman who is objectively a 10 and the man who is objectively an 8, and unquestioningly accept that both these people are 9s. So this creates a situation where women have to be "better" than men just to get the same number of points, but this children don't realize this because the whole world has always been like this for them.

So what impact does this have on the children? Does it cause girls to underestimate their worth and boys to overestimate their worth? (Or, alternatively or in addition, does it cause society as a whole to underestimate girls' worth and to overestimate boys' worth?) What impact does it have on the mating and dating game? What impact does it have on the next generation of children?

It was beyond the scope of the book I read, but, as we know about a generation after WWI there was WWII. Did this also result in a shortage of men? If so, did this exacerbate even more this now-socially-internalized idea whereby a woman has to be objectively better to be condsidered a 10 than a man does? How did this affect their kids (i.e. the Baby Boomers)?

Writing this out has given me a theory. Not sure how good a theory it is, but it's a theory that I have. You know how they keep talking about how boys are falling behind in education, how schools aren't serving them well etc.? What if it's really this idea, internalized and multiplied over several generations? Maybe boys feel "good enough" at a lower level of achievement than girls do? Maybe boys are just as happy with a 60% as girls are with an 80% for the same reasons that a man who, just a few generations ago, would have been considered a 6 is now considered evenly matched with a woman who, the same few generations ago, would have been an 8?

I have no idea how much of this is true or valid, but it would be an interesting thing for someone to research if they could figure out a methodology.

Things They Should Invent: non-rude way for businesses to tell customers that they're not quite the target audience

Buying a condo is way too hard and stressful to do myself, and everyone advises me that what I really need is a good real estate agent.

(Which always leads to the following exchange:

Me: So how do I find a good real estate agent?
Them: Ask around!
Me: Um, that's kind of what I'm doing right now?)

I'm told a good real estate agent can take all your preferences and specifications and keep an eye open for places that are a good fit, which does sound like exactly what I need.

However, I know that real estate agents get paid on commission. I know that my budget is very small (in Toronto real estate terms) and I have quite a lot of preferences and specifications and am generally very needy. I do love where I'm renting now and don't want to sacrifice even one bit of quality of life in finding a condo. I do understand that this makes me quite a lot of work for very little return, but I don't want to sacrifice on something as important as housing.

So my concern in finding a real estate agent would be finding someone who is actually willing to and interested in finding me something that meets all my silly little needs, holding my hand, and tending to my neuroses. I don't want to be stuck with someone who is rolling their eyes whenever I show up on call display or who pressures me to lower my standards just to save themselves time. And I'm quite sure they don't want to be stuck with me.

What we need is a standard, non-rude, non-judgemental, purely informative way for businesses to inform customers that they don't think they're a good fit. This would need to be done in a way that isn't detrimental to the customer continuing to receive that product or service from that business (in case they can't find something better). You can't really do this in real life because you'd be accused of discrimination or, at the very least, poor customer service. But, as a customer, I'd really like to know when I'm not wanted. And I'm sure you can think of one or two cases where you wouldn't mind being able to do this to your own customers.

Search Strings of the Day

1. Where to buy a Victoria's Secret bra
2. If you aren't gay then why aren't you married?
3. Stripper problems and how to solve them

Open Letter to Disappointed Mother in the May 6 Dear Prudence column

Dear Prudence,
I have two daughters, ages 11 and 14. It has been my desire to instill in them empathy, compassion, and an eye for supporting the underdog. My daughters are liked by their peers and are popular. I resent popularity and have rallied against it both at work and when I was in school. There are students who are picked on at their school, and in the past both girls have stood up for these students. What I find troubling is that this morning I witnessed both of them laughing at students who they thought were dorky. I asked what was so funny and got the explanation that the students were weird and had rejected one daughter's efforts to be nice. I wonder what I should be doing or saying at this point so that I don't lose ground with them, and so that we can build a lesson from this.

—Disappointed Mother

Dear Disappointed Mother,

Congratulations on raising two kids who can fit in with the cool kids even though you weren't one of the cool kids yourself! You and your daughters are in a unique position here, and you can do a lot of good for them and for the whole social structure of their school by explaining to them, clearly, specifically, and non-judgementally, where the "weird" students were coming from. Prudie advises you to tell your daughters that kids who don't fit in often struggle to figure out how to behave. But you need to go better than that and tell them why and how they struggle to figure out how to behave.

Tell them about how sometimes the mean kids make fun of people by acting like they're being nice to them and then mocking them for thinking that they actually were being nice to them. Tell them about how you have no way of telling if one of the cool kids is being sincere or not, and the more times they're cruel to you the more empirical evidence builds up suggesting that people's intentions are cruel. Tell them about how this messes up your ability to read people's intentions for years and years and years. Make sure they understand where this reaction is coming from and how it's a natural response to the environment, not random weirdness. Then, since your kids are popular AND receptive to standing up for picked-on students you can use this to empower your kids to solve the problem, giving the picked-on kids a critical mass of positive interaction and validation and ultimately unweirding them.

I know it sounds crazy, but a lot of people who weren't bullied have no concept whatsoever of how this works. You're in a unique position of being able to make people who can effect change in their social circle understand. Please use it.

Today's inspiration

In honour of what is apparently an impending 90s revival (and can I just say: yes please!), Style Notebook is asking people about their favourite 90s fashion film.

Emily Blake says:

Clueless. Oh, I know. I am not cool. My pick is not in line with the ’90s as they are being referenced on runways and in closets today. [...]

However Clueless was [...] where I first saw unadulterated fashion joy being portrayed. These girls were not afraid of looking ridiculous (Dionne’s incredible hat collection is a notable example), not afraid to wear colour, or pattern. They were having fun.

Yes! That's what it is: joy! That's going to be my guideline for taking fashion risks. Yes, flares have been out of style for years, but they make me feel fierce and bootylicious. Yes, it might be a bit much to match my bra straps to my shoes to my earrings to that one stripe on my dress, but it makes me feel like I fricking WON!

I'm never going to be a fashion plate objectively, so I may as well stop worrying about it and go for the joy. I'm cheering for a 90s revival because in the real 90s I couldn't explore as much as I wanted to, because I always had an eye on making safe fashion choices that wouldn't get me bullied. But if I wanted to live like that, I'd go back to high school. The new rule for adulthood: go for the joy!

More information please: what exactly does "sexual assault" mean?

We're being warned about a man connected with a series of sexual assaults on the Yonge subway line:

Okay, I ride the Yonge subway line, am I at risk?

He tends to approach women between the ages of 20 to 40 years old, with slim to average builds, and long, black or dark brown hair.

Between the ages of 20 to 40? Check. Slim to average builds? For slightly optimistic values of "average". "Long, black or dark brown hair"? Check.

Oh, shit, what's going to happen to me?

The man stands behind the victims on crowded trains and engages in what police loosely term “sexual acts.”

Meaning what, exactly? Is he going to try to stick his penis in me, or is he going to wank at me? Or is he going to do something else I haven't anticipated?

As part of the target audience, I'd very much like to know what I'm in for so I can be prepared. I'd like to start thinking about how I might defend myself against whatever these loosely termed sexual acts are. I'd like enough information to be confident in shouting in a crowded train "Stop him, that's the guy!" rather than getting a false positive on some guy who just innocent stumbled when the train changed speeds. I'd like enough information to be able to recognize halfway across a crowded train if he starts doing whatever it is he's doing to someone else.

I feel like the Toronto Police are not giving me enough information to protect myself and my fellow citizens, or to help positively identify the suspect, and I feel like I could do these things better if they'd give me a more specific description of what to expect. Yes, a more specific description is probably distasteful. That's why I want to read about it in my morning paper rather than experiencing it on my morning commute.

Things They Should Invent: subsidize use of Cancon in TV/movie soundtracks

Most of the rules to promote Canadian music and other performing arts industries fall in the category of requiring people to use Canadian content, e.g. a certain percentage of songs played on the radio must be Canadian. I think a more effective approach would be to make it a good business decision to use Canadian music.

One way people often discover new music is when it's used in the soundtrack to a TV show or movie. I've read that TV and movie productions have to pay a considerable amount of money for the rights to any songs they want to use.

So to promote Canadian music, they should set up a fund to subsidize the rights to Canadian music for soundtrack purposes. The artist still gets paid whatever they'd get paid, but there's little to no cost to the production. The subsidy could go to international productions as well as Canadian productions, to give our artists broader exposure. So you want to use the Hip in your guerrilla indie film, you can have a subsidy. You want to use Caribou in a Hollywood blockbuster, you can have a subsidy.

To promote emerging artists (and, ultimately, to save money), the subsidies would be bigger the less often a particular artist has been used. For example, the first person to use a particular artist gets a 100% subsidy, the second gets a 90% subsidy, the third gets 80%, etc. until the artist has been in 10 movies/TV shows and you have to pay full price. This would also mean that other people are doing the work of finding interesting emerging artists to subsidize.

The process would be very simple. A producer would fill out a form saying "I would like to use this song by this artist", and simply get a message back saying "This song is eligible for a X% subsidy. Do you want to use it? (y/n)". If it isn't eligible for a subsidy, it will cost no more than it normally would anyway.

So Canadian artists get money and exposure, producers get less costly music rights, and the program is very easy to administer because grants are awarded first-come first-served and other people are doing the work of seeking out worthy emerging artists.

Merchandise

1. I'm reading The Simpsons: An Uncensored, Unauthorized History, and it mentions how there was a huge wave of ridiculous amounts of merchandise when the show first came out. I remember that and wasn't especially surprised by that at the time, but I can't see that happening today. I can't articulate why, I just can't imagine any new TV show, no matter how awesome, successfully selling that much merchandise. Has society as a whole evolved, or is it just because I'm not longer in child world?

2. After Eddie Izzard's gig, there were these guys right outside Massey Hall selling bootleg merch - T-shirts and DVDs for like $5. (Which I thought was rather rude - Eddie himself was right there inside and could have come out at any time!) But I wonder how big the market for that stuff is? For the t-shirts, you'd have to be fan enough to want a tour t-shirt (i.e. they were the big square black ones with the name of the tour and all the cities, not even the cute and humorous Cake or Death and Covered in Bees shirts), but not fan enough to want your money to go into Eddie's pocket (and be okay with it going in some random guy's pocket) even while you're still carrying the endorphin rush from the three-hour show he just gave us.

For the DVDs, the same fan-enough/not-fan-enough balance applies, plus you'd have to be un-savvy enough not to know how to download the shows for free online, but still savvy enough to have gotten tickets for this sold-out barely-advertised show (and to have enjoyed the show you just finished watching enough that you want DVDs of more so immediately that you can't wait until you get home and can google the thing.)

From what I know of the fandom, that seems like a very narrow slice of the market. I wonder if these guys picked Eddie specifically (and, if so, why), or if they do this for every single show that comes into town? I wonder what their margins are like? In my experience, Eddie fans not only tend to be savvy, but also are rather inclined to care about Eddie personally, to the extent that people would think about whether they're taking money out of Eddie's pocket by buying bootleg merch. (That's not to say no one would ever bootleg, but thought would at least go into it.) I wonder how their margins on Eddie merch compare with their margins on other merch?

Things They Should Invent: relativistic requirements for salvation

Picture this: the most moral 10% of the population goes to heaven. Everyone else goes to hell.

That would be a good motivator for ethical behaviour, wouldn't it? It would also be a good way to get people to butt out of other people's business and work on improving themselves.

Now all we have to do is get the church to embrace moral relativism.

Things They Should Invent: 24-hour walk-in clinics next door to all emergency rooms

This article, which is ultimately about many other things, starts with the author wondering why people bring their kids to the Emergency room rather than to a walk-in clinic.

Solution: have a walk-in clinic right there. In the hospital. Next door to the emergency room. It doesn't have to be part of the hospital administratively, it could be a storefront inside the hospital building (like how there's often a coffee shop and a florist's). Then whenever someone comes into the emergency room with a non-emergency, the triage nurse can just re-direct them to the walk-in clinic, where they'll get treated faster.

Current earworm

(Video is, as usual, irrelevant)

Things They Should Invent: secret sources of water on stage during live theatre

Eddie Izzard started coughing in the middle of talking, so he went off to the wings, got a bottle of water, drank some, and then grinned at us and said "You can't do that in Shakespeare, can you?" Then he went off on a glorious tangent that started with Shakespearean actors drinking water and somehow ended with Laertes killing Ophelia with a bazooka, and all was right with the world.

But it occurred to me: you could totally do that in Shakespeare if the water was in a period-appropriate goblet that happened to be sitting somewhere on the set! Any decent actor would be able to drink water without breaking character.

They should totally do that in live theatre. Whenever possible, incorporate a glass of water or two into the set. It would make the actors' jobs much easier.

Things They Should Invent: reuseable LRTs

One major debate in Toronto transit planning is LRTs vs. subways. LRTs are faster and cheaper to build, subways are more user-friendly.

I'd much rather have an LRT right away than be stuck with buses for years and years and years waiting for a subway for the reasons described here. But I do find the subway a more pleasant way to travel overall.

So what I'd really like them to do is put LRTs in right away and then slowly replace them with subways. I doubt that would happen though - too much duplication of resources.

So what if we could reuse the resources? What if they could create LRT infrastructure that can be removed when we're done with it and used elsewhere in the city? You just take up the rails and install them in a different street, and send the LRT cars over there. They'd still have to budget for workers constantly building stuff, but that's job creation and would fall under the operating budget (as opposed to major kick-start capital investments) if they just had and budgeted for workers constantly expanding the TTC.

And what would we do with the LRT lanes once the tracks are removed? Bike lanes! Good, physically separated bike lanes like in Amsterdam. We sell this to drivers by telling them it will keep cyclist out of their way.

Shutting the fuck up: a risk analysis

Is shutting the fuck up a good idea or a bad idea? Let's analyze this.

We as Canadians have two choices: shut the fuck up, or continuing to inform our government of our wishes.

The government has three choices: comply with the wishes of Canadians, ignore us and do whatever they want anyway, and retaliate by punishing not only Canadians but also the people in developing countries whom we want to help.

So let's look at every permutation:

1. We STFU and the government decides to comply. At first glance this makes no sense - how can they comply if we're not saying anything? But they might take our silence for consent - it's happened before (c.f. making O Canada inclusive, updating sex ed. in Ontario). Or what if this is some sort of mind game where they'll only give us what we want if we stop asking for it? That seems to be what Senator Ruth is suggesting. Do Canadians really want their government to work that way? How could we possibly make our country work if we have to not inform our government of our wishes to make them happen, or stop informing them of our wishes at some secret unspoken signal? Completely unreasonable.

2. We keep talking and the government decides to comply. Optimal outcome. Government representing the wishes of the people. Exactly how democracy is supposed to work.

Therefore, if the government's plan is to comply, the best option is to keep talking.

3. We STFU and the government decides to ignore us. Again, they would likely publicly present our silence as consent.

4. We keep talking and the government decides to ignore us. We're still being ignored, but at least the results cannot be attributed to us, and it is made obvious that the government is ignoring the will of the people.

Therefore, if the government's plan is to ignore us, the best option is to keep talking.

5. We STFU and the government decides to retaliate. That would be like Darth Vader destroying Alderaan.

6. We keep talking and the government decides to retaliate. It would become glaringly obvious that the government punishes people for informing the government of their will, and, while there may be short-term pain, any government that would do this would be unelectable in the future and it would stand as a lesson to any other future Darth Vaders who might want to swoop in.

Therefore, if the government's plan is to retaliate, the best option is to keep talking.

Sprinklers

If you remember from fire extinguisher training, there are three classes of fires. Class A is ordinary combustibles (paper, wood, etc.). Class B is grease/oil/etc. Class C is electrical. You can use water to extinguish a Class A fire, but it would actually make things worse for Class B and Class C fires. For Class B, because oil and water don't mix, it would just spread the burning oil around. And for Class C, water + electricity is obviously a bad idea. This is all really basic. I learned it in babysitting class when I was 12, and I'm sure you all learned it similarly early on.

Conventional wisdom is that installing sprinklers makes it much safer if there's a fire. Question: what happens if it's a grease fire or an electrical fire?

More information please: unilingual judges edition

Apparently some people think unilingual judges should be permitted to sit on the Supreme Court. The people who support this seem to be thinking that requiring bilingualism (and this even though it would just be passive bilingualism) would rule out some of the best candidates.

But judges on all other Federal Courts have to be bilingual.

So under what circumstances would a person be one of the very best candidates in the country for the Supreme Court but not have Federal Court experience? What experience or expertise would they have that Federal Court judges lack? Why, if this experience or expertise makes a person such an epicly better candidate than the Federal Court judges, has is not been possible for any of the Federal Court judges to gain similar expertise?

Are there any actual specific people currently in existence would would be an ideal candidate for the Supreme Court but don't have Federal Court experience? If so, with the understanding that I haven't exactly been breathlessly following jurists' careers, what do these specific people have that the existing Federal Court judges don't?