Madonna of Excelsior by Zakes Mda.  This book is based on a true story of 19 white men and black women in a 1970s South African township who werearrested and tried for miscegenation until the international media found outand threw out the case.  It follows the story of one of the women, and thebiracial daughter she gave birth to as a result of this rape.It is an extremely fascinating book because it is written by a South Africanauthor, and the characters hold the values of the environment they grew upin.  No attempt is made to view the story through a Western lens.  When themain character is a teenager, it's practically normal for her and herfriends to be taken into a field and raped by white men, and the matter isdescribed in the tone in which one describes a minor life annoyance, likemosquitoes or missing the bus.  She doesn't even learn the word for rapeuntil 20 years later.  The only anger that mother or daughter feel is thedaughter's frustration at her appearance, at having hair on her legs whenmost black women don't, and having to put up with schoolyard taunts forbeing "coloured" (even this is treated like it's normal).  The unfairness, hypocrisy and double standards of the apartheid aren't even mention.  Doublestandards in action are described left and right, yes, but it's nevermentioned that this is a double standard. However, because of all this, I didn't much enjoy the book.  First of allthere's the problem of reading repeated rape and sexual harassment scenes.They are essential to the story, they are no more graphic than they need tobe (in fact, they are far less graphic than they need to be), but having to read rape is upsetting, and takes away from my enjoyment of a novel. Also, my milquetoast pablum-fed psyche wanted some kind of happy ending, revenge, justice, reparations for all the cruelty and humiliation the main charactershad to put up with!  But ultimately, there was nothing. A slight semi-demi-maybe-sorta redemption for one of the unpleasant characters, relatively painless natural or unrelated deaths for one or two others. Other than that, life just quietly went on.In summary, very important, very interesting, but not quite comfy recreational reading.

Father Charles Goes Down And Ends Battle. I have this mental image of a
priest walking down a hill into a raging battle, calmly putting up his hand,
and everyone stops fighting and goes home. When I was five I thought this
was a perfectly plausible situation.

You know, Ms. J never did teach us the dirty version like she promised...

How to make your translator cry:

1.  Don't use verbs. 
2.  Create a situation that involves two men, a masculine corporate entity, and several masculine documents.  Then cease using nouns for the rest of the text, using only the third person singular masculine pronoun.
3.  Tell the story as it occurs to you instead of in chronological order. Bonus points for using the present tense to refer to things that happened in the early past, then using the past tense to refer to things that happened in the recent past.
4.  Always use definite articles when referring to something you haven't mentioned yet.
5.  Quote jurisprudence (excuse me, "case law") frequently, but never cite the decisions you are quoting.  For bonus points, quote jurisprudence that has not yet been archived, uploaded or indexed by Google.
6.  Instead of using one noun to refer to one concept, use a staggering array of synonyms of your own creation every time a substantive is called for.  Make sure these synonyms sound very similar to language that might be found in a law, but are, in fact, just a chain of random words.
7.  Don't bother to explicitly which individuals are the appellant, defendant, plaintiff, counsel, etc. 
8.  Make up your own names for forms, codes, titles, organization names, and other standardized terminology.

Things They Should Invent (well, not invent, but sell): Brown eggs and
white eggs in the same carton. Just 'cause.

Based on the sounds I can hear from the apartment above me, my upstairs
neighbours seem to have spent about half an hour doing something very active
on their bed, then proceeded into the living room where they hammered nails
into pieces of wood.

After using MSN messenger for a week or two, I have to say that I'm not at all impressed.  It offers far less control over your contact list than ICQ - with MSN you can't make yourself invisible to a single user without blocking their messages and you can't choose to make yourself visible to a select few users when you're in invisible mode.  You can't even send a message to a user who's offline!  I cannot fathom why someone would willingly switch to MSN from ICQ. I will therefore be switching back to Trillian posthaste.  The only reason I'm even keeping my MSN account active is because everyone I want to talk to is using MSN, but I'd like to be perfectly clear that this is under protest.

It occurred to me in the shower this morning that perhaps I could eliminate the need to dust the inside of my computer by taking a piece of one of those filters for household heating vents, and putting the piece of filter between the case and the fan, thus filtering the air that enters the computer.

As I usually do before undertaking anything new, I tried to think of any reasons why this might be a stupid idea.  The best I could come up with is "You should stick stuff inside computers," but I can't think of any specific negative consequences that might result (as long as I get the filter attached properly so it doesn't go flying around and get caught in the fan.)

Does anyone reading this have a more definitive idea of why this would be a bad idea, or, conversely, know that it should work without any problems?

There was a poll a while back where they came up with the idea that 40% of Canadian youth think Americans are evil.  (Interestingly, it seems that's the only statistic from that poll that made it into the media.)  I had some thoughts about this while brushing my teeth:

1.  A lot of the interpretation depends on how the question was presented.  Was it multiple choice? ("Do you think Americans are a) cute and cuddly, b) a tasty breakfast treat, or c) evil?")  Was it "Do you agree with the following statement:  Americans are evil."  Was it incremental?  (Strongly agree, agree somewhat, disagree somewhat, strongly disagree) Was it fill in the blank, just asking "What do you think of Americans?" and compiling the results?  There is a difference between agreeing with or choosing a statement that's presented to you, and pulling the idea of "evil" out of thin air.  For one thing, if "evil" was an option presented in the poll, that would certainly give the respondents the impression that it's an acceptable answer in this context, just like if you're talking to a friend in a private conversation at home and he says "My boss is an idiot, is yours?" it's acceptable to agree, but you don't go calling your boss an idiot to his face. Unfortunately, I can no longer find information about how the poll was conducted.

2.  I'm honestly not sure if this is from the same poll or not, but I seem to remember the phrase "a force for evil" kicking around and I have it mentally associated with this poll.  The few remaining articles I could find through Google News have the only the word "evil" in quotation marks.  If the phrase was, in fact, "a force for evil" or something similar, that implies that the actions are evil, not necessarily the people. It's analogous to a brilliant person doing a stupid thing - you can say "That's a stupid thing they did" without meaning that the person themselves is stupid.

3.  Didn't some US politician or another unilaterally declare a few various countries to be evil not so long ago, in front of one or two TV cameras?  Funny, that.

4.  Sometimes it seems like the US is becoming one of those countries where if you criticize the foreign policy it gets interpreted as hate speech against the people.  I'm not sure if this is because of the Weltanschauung of certain significant elements of American society, or if the people who make these accusations in the media I regularly consume are just really loud or what, but it just makes me want to ignore US news and politics.

Things They Should Invent: Pay-Per-Use Last-Caller ID

You press *##, and the phone tells you verbally the number that called last.
You get charged a few cents, whatever's reasonable, whenever you use this
function. I know phones can do this because my work phone does it, but I
don't want to pay money for call display and for a display phone because I
don't get that many missed calls.

Do different cultures have different constellations?

I saw horsies!  Walking down Yonge Street!  Horsies!!!!

Things I wonder about bodily fluids:

1.  How much blood can you lose without dying?

2.  Suppose you're a hemophiliac, so if you start bleeding it doesn't stop without medical attention.  Suppose you get a really really tiny pinprick, so you're bleeding very very slowly.  If you're bleeding at a slower rate than your body can regenerate blood cells, but you keep bleeding forever, would you still bleed to death or could you keep functioning normally despite the fact that you're trickling blood.

3.  When people have had total kidney failure so they have to have dialysis, do they still need to urinate?

I hate this. I'm a shy and nervous person, so I have various nervous tics
when I'm feeling uncomfortable. When I was a child, these tics were rather
unpleasant things, like picking my nose, squeezing my zits, or cracking my
knuckles.. As I got older I realized I couldn't do these things in public,
so I consciously switched to playing with my necklaces. Eventually, all my
necklaces broke. So I made another conscious effort to switch fixing my hair
and touching my neck as though unconsciously scratching an itch. Then I read
an article that said that these are signs of flirting, so I worked
consciously to eliminate them, channelling my nervous energies into
adjusting my clothes.

Now I just read an article that said that signs of flirting are adjusting
your clothes, tossing your head, and making eye contact and looking away. I
now adjust my clothes as a nervous tic, I toss my head to avoid touching my
hair and coming across as flirting, and I make eye contact and look away
because I'm trying not to make eye contact at all so as not to give the
impression that I'm interested! GAH! So now it looks like I'll have to
find another nervous tic, wear my hair pulled tightly back and thoroughly
sprayed at all times so it never requires adjustment, and wear dark
sunglasses everywhere.

Things They Should Invent: an "I don't want to see this ad any more" option
for web browsers

It would put a cookie in your browser telling ad servers not to show you
particular ads. This would be no loss to the advertisers because obviously
users aren't going to click on an ad that they don't want to see, and it
would make users' browsing experience more pleasant.

I use WebWasher to achieve this at home, but I'm not allowed to install
software on my work computer and I really would like a way to avoid seeing
ads for Spiderman, dating services, and pornographic screensavers while at
work.

Some Great Thing by Colin McAdam

I can't decide whether I like this book or not.  The big problem is that all the characters are entirely unsympathetic. They all act like assholes, jerks or idiots, they all end up committing adultery, and they all do so with the attitude that the adultery is some random phenomenon that just happened to them, rather than a conscious decision that they made themselves.  I found it very difficult to work my way through the book because of all this - I simply did not enjoy spending my evenings inside these people's heads.

However, it does have a lot of redeeming qualities.  The author has perfectly captured the vernacular of his diverse characters, both in terms of speech and in terms of train of thought.  He has an unfortunate habit of not indicating frequently enough which character is speaking, leaving the reader counting lines, but the dialogue is impeccable.  Another plus is that the book is about urban planning in Ottawa during the 1970s, but the fact that it is about urban planning does not make the book less interesting in any way.  That's certainly an indication of the author's talent, being able to make a novel about urban planning interesting!

The book itself is quite good, it's just that I found the characters intolerable.  If you think you can put up with the characters, it might be worth reading the book.  I should warn, however, that there is a LOT of profanity in this book.  It's piled in layers upon layers in fascinating combinations that I've never seen before.  For me, the sheer density of the profanity made it meaningless, but other people might not feel this way.

Indulge me for a moment as I talk my way through a train of thought:

There are some people who are opposed to employment equity.  People have various reasons for being opposed to this policy.  One of the reasons that some people are opposed is that they feel that employment equity is favouring less-qualified candidates from designated groups over more qualified candidates not from designated groups.

It occurs to me that the people who oppose employment equity for this reason might want to keep quiet about it.

Why?  Well, let's start with the premise that since they are opposed to employment equity, their goal is to put an end to the program, so all candidates will be evaluated solely on merit and qualifications with no consideration for designated group status.

So what would it take to make the program end? First and foremost, all parties involved would have to feel that the program has done its job and is no longer necessary. 

How would they decide if the program has done its job?  I think two factors have to be met. 

First of all, the numbers have to work out.  The percentage of members of designated groups within whatever the organization is would have to match their percentages in the general population.  This is complex, there are many factors,  I have many thoughts on this, and it does need to be addressed.  However, it is very big, and it outside the control of people who are opposed to employment equity, and outside the scope of this little logic exercise of mine.

The second factor is that the members of designated groups who are sitting on employment equity committees have to start reporting back that they are not feeling at all disadvantaged or discriminated against because of their designated status.

Now imagine for a moment you are a member of a designated group; let's say you are an Icklibogg.  You worked very hard to get where you are, learned a lot, were always willing to try something new.  Meanwhile, somewhere decided that Ickliboggs are under-represented in your organization and put them on the employment equity list, because there aren't many Ickliboggs in the organization, they rope you into sitting on the employment equity committe. 

Then one day you overhear someone saying, in a very derisive tone, "Oh, they're only where they are because they're an Icklibogg."  You don't know whether they're talking about you or not, but you heard quite clearly what they said.

Later that day, you have to go to an employment equity committee meeting.  The chair asks you "So do you feel that our organization is a positive environment for Ickliboggs?"

Would your answer contribute to the elimination of employment equity?

Re: Catney's comments (which I'm far too lazy to find a link for - do a
Google News search for Catney if you don't already know what I'm talking
about):

The problem with the possibility of these comments poisoning the trial is
not purely academic. It isn't just some lofty theoretical matter of a
police officer verbally violating the "innocent until proven guilty" precept
even though we all know everything thinks he's the guy. The problem is the
possibility that Chen did, in fact, kill Cecilia Zhang, if he is, in fact, a
psychopathic cold-blooded child murderer from whom society needs to be
protected, and he gets a decent criminal lawyer and walks free because
Catney let his professionalism drop for one minute and poisoned the trial.

Things They Should Invent:

1. Self-scanning library return drop-box. When you drop a book in, it
automatically scans it as having been returned. Then all the librarians
need to do is reshelf the books. The scanner would have to be further
inside to prevent people from sticking the edge of the book into the slot
then pulling it back out and walking off with the book, but I think it could
be done with something like a supermarket scanner. On a related note, they
should come up with a library system that lets the library track books with
their UPS barcode instead of adding a new barcode.

2. Time-sensitive "reply to" field for email. So when I send an urgent
personal email from work, I can have the "reply to" address be my work
address before 5:00, and my home address after 5:00.

When I read that there had been an arrest in the Cecilia Zhang case, the
first thought that popped into my head was "I wonder if this guy really did
it, or if they're just pinning it on someone they had to arrest for
something else so the police could have some positive press."

And Fantino says there has been no loss of public trust!