After reading a grammatical discussion on Sugarquill, I felt like making a
list of all the grammar errors that I find understandable/forgivable in
amateur writers. Of course, being the proofreader from hell, I would still
correct these errors, but I can understand why someone might make them, and
sympathize completely.

1. Not using the subjunctive in English. Misusing it is still wrong, but
not knowing to use it at all is understandable.
2. Applying English pluralization to words that take Latin pluralization.
However, the reverse is not acceptable.
3. Minor errors in reported speech tense sequence when the sentence
requires three or more tenses.
4. Faulty noun genders (fiancé vs. fiancée), ONLY if the writer has not
studied the language from which the gendering arises.
5. Singular "they". I don't even consider this an error - I want to
standardize it as soon as someone lets me edit the style guide!
6. Sentences ending with prepositions, as long as the preposition is not
one that should go with "whom."
7. Using "who" instead of "whom" when there is no preposition, and
confusing "who" and "whom" in convoluted sentences.

From the Brilliant Ideas that will Never Work file: Designated parking-free
housing.

A lot of development of high-rise housing doesn't get off the ground because
the neighbourhood is concerned about where all those cars are going to be
parked. However, there are also a lot of people in the city who don't own a
car at all, and wouldn't mind living somewhere where parking is not
available.

Most residential buildings charge for parking separately - you don't use it,
you don't pay - but perhaps its time to go a step further and have
designated parking-free residences, and pay a modest financial incentive for
people to move into these places.

When you live in parking-free housing, you are not entitled to a spot in the
underground garage or on the street. However, if the building has a carshare
you are still allowed to use it. A whole building can be parking-free, or
there could be a certain number of parking-free units (they wouldn't
necessarily have to be the same units all the time, the residents could just
self-designate). People who choose to be parking-free can still own
vehicles, they just will not be entitled to a parking space in their
building or in reserved parking on the street.

Anyone who moves from a parking unit to a parking-free unit, or designates
themselves as parking-free in an eligible building, would get a one-time
financial incentive (maybe two or three months' housing costs, maybe a
year's worth of metropasses and taxi vouchers, maybe a guarantee that their
rent in the new building would not be higher than the cost of a comparable
apartment in the old building, plus reimbursement of any expenses associated
with moving). Perhaps there could be a large fee associated with switching
your status back to parking if you do so while living in an area that has
parking-free residences, or perhaps you might be required to pay back the
incentive.

The advantage would be that residents who do not require parking will be
identified, and the financial incentives would encourage them to move to
parking-free areas. I know that if someone paid me to move to a comparable
apartment in the same neighbourhood for the same rent, I would do so. Once
a significant mass of people who are willing to live car-free have been
identified, it will be easier to convince all parties involved to permit the
construction of a car-free highrise in a neighbourhood that can easily
accommodate 200 more people, but cannot handle 200 more cars.

From the Brilliant Ideas That Will Never Work file:

With most television services, you can pay a lot of money and get every
channel ever, or you can pay less money and get fewer channels.

For those customers who chose to pay less money and get fewer channels, they
should give them random daily previews of other channels. Customers get,
say, one free hour per week of every channel they don't subscribe to, with
the exception of pay per view and any channels they choose to block. The fun
part is that the free hour is totally randomized, generated by a computer
program. You never know when a channel is going to be available, or which
of the channels are available at a given time. So you're flipping channels
(aside: they need a system where you flip channels and automatically hit
every channel you're currently getting, which some TVs have and some don't)
and suddenly there's this channel you don't pay for! Is it interesting? Do
you want more? Should you pay for this, or try your luck again next week?

Someone to Run With by David Grossman.

A boy runs through the streets of Jerusalem trying to find the owner of a
lost dog. A girl runs through the underworld of Jerusalem trying to get her
brother back from the clutches of the seedy characters who are exploiting
him. And, eventually, find her dog.

The book is a bit slow to start out with, but it picks up about a quarter of
the way in and just doesn't stop. It sometimes comes perilously close to
falling in the TEEN DRAMA! category, but it manages to stay on the realistic
side of the line. Sweet Valley High this isn't. The characters are
beautifully flawed and realistic, and the plot is very plausible for a
thriller/mystery/adventure. The book gets uber bonus points for having a
character who's a shy geeky loner, and NOT giving him a kind, loyal,
omnipresent soulmate of a best friend. (Because if you have a kind, loyal,
omnipresent soulmate of a best friend, then you are NOT a loner). The
ending has so much cliche potential, but the author manages to avoid it by
ending the story at an appropriate moment and leaving the rest to our
imaginations.

I'm told the translation from Hebrew leaves something to be desired, but
I'm not at all qualified to evaluate that. Otherwise, very enjoyable, hard
to put down, one of the best books about adolescent characters I've ever
read.

"If they made those comments about any other identifiable group, they
wouldn't be able to get away with it."

Have you ever noticed that this is always said about any comments made about
any identifiable group, and it's always said by the people who aren't
letting them get away with it?

The media is very good about reminding people that 911 has interpreters, so
you should call 911 even if you don't speak English. However, it might be
helpful to mention what information a caller needs to provide to get the 911
dispatcher to set up with an appropriate interpreter as soon as possible.
It's nice to know that interpreters are available, but surely 911
dispatchers aren't able to instantly identify every major language,
especially when it's being spoken by someone who's panicking. Non-English
speakers probably realize this, but don't know what information they need to
provide or how to say it in English, so they don't call 911.

The media should find out what information the 911 dispatchers most need
from non-English speakers (The name of their language in English? The
phrase "I need a [language] interpreter"? The words "police", "fire" and
"ambulance"?) and publish this every time they're encouraging people to call
911 right away. That way, non-English speakers could memorize one or two
simple words or phrases, and rest easy with the knowledge that they know
exactly what to say to get help.

It's a panda dog! Panda dog!!!

The other day in Peanuts, Charlie Brown mentioned (in a thought bubble) that this girl was "the prettiest little girl I've ever seen".

I wonder if Charles Schultz thought that children actually think of kids their own age as  "little girls", or if that was just a Peanuts thing?

Lunchtime.  Foodcourt.  Three women and two babies sit down at the table next to me.  The babies look to me to be under a year old (can't really tell because they're in strollers), they're active and interested in stuff, eating solid food and putting food and bottles in their mouths themselves, although they can't quite handle a spoon.  The women take turns going to buy their lunches, and the two who remain at the table take turns feeding the babies solid food that they've brought.

As one woman returns from fetching her lunch and another stands up to leave, all attention is momentarily turned away from one of the babies.  She grabs a Mini Babybel off the table and starts playing with it. I don't think the Babybels are for the babies (they'd previously been feeding the babies little pieces of cheddar cheese, and who brings two kinds of cheese for an infant?) so I watch to see what happens. In the process of playing with the Babybel, she manages to get the wrapper off.  She throws it on the ground with the practised look of an adult trying to look like they're littering accidently.  Then she figures out how to get the wax off.  Then, with the same practised look, she throws the cheese on the ground and puts the wax in her mouth!  Just as I was wondering whether to intervene (I have no idea how poisonous that wax is) one of the women notices and takes the wax away from her.  The baby glares at her and throws her stroller rattle on the floor in protest.

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?