At work today, I encountered the term "carottes purees".

My first thought was pureed carrots. So I googled "pureed carrots" to see if there was such a thing. I got about 700 results. However, I noticed that most of them had to do with baby food. Since my text wasn't about baby food, I decided to google "pureed carrots" -baby to see what there was about pureed carrots for grownups. Surprisingly, I got over 5,000 results.

Logically that doesn't seem right, does it?

A Carnivore's Inquiry by Sabina Murray is a total waste of time. Read the dust jacket, read the first 12 pages, and it becomes completely obvious what's going to happen for the rest of the book. It's poorly organized, the reader doesn't react to things the way the author intends, and the plot is utterly transparent from the outset. Don't bother.

People are always talking about how renewable energy is important because we're going to run out of fossil fuels for energy sources.

It occurred to me yesterday that renewable energy is also important because we need oil to make plastics out of. I don't think we have an alternative to plastics yet, but we do have alternatives to fossil fuels. Therefore, we should be preserving our oil for plastics.

Amazon.ca is selling LOTR:ROTK extended edition for $38.47. On amazon.ca, orders under $39 ship for free. So I get this "Add 53 cents to your order for free shipping!" message. I swear, they priced it just under $39 on purpose, so they could collect the shipping fees from everyone!

What's up with U of T having all its washrooms in basements?

Things They Should Invent:

A phone number that you call to get an ice cream truck to come to your location!

I have to keep reminding myself that I have some money now, enough that money doesn't matter. Not for important things. And glasses are important. So, because the idea of never wearing these frames again makes me weep, the correct thing to do is take them to Lenscrafter's or Shorney's or whomever can do one-hour frames the cheapest, and get new lenses put in them. Then I will have my lovely frames and they will correct my astigmatism and all will be right with the world. And then if all the paint falls off or I feel like new frames, I can acquire them at my leisure.

Yeah, so if I ever start angsting about something that can be solved by throwing less than a week's pay at it, someone just smack me and remind me that I do have positive cash flow.

The very first glasses I've ever liked, and the frames have been discontinued. So I had the idea of getting new lenses in the current frames, but today I just noticed that the paint on the frames is chipping (I didn't even know there was paint on the frames!)

I think I'm going to cry.

I wish there was a way to make my cellphone beep when it was done recharging.

Concepts that exist in every language I've studied but don't exist in English (with examples in French):

- a single verb for "to do" and "to make" (faire)
- two verbs for "to know", one representing concrete knowledge of a fact or a skill (savoir) and one representing familiarity with a person, location, subject or concept (connaitre)
- two verbs for "to live", one representing being alive (vivre) and the other representing living in a particular location (habiter)


I know there are more, and I'll add them as they occur to me.

Imagine you can't talk but can still vocalize - your mouth is full, or you're at the dentist's or something. You want to express "yes", "no" or "I don't know". You would express "yes" by nodding your head and saying "mmm-hmmm" with an ascending pitch. You would express "no" by shaking your head and saying "nnnn-nnn" with a descending pitch. You would express "I don't know" by shrugging your shoulders and saying "mmm-mmm-nnn" with an ascending pitch followed by a descending pitch, the same pitch pattern that you woud use to say "I don't know."

Now take the body language, leaving only the vocalizations. Those vocalizations still communicate the concepts of "yes", "no", and "I don't know" to English speakers. What I'm wondering is whether they translate. I don't think the "I don't know" vocalization translates as well, because it's "Je ne sais pas" or "Ich weiss nicht" or "No se", all of which have different pitch patterns. But would "mmm-hmm" and "nnn-nnn" translate?

From the Brilliant Ideas that will Never Work file:

We know that there are waiting lists for some health care services. Some people have proposed permitting privatized health care as a solution to this. However, there is a great deal of concern that, since the waiting lists are generally a result of a lack of available health care professionals, any private health care service would just end up poaching professionals from the public sector, resulting in even less care being available for those who cannot afford to pay out-of-pocket.

We also know that there are quite a few immigrant medical professionals in Canada who are not qualified to work in Canada, but are perfectly qualified in other parts of the world.

Solution: allow privatized health care, but it can be staffed only by health care professionals who are not qualified in Canada but are qualified elsewhere in the world. Their credentials would be available and people who opt for privatized care could assess the risk for themselves. It would be regulated in such a way that working for the public sector is more desireable and beneficial than working for the private sector, but working as a private sector health care provider is more beneficial and desireable than, say, driving a taxi. Private-sector work would count as "Canadian experience" and help qualify the workers to work in Canada.

For my own reference, elements that were introduced in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets that I don't think have yet been used to their full potential in the series:

- House Elves (have had their uses, but don't feel fully used)
- Parseltongue (useful in the book itself, but not in the series)
- Gilderoy Lockhart
- Acromantulas (although I hope I hope I hope I'm wrong about this!)
- The Polyjuice incident, and the fact that Hermione got turned into a cat (Polyjuice itself has been used, but could have been introduced another way)
- The concept of regrowing bones
- The fact that the Sorting Hat can be used for purposes other than Sorting
- The Sword of Gryffindor
- The fact that Voldemort resembles Harry
- Colin Creevey and his camera (although the camera did have a function in that book)
- Penelope Clearwater
- The fact that Filch is a Squib

Un by Dennis Lee

It's hard to believe that this is the same man who gave us such childhood pleasures as Alligator Pie. At first glance, it seems like an almost computer-generated grouping of random words into somewhat syntactically correct poem-like arrangements - colourless green ideas sleeping furiously. But when you read it, you see that it has a plot, although it's like you're looking at the plot through a dirty window without your glasses on. And when you read it out loud, you discover an aural playground. There's a story being told and there are recurring themes as the poems reference each other, but it's all rather beyond me.

My optometrist recommends anti-reflective coating on my glasses to prevent glare when I'm working with a computer.

Problem: I don't know if I have glare problems, because I don't know what glare is for a computer monitor. I know what it is when driving, but I can't extrapolate that to a computer. Can anyone explain glare?

Every single person in my class resembles someone I've met previously. I can go around the room and say "He looks like my cousin, she looks like my parents' friends' daughter, she looks like this girl from my second year English class, she looks like the head of Student Advising from my alma mater."

Perhaps this means that I have already met my quota of people in this world, and we're now into reruns.

A lot of the time, when someone is convicted of rape/murder/general psychopathy, they interview his friends and neighbours on the news, and they say "I can't believe he's a rapist/murderer/psychopath! He was always so charming!"

It's also a characteristic of abusers. They're always very charming, and then become abusive in a domestic situation. And once people find out, they're always like "I had no idea! He was always so charming!"

Question: So why is "charming" still considered a positive personality trait?

I am a geek because:

- I special-ordered a dictionary from the UK because I wasn't happy with the selection available in Toronto.
- When the prof was going around the class asking people how old they were, I intentionally raised my hand because I'm the only one in the room whose age is declined in the genitive case, and I knew that she needed an opening to introduce that concept.
- I already knew how to decline my age because I had read ahead in the textbook.
- But I gave an incorrect, undeclined answer anyway so the prof would have a chance to correct me and write the right answer on the board.
- And then I proceeded to get bored because the rest of the hour was spent introducing the rest of the class to case theory.
- And I found myself thinking "What's wrong with these people? Didn't any of them study German?"
- And it was possibly the first time in as many as eight years that I'd been in an academic setting where no one had studied German.

Things that were not successfully taught to me in elementary and high school:

- The purpose of having multiple drafts of a text isn't just to correct spelling mistakes, it's also to perfect the wording of the text. (I figured this out in 3rd year uni)

- Literary analysis is a specific skill that people need to be taught. It doesn't just pop into people's minds naturally. (This occured to me well after I'd finished university)

- When writing an essay, you need to address or pre-emptively nullify possible objections to your arguments. (This was taught to me in 2nd year uni)

- Criticism of one's essay is not an ad hominem attack (This came to me when I became involved in Sugarquill. In my defence, I had a teacher who had a knack for making everything feel like an ad hominem attack)

- In language classes, it doesn't matter if what you say is true or not. The prof just wants to see if you've mastered the accusative case. (This occured to me today)