Wednesday, December 28, 2005

It's December 28. Do you know where your Voter Information Card is?

I received my Voter Information Card in the mail today. This means you should be receiving yours soon too. I do not know the precise day by which you should receive it, but if you're worried Elections Canada can help you.

Friday, December 23, 2005

Answering machines

Conventional wisdom has it that you shouldn't say "I'm not home right now" on your answering machine/voicemail, because people might take that as an invitation to burglarize your home. You should instead say "I can't come to the phone," thus giving the impression that you are home, but occupied.

Don't you think the burglars would have caught on right now, and would take any and all answering machine/voicemail messages as equal indicators of whether or not the person is home?

Wednesday, December 21, 2005

Things I don't understand: long-term-only views of politics

I've noticed in several places people saying that it doesn't matter if a suboptimal party wins the election, because history will not be kind to them. The people making these comments seem to either forget or not care that no matter how history treats a political regime, the people there at the time still have to live through it.

So are the people making these comments somehow so insulated from areas of federal jurisidiction that their lives cannot be made or broken with one well-aimed policy? If so, I envy them. But I hope they keep in mind that not everyone is in such a comfortable position, and some of us are directly affected by government policy.

Monday, December 19, 2005

My experience as a young voter

Metro Morning asked people to call the vox box and tell about their experiences as young voters. I don't want to be on the radio, so I'm going to blog it instead.

I am 24 years old, so I think I might still be on the senior end of the "young voters" scale. I voted for the first time in the 1999 provincial election; I was 18 years old, and that was the first opportunity I ever got to vote. Since then, I have voted at every possible opportunity - including one provincial by-election in my parents' riding just because I was still registered as a voter there - with two exceptions. I did not vote in the 2000 municipal election because I had just moved to Toronto, and felt I did not have enough experience living in the city to assess the incumbent on his record, and therefore was not qualified to evaluate the various platforms. For example, I couldn't tell you if transit services were egregiously lacking or if transit fares were egregiously high when I was still in awe of the very presence of a subway. The second time I did not vote was for a city councillor in the 2003 municipal election, because I could find no information whatsoever about one of the two candidates. I did vote for mayor then.

However, as a young voter, I see three major problems with this election campaign:

1. The candidates are taking shots at each other instead of discussing their own platforms. I find this terribly insulting to my intelligence.

2. Platforms are developed on only a few key issues, instead of the entire scope of federal government responsibilities, and candidates are not empowered to discuss issues outside the scope of their platforms. In addition to broader issues of policy and my general vision of the purpose of government and what Canada should be, I have some concerns specific to my own situation that do involve issues under federal jurisdiction. However, these concerns have not been deemed part of the general platform of any party, so none of the candidates can address them for me.

3. The media keeps telling me that I'm not voting, instead of treating me like a voting adult who is interested in being an informed voter.

The Hatbox Letters by Beth Powning

As an introvert who lives alone, I've often pondered the potential of a novel that took place entirely inside the protagonist's head, with little to no human interaction. This book, about a grieving widow rattling around inside her big old house while dealing with boxes of old family papers (the "hatbox letters" from the title), comes very close to doing just that. I actually enjoyed the interior monologue quality of the novel, but there were two rather large, important aspects that annoyed me: the author's use of detail, and the way the book deals with the grieving process.

The author described everything in tiny, artful, poetic detail. This was a constant distraction, because the structure of the book implied that the narration was entirely from the protagonist's perspective, and in my experience people simply do not notice that level of detail around them. Obviously this does not apply to everyone, because the author clearly noticed it, but it simply rang untrue for me. It was even more distracting during flashbacks to the author's ancestors (who wrote the titular letters). The conceit is that the protagonist is imagining the flashback scenes, but the level of detail is far too much for something being imagined by someone who wasn't even there. It is terribly unfortunate, because I should be admiring the detail as a sign of the author's artistic talents, but I found it very difficult to get past "Oh, come on! Like someone would really notice that!" I think the novel would have been better served if the narration of detail had come from an omniscient third-person narrator.

The general theme of the book is the grieving process. The author is newly widowed, and in reading her ancestor's letters she discovers that her grandfather was originally engaged to her grandmother's sister, but the sister died tragically and her grandfather ended up marrying his deceased fiancée's sister, who eventually became the protagonist's grandmother. The author somehow (and how exactly she does this is unclear to me) uses this information to get over her grief and "move on with her life," as self-help likes to say. But this does not ring true with my own experience of grief. The author was married for decades - close to 30 years, if I remember correctly - and she just sort of "gets over" her grief in only a couple of years by learning that her grandparents were bereaved but eventually got married anyway. This simply does not make sense to me. In my experience, grief does not just go away, and certainly cannot be made to go away by presenting the bereaved with the fact that other people in the past have been bereaved and yet went on and did other things in their life. The fact that life goes on does not negate grief, and it seems absolutely bizarre that they would be presented in such a cause-and-effect manner. I know that society generally considers it commendable for people to "get over it" and "heal" and "move on" (and my theory is that this is considered commendable because it's just easier for other people when the bereaved is no longer acting bereaved), but I simply cannot fathom that a widow of a happy, loving, decades-long marriage would just get over her grief after learning that her grandparents were once bereaved, and then engaging in a few social activities. It seems to very much trivialize the idea of grief, which is an unfortunate sentiment for me to take away from a novel dealing with grief.

I should add that in all of this, there was one tiny detail I absolutely adored: the protagonist was the same size as her husband, and they shared shoes and gardening clothes. Not only do I find the idea of sharing clothes terribly romantic, but it's quite refreshing to see a sympathetic romantic pairing that does not consist of a giant hulk of a man and a dainty petite woman.

Apart from that, I really enjoyed the introspective quality of this novel and I enjoyed watching the flashback plot unfold, but the distracting quality of the level of detail and the ultimately dismissive way in which grief was handled rather ruined the experience for me.

Sunday, December 18, 2005

Pessimism is the road to happiness

If you assume everything is going to go perfectly in life, you'll be disappointed if it doesn't, and neutral (i.e. "Yes, just as I expected") if it does.

If you assume everything that can go wrong will go wrong, you'll be happily surprised if it doesn't, and neutral ("Yes, just as I expected") if it does.

Open letter to the media

Dear media:

Please stop alienating me.

Whenever I open the newspaper to see the day's election coverage, I see an article about how I don't vote, speculating about how I'm too self-absorbed or ADD to really care about politics, and perhaps I shouldn't be allowed to vote at all because my generation has no sense of responsibility and will lead the country to hell. I fully intend to vote, and the reason I'm reading every word of election coverage is so that I can be a fully-informed voter, but it's becoming increasingly difficult to tolerate when everything is tinged with disparaging commentary about how I'm not going to vote.

I also read an article today about how I'm politically disengaged because I live in an apartment. This article alleged that I am generally disengaged from the community as a whole, because I think I have a lot of friends but really they're just fleeting acquaintances, and that my living in an apartment contributes to my disengagement, because I don't have common concerns to discuss with my neighbours like whether the garbage out back is going to be picked up. First of all, I don't think I have a lot of friends. I think I have a few, very close, very important friends who are definitely not fleeting acquaintances. My neighbours are fleeting acquaintances, which is why I don't feel the need to discuss politics with them. And I do care about whether the garbage out back is picked up, because my recycle box needs emptying but the recycle dumpster was almost overflowing yesterday and I certainly couldn't fit all my newspapers in unless they've emptied it this morning. But I don't discuss this with my neighbours because my super could tell me definitely when it will be empty, while my neighbours could offer nothing but empty speculation.

Another article I read recently postulated that I am having financial troubles because I have no sense of how to manage money, and this is partly because I have over-inflated career expectations because I have an over-confident idea of what my skills are worth and am not willing to start at the bottom and work my way up. Again, this is the complete opposite of my current situation. I will admit that my lack of financial trouble stems almost entirely from good luck, but I am still insulted that you think I don't know how to manage money. As a quick perusal of my personal finances will show, I can manage money just fine, it's just that there needs to be money for me to manage it. I also take umbrage that you'd think I'm not willing to start at entry-level. My problem in job searching has been that people were unwilling to hire me for entry-level positions because I have a degree, but I know full well that I do not have the experience to start above entry level with an employer I've never worked for before. It really is terribly insulting to be told that I'm cocky and inept with overly-high expectations when I very much want to start at the bottom and learn and gain experience but every potential employer except the one I ended up working for would not allow me to do this!

Traditional media often worry about attracting young readers and viewers, and are inexplicably concerned that blogs are taking away their audience. I can't speak for anyone else, but as a young reader and viewer (and blogger), I want very much to consume traditional, well-respected news media in order to be a fully-informed citizen, but it is very frustrating when these media sources pigeonhole me as something I am not, and then disparage me for it.

Dropping Out

There has been a lot of discussion lately about how to stop people from dropping out of school. There has even been talk of taking drivers' licences away from people who drop out. I don't agree with this because, as I've mentioned before, I think consequences should be natural and that no good can come of creating artificial consequences. But I also think they're focusing on the wrong part of the process.

Instead of trying to stop people from dropping out, they should let anyone drop out whenever they want, for any reason.

BUT, they should also make it the easiest thing in the world to go back to school.

This means making all public school classes free for anyone. This means making a wide range of classes available day and night, online and correspondence. This means providing guidance services for adults who once dropped out of high school and now wish to go back and finish and then go on to post-secondary education. This means allowing people to get co-op credits for their jobs. This means creating a secondary and post-secondary education model in which students who are above the age of majority are not automatically assumed to have parental support.

The main problem is that the whole "stay in school" initiative is simply not addressing people for whom the very fact of being in school is a hardship or is logistically difficult. This simply perpetuates the notion that education is a trial, a punishment, thoroughly unpleasant. Instead it should be accessible, perfectly feasible, something you can fit easily into your life, a pleasure or a stepping stone, not a jail sentence.

Saturday, December 17, 2005

Lessons Learned: glasses lenses

Glasses lenses have brand names, and in each brand there are different types of lenses, like how there are Honda and Toyota and Ford cars, and then there are different types of Hondas, like the Accord and the Civic. All the different brands and types of lenses are easily googleable.

I'm pretty sure that depending on what types of lenses and coatings you ask for, they order a different brand and type of lens. For example, when I ordered my glasses, the lenses I got were Essilor Trio.

Therefore, I think a much more sensible way to go about this whole glasses business is when you're pricing things out, ask for the various brands of lenses and how much they cost, write it all down, then go home and google all the lenses. There should be enough qualitative and quantitative information available to compare them, then you can make an informed decision without being pressured or having to depend entirely on the optician's word.

Friday, December 16, 2005

Childfree

I think there might be some deep, important reason why I'm childfree. I've noticed my base, instinctive reactions seem to be pushing me in that direction. I do have your normal care-for-and-protect-a-child instincts, and my instincts when interacting with babies seem to be optimal for the baby's development, but my instincts are also pushing me away actually reproducing myself. It's not that they're pushing me away from sex, it's just that they're totally anti-breeding.

For example, women who are biologically ready to reproduce find more testosterone-heavy physical features attractive on men, but women who are not in a position to reproduce find testosterony features unattractive. I find them unilaterally, 100% unattractive. In the BBC's gender quiz, I picked the less testosterony man as more attractive every single time. I also find behaviours associated with testosterone just unpleasant, something to wrinkle my nose at and walk away from, much like if you saw someone spitting on the sidewalk.

I also find behaviour that results from paternal instincts unpleasant. I see a man being proud or protective of his children or trying to teach them stuff, and it just puts me right off. It's the same visceral reaction as I would have if I walked past an aquarium containing an octopus. The strange thing about this is that most of the traits that I find attractive in men are things that would be considered good in a father - kindness, gentleness, intelligence, loyalty. But a whiff of the paternal, and I'm turned right off. I don't feel that way about maternal instincts - I feel completely neutral when I see a mother being maternal - but the slightest hint that a man might enjoy childrearing and I'm pressing my legs together, crossing my arms tightly over my chest, and cowering away.

I think this might be because there's something in my body - some physical problem, or perhaps some hereditary disorder that I don't know about - that makes it unadvisable for me to have children. I used to want children very much, but this was in early puberty before I developed a libido. As my libido grew, my desire for children shrank. By the time I was actually in a situation where I could have become pregnant if I had chosen to do so, I was vehemently childfree. There must be something in there somewhere that gives me these strange instincts - the same way that when I had a slight tendon injury on my foot, my instincts told me not to put my full weight on it, even though there was no pain when I actually did put my full weight on it. Maybe because I'm so shortwaisted, there would be no way for me to gestate without hurting my bones. (Ick!) Maybe I carry some sort of bad genes. Maybe any babies I'd attempt to have would be born with a serious disability. I don't know of anything definitive, but it really seems like there's some reason for these bizarro instincts I have.

Which brings me to the CF community. I feel strangely unwelcome in the CF community because of my relative youth. CF people like to complain about Kids Today (which isn't one of my favourite pastimes, but not a surprising trait), and I've noticed all too often that they group people in their early 20s - people whom I would consider both adults and my peers - in with Kids Today. It's very off-putting to lurk around in what is essentially a support group for a minority lifestyle, and hear people who could be me, or who were me just a couple of short years ago, cited as Part Of The Problem. I'm sure if I walked in and said I'm 24 and want to get a tubal, they'd all be completely supportive - I'm sure I'd get all the best advice they could give me, and they would passionately defend my right to get sterilized at such a young age. But if I walked in and said I'm 24 and no, I don't see what's wrong with emailing your co-worker instead of walking over to their cube, I'd be flamed out of there.

Thursday, December 15, 2005

May I have the last word on Beer and Popcorn?

I've done enough blog-link-whoring lately, so if you don't know the story, type "beer and popcorn" into Google News.

The appropriateness of spending one's childcare money on beer has been addressed elsewhere, so I'm not going to get into it here.

But the big question, which no one has addressed, is why is Scott Reid so anti-popcorn???

Popcorn is a perfectly good snackfood. It's low in fat, it has fibre, it's one of the healthier salty snack choices, and it's perfect on family movie night. It is perfectly appropriate for parents to buy popcorn, as long as they have the decency to share it with their kids. What does Scott Reid have against popcorn?

Another tool to help you decide how to vote

CBC's Vote by Issue Quiz. You state whether you agree or disagree with a particular platform on a particular issue, and it tells you how closely aligned you are to each party. Rather cool, although my results were no surprise to me.

Found through the Star's Antonia Zerbisias.

Wednesday, December 14, 2005

Things They Should Invent: a more pleasant election for all

All candidates and all parties should agree to simply discuss issues and policy. They should not discuss other candidates and parties, they should not discuss their opponents' policies, they should just discuss their own platforms and leave it up to the public to compare and contrast.

There should be a fine for any politicians who violate this rule with all proceeds going to charity. OR with all proceeds being a donation to the opposing parties!

Things They Should Invent: private consultation areas in pharmacies

Most of my Things They Should Invent come out of my own head; this one did not. This came from reading NDP candidate Paul Summerville's blog entry on privacy concerns surrounding the sale of Plan B, a.k.a. emergency contraception, a.k.a. the morning after pill.

It occured to me that the real problem is not with the behind-the-counter status of Plan B itself, but with the layout of pharmacies. There is no private space to consult with pharmacists. I haven't consulted with pharmacists that many times in my life, but when I have it has been at a counter off to the side, but still within full view and hearing of the other customers, often with those customers waiting impatiently in line behind me.

The things I have discussed with the pharmacists aren't uber-private (I wouldn't hesitate to blog them or tell people about them if they were at all interesting), but if my life circumstances were different I might have a problem with being overheard. After all, I'm a self-sufficient adult, living alone in a secular community. I have no relatives, co-workers, or family friends living in my neighbourhood or likely to wander into my local pharmacy. I have no enemies who might wish to blackmail me (to my knowledge), and the things I might discuss with a pharmacist happen to be considered socially acceptable by a large enough chunk of society that they couldn't be used to blackmail me. In short, no one who overheard my consultation would care about it. However, I can see that under different circumstances, or even earlier on in my own life, I might find it terribly embarrassing to discuss these things with a pharmacist out where everyone can hear me. When I was younger, I was embarrassed to tell people I used deodorant, or that I had my period - I would certainly have been embarrassed to consult with a pharmacist out in the open, in my local hometown pharmacy, where everyone could see that I was talking to the pharmacist, and the pharmacist might be a classmate's parent, and that cute guy in grade 12 worked as a stockboy at that very store and could walk by at any minute and overhear that I had menstrual cramps or athlete's foot or oily dandruffy hair or whatever.

All they need is a quiet consultation room where a pharmacist and a patient can discuss any issues that require discussion in privacy, without being overheard. This is not just for Plan B and other things related to sexual health, but also things like "I get this horrible gas whenever I eat onions" or "What should I put on this rash?" or "I'm two months pregnant. Can I take this medication?" None of these things are terribly shameful, but that doesn't mean they need to be general knowledge. As a customer service, all pharmacies should have consultation spaces that are at least as private as the consultation spaces in blood donor clinics. It's a matter of human dignity.

Monday, December 12, 2005

Things that are particularly unattractive for people to be smug about

1. Diet and exercise regime
2. Parenting techniques
3. Financial management
4. Any stroke of sheer good luck they happen to have experienced

Sunday, December 11, 2005

Wedding invitation correction notices

This scene just popped into my head, and I can't remember where exactly it's from. It was in a TV show or a movie or a book or a comic strip or something.

The bride and groom get their wedding invitations back from the printer's, and they notice there's a mistake. So they get these correction notices printed up to insert into the invitation, but there's a typo on the correction notice that makes the groom's name sound funny. So they then get another correction notice printed up to give the correct spelling of the groom's name, and the invitations go out with two correction notices in them.

Does this ring a bell for anyone?

Saturday, December 10, 2005

Milkonomics

I stopped in to a tiny little convenience store I've never shopped at before to get a carton of milk. It cost $3.89 for 2L.

At Dominion, the cheapest 2L carton is $4.00, and at every other store I've ever bought milk at it's even more expensive.

How can the tiniest convenience store in the neighbourhood manage to undersell a large supermarket?

Friday, December 09, 2005

Mindscan by Robert J. Sawyer

I LOVE THIS BOOK! It's set in Toronto in 2045, about a guy who decides to get his consciousness transferred into an immortal android to avoid a hereditary disease that will leave him in a permanent vegetative state.

The plot itself is perfectly good, but where I really fell in love with the book is the tiny attention to detail.

Subway lines that are currently being planned IRL Toronto had "recently" been completed.
The protagonist randomly thinks to himself one day "It's 2045! Why the hell don't I have a self-steering car?"
His android form isn't colour-blind, so when he wakes up his first thought is "OMG, what's that colour?" "Green" "Oh wow! That's my new favourite colour!" Then he spends a while staring at green.
They keep old people on the moon, where they'll be less likely to be injured in a fall and can be mobile for longer because of the lower gravity!

I listed a whole lot more beautiful little details, but then I decided to delete them so people who haven't read the book can discover them for themselves. The author creates a perfectly plausible Toronto of 40 years in the future, uses clever conceits to insert details that wouldn't normally be explicitly stated but need to be mentioned to the 2005 reader, and fills the whole thing with brilliant, clever little touches that make me want to applaud him.

Note to self: read this book again in 2045 and see how it stands up to reality.

Thursday, December 08, 2005

Deciding where to vote (for university students)

This is intended for students who are eligible to vote either in the riding where their parents live or in the riding where they go to school, as well as anyone else who has some choice over which riding to vote in.

1. If one of the ridings is a really close race, vote in that riding. If both are close, vote in the riding with the closest race. If neither is really close, follow the instructions below.

2. Of the parties running candidates in your riding, decide which one has the best platform that comes closest to meeting your needs and your vision of the country (hereafter the Best Party). Then decide which one has the worst platform that is furthest from meeting your needs and deviates the most from your vision of the country (hereafter the Worst Party). You are judging the parties as a whole, not the individual candidates in your riding. Assess each party individually without regard to possible strategic voting - that comes later.

3. Based on your own needs and your own vision for the country, decide whether it is more important to you that the Best Party win, or that the Worst Party does not win.

4. If it's more important to you that the Best Party win, vote for the Best Party in the riding where the Best Party is least likely to win.

5. If it's more important to you that the Worst Party not win, and the Worst Party has a chance in either of your ridings, vote for the party most likely to defeat the Worst Party in the riding where the Worst Party is most likely to win.

6. If the Worst Party doesn't have a chance in either of your ridings, vote for the Best Party in the riding where the Best Party is least likely to win.