Things I Don't Understand: limited characters in electronic forms

I was filling out a contact form on a business's website, to ask them a question about a product. Unfortunately, they limited the number of characters in the main box of the form, and my question was way over the limit. So I edited out all the niceties, ("I was wondering if...", "Would it be possible to...", "Thank you very much") but I was still over the character limit. So then I eliminated the background information to give some context of why I was making this request. Still over the limit. So I pared down my prose as much as possible, used shorter synonyms, even took out the less important words in the specific product name, shortening the five-word name to two words and hoping they'd know what I meant. I was finally within the limit, but the result was two terse, brisk, business-like sentences. None of the niceties and social lubricants that usually characterize business prose, no context of why I want to know this strange factoid, no specific product names and helpful web links. It was like walking up to a stranger, unintroduced, and barking out, apropos of nothing, "Where's the subway?" without even bothering to modulate your tone to make the request sound more friendly.

Why do web sites do this on their "contact us" forms? It only hinders clarity and politeness. I realize that conciseness is nice, but so is completeness. I've had a job where I read and dealt with incoming emails, and I seriously doubt the time saved by forcing the emails to be very short would actually be significant, especially considering the time that would be wasted when the email-answerer does not understand the question properly or has to seek out further clarification. My original request was not that long - it was shorter than this blog entry - so what possible advantage could there be for companies to limit their form so tightly?

On drugs or off drugs?

Someone I was talking to today mentioned that if he saw someone behaving erratically for no explicable reason, he would assume the erratic behaviour is due to the person being on drugs.

I thought about it for a moment, and I realized that I would assume the erratic behaviour is due to them being mentally ill and off their meds.

Funny how two opposite situations can produce the same result.

Redraw the midtown riding map!

The current riding map does not serve the Yonge & Eglinton neighbourhood well. The neighbourhood is split up into three different ridings - Don Valley West, Eglinton-Lawrence, and St. Paul's - and we find ourselves off in the very corner of each of these ridings. As a result of this, the candidates don't reach us as well. I have seen precisely zero candidate signs this election, and about 25% of the campaign flyers I get are for candidates from other ridings, due to the fact that I'm a block away from each of the two other ridings.

If we must define our community by adjacent geography, I would consider Yonge & Eg. to be my community. I certainly feel more of a sense of shared community with someone just on the other side of Yonge than I do with the people down on St. Clair who are campaigning against streetcar lanes. However, the riding map has divided my geographic community up among three ridings, leaving us as an afterthough in each of our representatives' minds. My representatives and my riding candidates are very good at representing my needs as a Torontonian, but they simply to not take into account my needs as a Yonge & Egger, because only a small part of the neighbourhood is in the riding.

Everywhere else I've lived, the entire community has been part of one riding. Other communities were included in the riding too, but the geographic area that I perceived as "my community" was not split up. When I talked politics with someone I considered a neighbour, I was certain they would be in the same riding as me. Unfortunately, this is not the case at Yonge & Eg. in the 21st century.

Next time the riding map is changed, all of the Yonge & Eg. neighbourhood should be included in the same riding. We are a small, densely populated area with (by reputation, at least) a rather uniform demographic that is likely to have similar political needs. To split us up defeats the purpose of having ridings in the first place.

Every party's election platform, summed up in once sentence

Every party's election platform, summed up in once sentence:

"Judge me on my current platform, but judge my opponent on his sordid history."

Election lawn signs

The Star published a poll today asking if election lawn signs influence people's votes. This made me realize that I have not seen a single lawn sign this campaign. Not one. This is probably a combination of the facts that I live in an apartment, I commute by subway, and I live in the very corner of my riding.

They've never really had much influence on me anyway, unless I was considering a strategic vote - then a sea of The Worst Party's colours might convince me to go strategic. But over all, I don't pay much attention. This year I've seen zero signs, and I didn't even realize this until the specific topic of election signs came up.

How to Vote Strategically

Some people vote in an attempt to elect The Best Party (TBP). Other people vote in an attempt to prevent The Worst Party (TWP) from being elected. This is called strategic voting. Unfortunately, some people aren't very strategic about strategic voting - I've seen far too many people look at a national poll, see that TWP is uncomfortably close to the lead, and therefore vote for the party most likely to defeat TWP. It's not that simple. Your vote only works to elect a representative for your riding, so you need to vote strategically based on who is likely to win your riding, not who is likely to win the country.

Luckily, I've found three useful tools to help predict your riding. I can't vouch for their accuracy, but you can read about their methodology and decide for yourself. Try them all out and see if they agree.

The Election Prediction Project

If the prediction for your riding indicates that TWP will win, or that your race is too close to call, then you should vote strategically by voting for the party most likely to defeat TWP in your riding (i.e. not necessarily the same as the party most likely to defeat TWP nationwide). If you can't tell which party is most likely to defeat TWP in your riding, click on the name of your riding and read user comments. If the prediction for your riding indicates that a party other than TWP will win, vote for TBP.

Hills Knowlton Election Predictor

Click on "Split" and enter the most recent poll numbers. Poll numbers are always available from the Globe and Mail, and I'm sure you can find more by looking at the front page of your newspaper or poking around Google News. Then go to the map view to see which way your riding goes. If the map shows your riding will elect The TWP, click on your riding on the map to see which party is likely to come in second, and vote for that party. You might also want to do a Doomsday prediction, by inserting the highest historical poll results (available through the Globe and Mail) for TWP and the lowest historical poll results for TBP and the party that's most likely to defeat TWP (if you have any leftover percentage points, you can just stick them in the Other column).

If The Worst Party never shows up as a winner in your riding, vote for The Best Party. If The Worst Party wins under the most recent poll results, a strategic vote is preferable. If The Worst Party shows up under the Doomsday scenario only, you might want to see what other prediction methods have to say.

Democratic Space

This one works particularly well if you have a strong party affiliation, but still feel a strategic vote might be necessary. Simply click on the link for the party you consider to be TBP, then do what the page tells you.

Maybe it's the Boomers' fault

I once heard, in a more American context, that the Baby Boomers are the generation that got the legal drinking age reduced to 18 so they could drink when they were in college, then got it raised to 21 so their kids couldn't drink in college.

I think perhaps they're doing the same thing with the social safety net.

I've been complaining at some length about the fact that strengthening the social safety net doesn't even seem to be an issue in this election. I think that's because of the Baby Boomers. They're all approaching retirement age, so they have nice nest eggs saved up, and worst case could survive on their savings and the pensions that are already guaranteed to them. So that's why they're filling the op-ed pages with all this rhetoric on how the expectation of a 60s-70s-style social safety net is obsolete. Because they don't need it any more. They had it to catch them when they were just starting out, and now that they don't need it any more they're working towards dismantling it to deny the same security to those pesky kids.

Gun violence roundup

Semantics

The other day on Metro Morning, Andy Barrie said there are two Torontos: one populated by young black men, which has a high murder rate, and another populated by everyone else, which has a lower murder rate. I think saying young black men was a poor choice of words here, unless it was true. It seems to me that the higher murder rate occurs among people involved in gangs and/or drugs. While I realize there is significant overlap between the two groups, I think the fact of being young and black and male is only incidental, and the fact of being involved in gangs/drugs is the real key factor. If a young black man who is not involved in gangs or drugs is still at high risk of being involved in gun violence, and if someone who is not young or black or male but is involved in gangs or drugs is still at a low risk of being involved in gun violence, then it was correct to use the phrase "young black men." But if this is not the case, then it was incorrect, and an unfortunate case of linguistic laziness leading to stereotyping in the media.

Andy Barrie has also been asking people what they think of the phrase "black on black violence." I think it is not only unfortunate, but also incorrect, unless the root cause of the violence is, in fact race - in other words if there are black people walking around thinking "I will shoot that person because they are black, but I will not shoot that other person because they are not black."

There have been letters to the editor saying that the shooters should not be considered victims, because their victims are victims. The problem with this assertion is that it is semantically incorrect. The concept of "victim" is not zero-sum. Even if someone is a perp in one situation, that does not automatically negate the possibility that they might be a victim in another situation. While enough perp-like behaviour would make a person considered primarily a perp and not so much a victim, semantically one does not cease to be a victim, so it is still perfectly valid to call them that.

Fathers

There was an article in today's Star that went into some depth about how fatherlessness leads to violence. As someone who has a father (who I would describe as involved, perhaps even over-involved), none of this rings true for me. While I can see how not having a father might lead to anger (judging solely by discussions with my friends who are fatherless, or who feel that their fathers are underinvolved), I don't think that having a father is panacea.

The article cites research that shows that children with involved fathers are more compassionate. This runs directly counter to my experience. My own father is less compassionate than I think a person should be. When I was younger, I was more easily influenced by my parents - I assumed that my parents' attitudes were automatically correct and should be emulated - and my father's lack of compassion lead me to be a less compassionate person than I think I should be. It wasn't until I was able to distance myself from my father's influence that I reached an acceptable level of compassion. To this day, I am still embarrassed by and ashamed of my attitude under my father's influence, and I am still trying to make amends for it. Perhaps if the father himself is more compassionate the children might end up being more compassionate, but I don't think the mere presence of a father automatically leads to compassion in the child.

It also states that fatherless children see their mothers being abused by their boyfriends, and the anger and helplessness they feel causes them to act out violently. However, it neglects to mention that the fact of being a father does not negate the possibility that a man might also be an abuser. Abusers don't just stop being abusive because they have managed to produce a child. I'm sure the same anger and helplessness is present in children who see their mother being abused by their biological father, and perhaps the net effect is even worse, because the children might have a certain degree of loyalty to and respect for their biological father that they may not have with someone they perceive as an interloper. Also, a child may feel anger, resentment, and helplessness as a result of any real or perceived injustice in the parental relationship, even if this injustice is not considered abuse. I am personally familiar with several situations in which children of happy marriages felt resentment towards their biological father because they saw their mother doing more housework while the father engaged in recreational activities. (I am not postulating that this sense of injustice only follows one set of gender lines, but other gender role combinations are beyond the scope of both the article and my own pool of anecdotal evidence).

In addition to all this, there are a number of statements in the article that simply presented as givens, without being supported or fleshed out in a way that made me understand them. For example, it says that fatherless children seek out gangs so they can get respect. But how does not having a father lead to the child not feeling respected? Having a father did not make me feel respected - my father had absolutely zero net effect on how much respect I felt I was getting. And if the absence of a father is, in fact, making them feel less respected, how would thuggish behaviour fill that gap? I can see how one might feel like they're getting respect after becoming a bully, but how would the respect that comes from being feared by one's peers make up for whatever respect one gets by the presence of a father? It seems to me that they'd be completely different kinds of respect. It also says that fatherless young men act out to make them feel manly. How does not having a father make one feel less manly? As a woman with a father I simply have no concept of this, and if the authors of the article wanted me to understand it, they should have explained it explicitly, step by step.

I think this article oversimplifies things. While those without fathers are quite likely to glamourize the benefits that the a father could bring to their life, I'd say over half the people I've discussed this with who have involved fathers feel their lives would have been better with less paternal involvement. The presence of a father is not necessarily panacea, and the absence of a father isn't necessarily a recipe for disaster. It is more important to have positive adult role models, and I think this article went too far in assuming that a biological father is automatically a positive adult role model.

Safety in randomness

I still feel perfectly safe in Toronto. This is not because of race or money as some assert, but rather because the vast majority of murders in Toronto are related to gangs or drugs. Neither I nor anyone I know is involved in gangs or drugs, and while it would be foolish to assert that these problems do not exist in my neighbourhood, they do not occur openly in the areas I frequent. Therefore, the only way I'm likely to get murdered is by accident, and I can live with those odds. I realize that random accidents are the very thing that many people find scary, but I would be much more frightened if there was a serial killer out there whose target demographic I fit perfectly. The people doing the killing don't actively want to kill me, and that's enough to make me not worry.

What the candidates need to know about my generation

I was born in 1980, on the cusp of Gen. X and Gen. Y. I have traits of both generations, but do not fully fit into either.

People my age became economically aware in the recession years of the late 80s and early 90s. We saw in the news (and maybe even in our own parents) all about the layoffs, we heard how no one would ever be able to have job security at all ever again, and we grew up fully expecting that, throughout our adult lives, we would lose our jobs for reasons that were completely beyond our control, and we would have difficulty finding new jobs through no fault of our own.

We witnessed the dot-com boom first hand, but most of us were too young to take part in it, still being in high school or just starting post-secondary education. However, we heard about enough wunderkindern that we felt guilty for not being able to actively take advantage of the dot-com boom. We were surrounded by constant pressure to build a website and become a millionaire, despite the fact that we were still in school, and we worried about whether there was any room in this new economy for people who are comptetent but not quite exceptional, for people who are talented and hard-working, but not really entreprenurial.

Then we witnessed the dot-com bust, and felt like we had just missed the bullet. We were, after all, not that far away from being in the workforce ourselves. If our parents had met a year or two earlier, or the vagaries of our parents' birth control had been slightly different, we would have been out there ourselves, out of a job and with nothing to show for it but a handful of suddenly worthless stock options. Indeed, many of us were still enrolled in pricey computer science degrees that we feared would be worthless.

We do not feel economically secure, even when we have good jobs. We do not see a booming economy as panacea, because we've seen the aftermath thereof shatter people's dreams and lives. We do not believe education, hard work, good intentions, and the right attitude will necessarily be enough to enable us to support ourselves. Economically, we do not feel in control of our own destinies. Those of us who are doing okay for ourselves can't help but wonder when the other shoe is going to fall; those of us who are struggling find it very difficult to believe that it's ever going to get better.

So what can you do for us?

Chronicles, Volume 1 by Bob Dylan

I didn't like this book for the same reason that I don't like most autobiographies. It was basically a list of names and books and movies and music and seemingly minor events that were of no interest to me as a casual fan. While he did do a good job "painting a picture" - describing the environment and the era and the mood - what he actually had to say was of very little interest to me, although it might be of more interest to a more hardcore fan.

I feel this way about almost every autobiography I read. Maybe I just shouldn't read them any more.

J. J. McWilliam Cabernet Merlot

As Col. Potter from MASH once said, there aren't enough O's in smoooooth to do this wine justice. It brings out the best in Cabernet Sauvignon and the best in Merlot, reminding me of why one would bother to put something as finicky as Cabernet Sauvignon in something as pleasant as Merlot.

Wherein money buys happiness

Having a home that is in good enough condition that I only very rarely get bugs, and therefore only very rarely get panic attacks, makes me happy.

Knowing that I have the resources to recover from any emergency that might be thrown my way makes me happy.

Eating and drinking whatever I want, whenever I feel like it makes me happy.

Wearing clothing and cosmetics and glasses that make me feel attractive and pulled-together and in control the appearance I present to the world makes me happy.

Long, luxurious morning showers make me happy.

Taking classes makes me happy.

High-speed internet makes me happy.

My computer makes me happy.

Reading, watching, and playing whatever books, movies, and computer games I want, whenever I feel like it makes me happy.

Savouring two newspapers over my morning coffee makes me happy.

Subscribing to the TV stations that carry my very favourite shows makes me happy.

Having a station in life that causes the vast majority of people to treat me with basic human respect makes me happy.

Things They Should Invent: Ask A Murderer

There has been a lot of discussion about how to make people stop shooting people. I can see pros and cons of every idea presented, but what do I know? I'm not a murderer, I find the gangster lifestyle distasteful, and I wouldn't touch a gun if offered the opportunity - I'd like to think I wouldn't touch one if my life depended on it, but I've never been in that sort of situation so I can't say for sure.

So what they should really do is ask murderers to evaluate the various ideas for stopping the violence.

Are there any investigative reporters reading this? If so, you can get this started. Track down some known murderers - reformed or not, preferably some of each. Interview them. Present them with the various ideas being kicked around. Ask them what would have worked on them and what would not. Make the results of the interviews public. Bring it to the elected officials.

Feel free to steal this idea. Feel free to take all the credit. Just someone do it - it's perfectly doable by anyone with criminology and/or investigative reporting skills!

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.