Concealed weapons

On TV, a guy is trying to rob some people by either holding a gun in his pocket or pretending he has a gun in his pocket. I've heard of people doing this before.

Why would someone do this? I can see how it's an effective way to pretend that there's a gun in your pocket if you don't really have one, but if you really did have a gun, why would you keep it in your pocket? Wouldn't it be more effective to show them the gun? Obviously there's some precedent for people doing robberies this way, so there's something that makes people think a robber might actually have the gun in his pocket instead of taking it out. So why would this be beneficial to the robber to hide the gun while conducting the robbery?

Wherein a lowly prole blithely tells Stephen Hawking he's wrong

Dear Mr. Hawking:

Today you said that humanity must colonize space in order to survive.

That is wrong.

True, it is probably factually correct that, at some point in the future, humanity will be wiped out if our habitat is limited only to earth. But it would be morally wrong to attempt to colonize space.

We have no way of knowing who or what is living on other planets. True, we can probably detect whether carbon-based, air-breathing, 3+1 dimensional lifeforms are on a planet before we go about colonizing it, but why on earth should life in space be limited to that? It could be, say, cobalt-based, and seven-dimensional. Or it occupies the same time continuum as us, but travels in the other direction. Or it could breathe water and hydrate itself with nitrogen. We have no way of knowing that, and we have no way of knowing what kind of damage we'd do to the aliens' habitat, or how pissed off they'd get at us.

If humanity fucks up badly enough that we make our own planet uninhabitable, then it would be pretty damn cocky to assume we're entitled to start taking over other planets. Let's go extinct with dignity instead.

For if you want to watch Enterprise from the beginning

I'm currently watching what appears to be the final episode of Enterprise. This would suggest that they're going to start showing the series from the beginning tomorrow. So if you're in Canada and want to watch Enterprise from the first episode, it's on Space at 9 pm on weekdays.

Liberal leadership

The weird thing about the Liberal party leadership race is that there is no way that every single one of the candidates can possibly think that they are the best person for the job or that they bring something unique to the job that the others don't have.

Party leadership races differ from regular job competitions in that the candidates all know who all the other candidates are (or who all the other potential candidates might be), so they can reasonably assess whether they are the best person for the job. Everyone's professional qualifications are a matter of public record, so why would you even put your hat in when it's clear you're nothing special?

Party leadership races differ from elections in that the candidates in each riding are affiliated with different parties. It doesn't matter of a particular candidate is not the single most qualified individual in the world, because they represent a larger party which contains a lot of people with different strengths. They only need to be competent, represent their party's platform, and be different from the other parties. But in a leadership race, everyone has essentially the same politics. I'm not sure, but I believe policy is set by the party in general, so it's not like the leader is just a person representing a certain policy platform. The leader needs to be exceptional, not just competent.

There is no way all 10(?) of the leadership candidates are exceptional or are without question the best person for the job. Quite a few of them have shortcomings that even I can see. There is no clear winner as yet so it does make sense for a number of people to run, but some of these people I don't understand why they're running. If I were a member of the Liberal party I'd be emailing them all to ask them why they think they're the best choice, but I'm not a member of any parties so this isn't something I need to take action on.

Things They Should Invent: Call Priority Display for cellphones

The problem with a cellphone is that the call recipient could be anywhere, and the caller has no idea where the recipient is or what they're doing (as opposed to landlines, where the caller knows that the recipient is at home or in the office).

The recipient can screen the calls by looking at the Call Display, but they still don't know how important the call is. Is the caller having an emergency, or are they just calling for information? Can it not wait, or can it wait an hour? And, for people who don't have a landline, is the caller calling just to chat, or for a specific purpose? The recipient may feel obligated to answer because the caller is their partner or child - someone who would be calling the recipient if they were having an emergency - but the caller may be calling about something that can wait an hour.

Therefore, I propose that, before the call connects, the caller should be instructed to press a number corresponding with the priority of their call. Priority 1 is "Requires immediate attention" - i.e. emergencies, or the need to change your plans to meet up in half an hour. Priority 2 is "Purposeful but not immediately urgent" - i.e. the caller wants information that's too urgent for email, but the recipient doesn't need to drop everything/pull over to the side of the road/interrupt their romantic dinner etc. The recipient can let the call go to voicemail and return it when they're unoccupied. Priority 3 is "Just calling to chat," and the recipient can just refuse the call if they're not up for chatting at the moment.

And now, a musical number

Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday same-sex marriage
Happy birthday to you

South Toronto?

"South Toronto, like those parts of London that are host to the radical imams who influenced the 9/11 terrorists and the shoe bomber, has people who adhere to a militant understanding of Islam," said John Hostettler, chairman of the House of Representatives subcommittee on immigration and border security, noting that Toronto has a very large South Asian community.

Attn: Mr. Hostettler:

First of all, the people accused in this case were not South Asian at all. That is the most random comment ever.

Secondly, there is no such thing as South Toronto. A quick Google search will show that's unidiomatic. The southern part of our city is our downtown, which features the city's financial district and trendy waterfront condos. Toronto's marginalized tend not to live there. The accused were from Scarborough and Meadowvale, both of which are well north of our downtown, as well as significantly east and west, respectively.

If you're going to make shit up, at least make shit up that can't be refuted with a single Google, or by the common knowledge of anyone with passing familiarity with the situation.

Hijab

The Star's Antonia Zerbisias touches on the usual comments from the usual quarters about the hijabs worn by the family members of the accused terrorists (You have to scroll down a bit - the post I linked to deals with several topics).

It occurs to me that the relatives of the accused may be choosing to wear a more extreme form of hijab for privacy or disguise purposes, specifically because they are surrounded by the media.

I have noticed that their headwear seems a little more haphazardly put together than the hijab I usually see on people walking down the street and riding the subway. Most hijab that I see in real life gives the impression that it's a single, one-piece garment that somehow magically drapes itself where the wearer wants it to, without the help of pins or clips or knots. Upon closer inspection, you do sometimes see the occasional pin or a hint that it's really two pieces, but to the casual observer it just looks like a single, particularly obedient, piece of cloth.

Even from newspaper photographs, I can see that the relatives of the accused are wearing two or three sometimes-mismatched pieces of cloth around their head and face. I can see where they are pinned in some cases, and some pieces appear to be inexpertly tied on, as though the wearer is not used to wearing her scarves that way. I have never seen such haphazard hijab in real life.

Understand, I do not know any of these people personally and do not frequent the neighbourhoods where the accused are reported to have lived or where the trial is taking place. Perhaps they do dress this way all the time, I have no way of knowing. However, if I were in their position, with a loved one unexpectedly arrested for egregious crimes and the world's media following my every move, and if I had the equipment and the knowledge to whip up a makeshift burqa or abaya, I would totally do so. That way, when I am inevitably photographed, my facial expressions, facial feature, physique, wardrobe, and skill with cosmetics would not be subject to public scrutiny. I wouldn't have to worry about someone googling my name at a later date and finding criticism of my acne or lank hair or armpit stains. (Even if the mainstream media wouldn't make these kind of judgements, the average Fark reader certainly would). Also, once the media is no longer hounding my every move, I could go back to dressing normally, and random passers-by and casual acquaintances and the people at the deli and future co-workers and classmates would have no idea that I was associated with that sordid ordeal, all at the minor cost of making some non-standard wardrobe choices that, worst case, will cause critics to sneer "Well, what do you expect?"

I'm rather surprised that more people haven't advanced this theory - I've discussed it with a number of people in real life, and the vast majority of them came up with the same theory independently.

PMS drinking game

1. Use the internet to locate a drinking game that goes with whatever activity you are currently engaging in.

2. Where the game instructs you to take a drink, eat a salty snack instead.

Why people don't wear bike helmets

The Star attempts, unsuccessfully, to delve into the issue of why adults don't wear bike helmets. I think I can provide some insight here.

The introduction of bike helmets is rather recent. I'm 25 years old, and when I was a kid my parents made me wear a hockey helmet to ride my bike, because bike helmets either weren't available at all, or weren't available for small children. The law that kids must wear bike helmets didn't come into effect until I was in my teens. This means that most adults grew to adulthood without ever wearing a bike helmet, and most young adults who did wear them as kids were not required by law to do so, which means that the helmet was imposed on them by parents who were overprotective (at least compared with their peers' parents). Personally, during the years when I had to wear the hockey helmet on my bike, I never saw any of my peers wear a helmet. I think I was over the age of 10 before I saw someone other than myself and my sister wear a helmet while riding a bike. Even my own parents didn't model the behaviour.

Now, obviously some adults do wear bike helmets so this isn't intended to apply to everyone, but I think I can pin down the motivation of those who don't.

For older adults, it's a simple matter of habit. If you've never worn a bike helmet in your life, why would you start at the age of 30 or 40 or 50? Adults tend to think that they are more cautious and in better control as adults than they were as kids (I can't speak to whether or not they actually are), so if they've never hurt themselves on a bike as a kid, they'll assume they're not going to do so as an adult.

For younger adults who were made to wear helmets as a kid before it became widespread, the helmet is a tool of parental oppression. When we were kids it made us look funny and geeky. While our friends were enjoying the wind blowing through their hair, our hair was getting sweaty and greasy and matted. This was particularly problematic in early adolescence, when looks were important, oil and sweat glands were out of control, and bicycles were the primary mode of transportation. It was a shamefully uncool thing - I personally remember people throwing rocks at me because I was committing the social faux pas of wearing a bike helmet (this was in addition to the fact that looking sweaty or greasy was also a social faux pas punished by tormenting). You can see why someone who dealt with this throughout childhood and adolescence as a result of parent-imposed helmet-wearing would gleefully cast aside the helmet and ride around with the wind in their hair the instant they hit the age of majority. Personally, in early adolescence, I decided that I would prefer the inconvenience of simply never riding a bike again to the ongoing humiliation of wearing a helmet. As an adult, I don't enjoy biking as sport, and it's not practical as transportation because I'm not comfortable riding on Toronto city streets (with or without a helmet), so I have never had reason to revisit that decision. Even during threatened transit strikes I would prefer to walk if it came down to that, because I would have to go far out of my way to find a route that's quiet enough that I'd feel capable of biking on it.

Many people would think riding on the street without a helmet is foolish because of the potential for injury from motor vehicles, but even if you do wear a helmet, there is still great potential for injury. We're talking broken bones, at the very least. People who ride on busy streets are either accepting great potential for injury, or are blithely disregarding it. On a separate bike path that doesn't involve streets, the potential for injury is very different. Yes, you could still fall off or drive into a tree or something, but you're not going to end up under the wheels of a truck. The Star article doesn't mention the specific conditions of the cyclists they interviewed - whether they were on a street or a bike path or what. But the picture shows a smooth, separate bike path with no noticeable obstacles or traffic interference. In childhood, I fell off a bike under similar conditions many times, and none of those falls were such that the presence of a helmet made a difference in the outcome. (I don't go that fast, because I don't particularly care to break a sweat just for the sake of going faster - and I break a sweat at the slightest provocation.) Therefore, as an adult, if I were biking on a smooth bike path that was separate from traffic, I would likely forego the helmet and rejoice in the wind in my hair as a joyous celebration of the liberty of adulthood. If the venue was not a smooth bike path that was separate from traffic, I wouldn't be there on a bike in the first place.

I think this all will change within the next 20 years, as wearing a helmet is normalized with today's children. By the time I'm 40, not wearing a helmet when you bike will probably be as weird as not wearing a seatbelt in the car. But not all of today's adults are going to make that change, because they believe they are aware of all the factors and are making a calculated risk using their best judgement. Speaking as an adult who does not want to wear a helmet, I have weighed all the factors and am using my best judgement. That's why I don't own a bike.

Big yucky mess

I was lying in bed in that nice calm place where I'm not asleep yet but my thoughts are wandering freely and dallying wherever they please, when I suddenly realized I hadn't taken out my garbage yet. As I've mentioned before, it is absolutely imperative that the kitchen garbage be emptied every night. So, despite the fact taht it was pushing 2 a.m., I got out of bed and went to the kitchen to get the garbage. I took the bag out of the can, tied it off as usual, and carried it out to the garbage chute. In the livingroom, I felt like I had stepped on something, so I looked down.

BIG MESS!

The garbage bag had sprung a leak. And it was particularly full today, so there was a mess of coffee grinds and dead noodles (funny, I don't remember putting noodles in the garbage) and unidentifiable liquid all over the kitchen floor and halfway into the livingroom. I took the bag back to the kitchen (making more of a mess along the way), stuck it in another bag, took it out to the chute and threw it down, then came back to my apartment to clean up the mess. It's now clean, although I had to run the vacuum for about 10 seconds to pick up some stray bits of ground coffee.

So if one of your neighbours was disturbing you by vacuuming and throwing things down the garbage chute in the middle of the night, please be forgiving - she was probably having a rough night.

Why I won't use reusable tote bags to do my grocery shopping

Dominion is trying to convince me to buy reuseable totebags for my grocery shopping. I understand the environmental concerns, but I'm not going to do this for two reasons:

1. Grocery shopping is not a special trip for me. I usually get groceries on the way home from work, whenever it occurs to me that I might want some food that I don't have at home. I don't want the additional planning of having to anticipate grocery shopping, anticipate how much I will buy, figure out how many totebags I need to carry that many groceries, and carry the totebags around with me all day. I don't have a car, so I can't just stick the totebags in the trunk, and I usually carry only a large handbag which is generally pretty full because of my habit of carrying an umbrella and a novel and a waterbottle everywhere, so bringing the totebags would mean carrying an extra piece of luggage on my commute.

2. I need plastic bags anyway. I put a plastic bag in every one of my four household trash cans (i.e. small wastepaper baskets). I empty the kitchen can every day whether it's full or not (to avoid bugs), and the other three whenever they are full. I live in an apartment building, so my garbage goes down a chute. This means that all the garbage has to be wrapped in a plastic bag, and grocery store bags are perfect for this. If I didn't get plastic bags from the grocery store, I would have to buy small plastic garbage bags. So my plastic bags are going into the landfill, but that is out of necessity because of the logistics of my building's waste disposal infrastructure. I don't throw out plastic grocery bags automatically when I bring them home, I throw them out once they've served their purpose as garbage bags

Basically, using totebags would increase my inconvenience and expense without having any net effect on the number of plastic bags I send to the landfill.

If Dominion wants to improve my personal environmental footprint that results from their store, the best thing to do would be to use biodegradable plastic bags that are strong enough to get the groceries home and serve one use as a garbage bag, but will break down in the landfill.

Things Google Should Invent: enable users to mark parallel texts

Note for the non-linguists: parallel texts are texts that say the same thing in two or more different languages. The multilingual instructions for setting up your Ikea furniture or your new electronic widget are parallel texts. Your Canadian cereal box is a parallel text. EU websites are generally parallel texts.

Google already has what is probably the largest multilingual indexed corpus in the world, and millions, if not billions, of users. If Google cannot learn to recognize parallel texts itself, it should include a function on the toolbar or the interface (I'd prefer the interface because I don't have the toolbar at work and am not permitted to install it) that lets users mark two webpages as parallel texts - either tightly parallel (for direct translations) or loosely parallel (for texts that discuss the same topic, but aren't translations). Then they could add a function that lets users retrieve pages that other users have marked as parallel to the one they are currently viewing.

Apart from the obvious applications in the language industry, this could be very helpful for people who want to be tourists in a country whose language they don't read fluently, or do research on a topic where information is more readily available in a non-preferred language.

More power!

They always advertise cars based on how much power they have. Do cars ever not have enough power for normal, real-life driving?

Things They Should Invent: don't consider others overpaid

The TTC strike has raised the usual complaints about TTC workers being overpaid. Personally I don't think they are, but that's not the point today. My point today is that almost all of us, with the exception of the independently wealthy, are workers. We all are or would be dependent on wages or salary to support ourselves. Therefore, it is not in our best interest to lobby for wages or salary to be lower anywhere, at all. In this economy where no one can expect to have a job for life, we should look upon all jobs in existence as potential employment opportunities for ourselves.

Do you think you could do a TTC job easily? If so, then it's a good thing that they exist and they are paid a decent wage, because when you lose your job, that's one more potential employer you can apply to. If you lobby for the TTC people to be paid less, that will simply result in more low-paying and fewer well-paying jobs available when you next need to look for work. Unable or unwilling to do a TTC job? Then you should still be glad they exist, because every TTC employee and would-be TTC employee is one person who isn't looking for work in the pool of jobs you are able and willing to do. If they suddenly started earning less, some of them might leave the TTC and wander onto your turf, making it more difficult for you to find work.

If you're thinking "Look what these TTC people are earning! I'm not earning nearly as much and my job is harder!" then you should be lobbying for your job to pay you more, not for the TTC people to be paid less. As workers, we should all be pushing for improved compensation in all jobs, not lesser compensation.

Not as bad as it could be

I wasn't closely following the news yesterday, and I woke up this morning at the latest hour possible because the heat was making it difficult to sleep, so I had no forewarning that the TTC was on strike. However, thanks to the leet organizational skills of our admin team head, as well as the fact that one of my fellow English translators lives close enough to walk to work, I am working from home today. Good thing too - the last time there was the threat of a TTC strike, I had the crazy idea of walking two hours to work, but given today's heat and the fact that my right foot has easily gotten cranky ever since I injured it last summer, it doesn't seem like such a good idea to walk four hours roundtrip today. I'm sure my parents would find that a failing of character, but that's their problem.

My air conditioning isn't on yet (hopefully the supers will have mercy and turn it on today, even though they aren't required to do so until June), but with a fan blowing at me and an icepack on my lap, it's certainly bearable.

As Poodle would say, life is good.

Brilliant Ideas that will Never Work: mandatory Nationstates for all politicans

Everyone in the world who is or wants to be a politican should be required to have a Nationstate that they run in accordance with their own politcial beliefs. The Nationstate should be named with the politician's own name, so people can find it easily, and then everyone could see what kind of country they want to run.

Moping

Sometimes people complain that other people are "moping around".

Seems a strange thing to complain about if you think about it. Moping is not deliberate. It is the result of being sad/pensive/upset about something. It seems weird to complain that someone else is sad, especially to complain like they're doing intentionally for the express purpose of making your life less pleasant.

I don't like where For Better or For Worse is going

The latest arc in FBOFW has Liz uncertain about living in the North and wanting to move back down south into a nice suburban existence (it has been mentioned before that she'll be working in Mississauga in the summer, that's where I'm getting suburban from).

I don't like this. I'll be the first to admit that, as an individual, Liz totally has the right to be uncertain or change her life direcction whenever she wants. I would not hesitate to advise any of my peers that none of the career decisions they make now need to be permanent.

However, I've always perceived Elizabeth as an everywoman. She's my precise age and demographic - when I was little, I called the comic strip "Elizabeth" - so I've always taken her to be somewhat representative of me. My own life has been plagued with people treating my major life choices like they're "just a phase" [insert smiling knowingly over my head]. I strongly feel that what I do and where I live are perfectly right for me - and I have been striving to live and earn my living this way for the past almost 10 years - so it's very tiresome and even a wee bit dehumanizing when people assume that one day I'm going to wake up, find a nice engineer or MBA, move to a big house in the suburbs, and start squeezing out kids and spending my weekends doing home maintenance. Similarly, Elizabeth has always been passionate about teaching in the North, and by having her suddenly, apropos of nothing, want to go back to 905, it feels like Lynn Johnston is dismissing her passion for the North as "just a phase - she went off and had her little adventure and now she's back to normal life." And, by emotional extrapolation, it feels like she's being similarly dismissive of all my and my peers' life choices that don't follow the exact path she would have set out herself.

It feels almost judgemental of the fact that different people have different needs from their career and their lives, it feels like the author is sitting there with a smug, superior smile passing judgement on anyone who dares make different life choices than their parents. I grew up with this comic strip, it's always the first one I look at when I open the paper or go online, when I create SimPattersons I always play the Elizabeth character. I don't like getting these feelings from a comic strip that has always figured so strongly in my psyche.