Things They Should Invent: mp3s sorted by tempo, for distance runners

In sports camp when I was a kid, one of the counsellors taught us to mentally (or verbally) sing Do Wah Diddy Diddy while we ran, to pace ourselves. If you want to make sure you aren't going to hard, you try to sing the song out loud (because you should still be able to talk while running at a normal pace).

This technique served me well throughout my life, but it gets pretty boring having just that one song. So what they should do is have a service where you can download mp3s by tempo. For example, you type in MM=120, and you get a list of every single song that uses that tempo, so you can listen to a wide variety of music while you run, without losing your pace. Then, if you're training up and your pace increases, you can download some faster music to accompany you.

Open letter to Margaret Wente

Dear Margaret Wente:

In the Toronto section of today's Globe and Mail, you wrote an article where you described the many difficulties you faced going carless for a week. I humbly suggest that the problem is not the lack of a car or shortcomings with the TTC, the problem is your neighbourhood.

When you chose to live in the Beaches, you doubtless did so without consideration for the quality of the public transit service in that area. However, people in your socioeconomic demographic can afford to live in most Toronto neighbourhoods, so if you actually intended to live without a car IRL, you would have picked a different neighbourhood. Try those same errands again, but this time with Yonge & Eg. serving as your home base. If Yonge & Eg. isn't your cup of tea, try Roncesvalles, or Davisville, or the Annex, or St. Clair. Pick your favourite one of the many Toronto neighbourhood that has a subway stop and all your most frequently used amenities and services all within walking distance, and try using that as your home base to get a taste of what life is like for people who could afford a car, but choose not to have one.

My home base is Yonge & Eg. Using a CAA map of Toronto and a ruler, I've determined that my commute is about as long, distance-wise, as yours. It takes me 17-25 minutes, door to door. The amount of walking I have to do is so negligible that I can wear whatever shoes I want, including my ridiculous heels. If my feet are going to start hurting, they would do so from my normal around-the-office walking anyway. If you're worried about the fashionability of carrying a backpack, you can easily fit water, reading material, etc. in a larger purse that does not look out of place on an office worker. The modus operanti for female TTC commuters who carry their lunch is to use a fashionable shopping bag. I see immaculately-groomed women with killer three-inch heels taking the TTC all the time, sometimes including myself. (And when my grooming deteriorates to less than immaculate, it's not because I took the TTC, but rather because I'm generally clumsy and sloppy, with oily skin and flat, heavy hair.)

The trip to the two "out of the way" places you listed (Bathurst & Lawrence and Eglinton & Allen) take me no more than half the travelling time you listed. I can't speak to the ease or difficulty of getting to Scarborough because I have no reason to go there. I don't have to worry about shopping using the TTC, because all the shopping I need is right in my immediate neighbourhood. Ditto with exercise classes - I don't go to a gym because it's no my scene, but I go right past three in the five-minute walk from the subway to my house, and I can think of three more within a five-minute walk in the other direction, plus two more within a five-minute walk of my office. I'm sure one of them would meet my needs.

I do grocery shop several times a week, but it is not out of my way at all (even when I don't grocery shop, I walk right past the store anyway) so it isn't a Great Big Chore. And carrying home a 32-pack of toilet paper? Dead easy! You just stick the end of the pack into one plastic grocery bag, then take two more plastic grocery bags and tie them to the handles of the bag that contains the toilet paper. The two extra bags will serve as extended handles, comfortably reaching over the top of the toilet paper package and allowing you to carry it with no more difficulty than you would have carrying a normal grocery bag. I regularly carry home a big-ass pack of Charmin along with up to five other grocery bags, and the toilet paper is the least of my problems.

While I know that many people cannot afford to live near a subway station, a couple with a house in the Beaches, two cars (one of which is an SUV), and two jobs (at least one of which is white-collar) can certainly afford to live in one of Toronto's more convenient neighbourhoods, and would certainly do so if they chose not to own a car. Therefore, while your experiment may reflect what life is like for those who are too poor to have their pick of neighbourhoods, it is not a sign of what your own life would be like if you gave up driving.

The next definitive fandom meme

Everyone who cares has by now seen the Star Trek version of Knights of the Round Table.

I think I've just stumbled upon its natural successor.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you...Azkaban Cell Block Tango!

Before you judge me, here's your homework assignment

With recent news from Statscan that more 20-something are returning to their parents' home after moving out, we've had the usual rash of snide commentary from our elders. But sometimes I think they don't understand our context. One columnist said that we're living with our mommies and daddies because we think we're too good to live in a studio apartment with brick and plywood bookshelves. I know an awful lot of people in their 20s, and none of us think we're too good to live in a studio apartment, but many of us can't afford a studio apartment (or can afford it, but our income isn't sufficient to meet the requirements of the 1/3 rule.) (As for the brick and plywood bookshelves, personally I found it easier and cheaper to have the bookshelf from my childhood bedroom brought up here - bricks and plywood cost money too, you know!)

So, I have devised a homework assignment. If you consider yourself my elder, you must complete this assignment before you are qualified to comment on my financial realities. If you don't want to do all this math, you're free not to comment on my financial situation at all.

First, answer each of the following:

1. How much did you earn at your first job?
2. How much did you earn at your first grownup job?
3. How much was your university tuition?
4. How much was rent on your first apartment?
5. How much did your first home cost?

Then, adjust those numbers for inflation to see how much each amount is worth in today's dollars.

Now you need to find out how much each of these things would pay or cost today.

1. and 2.: You can best answer these questions by looking up comparable jobs on Workopolis or your favourite job-finding site. If you can't find any advertisements, NOCS can give you a vague idea of the average income earned - keep in mind that starting income will be lower. If you got paid minimum wage, it can be found here. If you were unionized, google up the union in question and read the collective agreement.

3. Go to your alma mater's website and look up the current tuition rates.

4. Try typing the address of your first apartment building into Google. If that doesn't work, use your favourite local apartment-finding site.

5. Look in MLS and find a comparable home in the same neighbourhood that is up for sale or sold recently. Again, you can also try googling the address.

Once you have all these numbers, you need to calculate the following ratios - both for "back in the day" when they applied to you, and for today. For the "back in the day" calculations, remember to adjust for inflation:

a) How many hours did/would you need to work at your first job to earn one year's tuition?

b) What percentage of your monthly income was/would be needed to pay the rent on your first apartment?

c) How much mortgage could you get with the income from your first grownup job? A mortgage calculator helps. If you don't remember properly, historical interest rates can be found here.

d) How long did/would it take you to save up a downpayment on that home with the income from your first job? The downpayment must be large enough to both meet whatever requirements are set out by the lender, and to fill the gap between your mortgage amount and the cost of the house. This investment calculator can help you, as will the historical interest rates. Remember to pick an investment that matched your real risk tolerance at the time, without the benefit of 20/20 hindsight. Remember too how much of your income you could manage to put into savings at the time.

Finished the calculations? Remembered to adjust everything for inflation? Congratulations, now you have a sufficient sense of perspective to comment on my financial situation. Judge away!

We need to question Statistics Canada's definition of "protestant"

The Toronto Star offers this chart of how many people from various religions marry outside their faith. It is sourced to Statistics Canada.

"Protestant" is divided into "Mainline", "Conservative" and "Other". The footnote defines "Other" as:

Includes New Age, Aboriginal Spirituality, Pagan, Scientology, Satanist, Wicca, Gnostic, Rastafarian, Unity, New Thought, Pantheist and other small religious groups.

This is a serious problem. The definition of Protestant clearly identifies it as a form of christianity. I don't know about all these religions, but Pagan, Scientology, Stanaist and Wicca are definitely not christian religions!

Does Statscan always include these other religions in with protestant? If so, that's a huge problem!

And good morning to you too

What's up with all these morning thunderstorms lately?

I need more sociolinguistics!

Today I had to translate a message that was ostensibly coming from a middle-aged man (but was more likely written by his staff.) I translated it from French to English as I normally do, but once it was finished, I realized it didn't really sound like something a middle-aged man would say. It sounded more feminine. Specifically, it sounded like a slightly eccentric female tenured professor who wears scarves and has piles of paper all over the office, when it needed to sound like it was coming from a staid middle-aged man with a mustache. I don't know if that's a function of my own voice, or a function of the fact that the staff person who wrote it was female (I don't know if it was a female staff person or not), or if it's just a function of the French language, which tends to be more emotive. But I had such a struggle getting the tone of the text to sound like it was coming from the person it was coming from!

Since I'll have to do a lot more of this in the future, I briefly considered creating an online persona who's a middle-aged male, just to practice getting the tone down. But even if I could pull off a male persona, there's no way I could do middle-aged. Especially since I'd have to be proactive in saying things, and I don't think I can come up with things that it would occur to a middle-aged male to say. If I could pull it off, it would have to be reactively. But I could never be proactive about it. But then, I've never been very good a role-playing anyway.

I'm sure at least one person has come away from this secretly thinking that I really am a middle-aged male in the guise of a 25-year-old woman.

My stomach, my hands, and my language skills

I love food! Some people view eating as a chore - just something you have to get out of the way to survive - but for me it's a pleasure. The problem is that lately my tastebuds have been craving more food than my digestive system can handle. For example, right now I'm full, bordering on uncomfortably full, but my tastebuds are demanding French onion soup. I have no room for soup, but my tastebuds won't shut up about it. It's quite annoying.

A couple of weeks ago, I had a tragicomic accident where I fell off my yoga ball whilst doing something stupid, and got rugburn all over the back of my hand. Initially, I had a number of ugly scabs - something that you'd expect to see on a Dickensian orphan with a particularly unhealthy-sounding cough like that sickly kid who sometimes shows up on the Simpson. Now it is starting to heal, but there's a section that looks like a healing cigarette burn. I don't know which is worse. Before, I looked like I had some kind of freaky skin disease. Now, I look like I'm either being abused or self-mutilating. In reality, it's just a symptom of not having the common sense to braid or bun my hair before doing upside-down yoga ball things!

The other day I was working at a conference that was being held in a hotel. In the hotel elevator, these three ladies started talking to me in some language I don't know. If I had to guess, I'd say it was Korean, although I could be way wrong. (But I'm going to continue to call it Korean for simplicity's sake.) This was very odd, because there is nothing to indicate that I might understand Korean. I don't like using racial descriptions, but frankly I'm a tall, green-eyed white girl. If I don't look white, I look Mediterranean. If you spoke to me in any European language, I'd understand. If you spoke to me in Hebrew or Arabic or Pashto, I could see why you might think that's worth a try. There is nothing in my superficial appearance to suggest I understand Korean - I wasn't even wearing my ID badge that identified me as a translator. It was most bizarre! Then when I got home that night, I got a phone call where the person on the other end was also talking in Korean. It might have been a prank call (do people still make prank calls?) At any rate, it was the same language as the elevator ladies, which was quite odd. In retrospect, I should have replied to the phone call in Polish.

Summary of Star Trek: First Contact, written by someone who obviously doesn't know Star Trek

"Half-robot Borg tries to sabotage a rocket flight."

- from the Globe and Mail TV guide

Etiquette dilemma

I got on the subway, saw an empty seat, and sat down. This lady got on shortly after me, but there were no seats so she stood up in front of me. Then, several stops later, one of the people sitting next to me got off, so the lady standing in front of me sat down next to me. As she moved to sit down, the way her moved and hung showed me that she was pregnant - at least I think she was pregnant! I didn't notice the apparent pregnancy while she was just standing still. I felt like I should apologize to her for not offering her my seat, but there was the tricky question of what if she isn't actually pregnant? What's the proper thing to do in this situation?

Things They Should Invent: redefine "women's issues" to exclude parenting issues

A number of political issues are often grouped together under the general category of "women's issues," but many of these issues are actually parents' issues. In addition, some reproductive issues that are commonly considered women's issues also affect men who have sex with women. This causes many problems:

- childfree women, infertile/post-menopausal childless women, and women with grown children will look at the "women's issues" section of the website (or whatever medium) and come to the conclusion that women's issues aren't for them, when in fact there are one or two issues hiding in there that are for all of us.

- issues that have to do with parents and opposite-sex partners are listed under a category that tells men "This is not for you."

This means that:

- nearly all women over 50
- all men except for gay and celibate childfree men
- childfree women

are all alienated from issues that concern them, simply because of lazy labelling. I don't have census data or anything here, but that's obviously a majority of the population.

So is it a parenting issue? Call it a parenting issue. Is it a reproductive issue? Call it a reproductive issue. If there are any women's issues left, you can call them women's issues. I don't know whether or not there are any left, because all the stuff for parents told me it wasn't for me so I didn't read it in depth.

"You're just taking the easy way out"

This phrase, like the words courage and cowardice, is often misused as a commentary on virtue. People accuse others of taking the easy way out as though there's some inherent virtue in doing things the hardest way possible. Now sometimes the harder route is more virtuous and the easier route is less virtuous, but they are virtuous or not based on their own merits, not because of their inherent difficulty or lack thereof.

So, in the shower this morning, I thought of a simple rebuttal to show people who make this comment the folly of their position. It won't work for everyone, but it will work for a lot of people: "You have a car, don't you?"

Extremely small countries are cool

There are quite a few countries in the world with five-digit populations. Tuvalu has about 10,000, San Marino has about 20,000, Monaco has about 30,000, etc.

The cool thing about these countries are that if they have an official government correspondence office, they could answer every single letter the gov't receives from citizens. If they have more than one full-time person, they could probably manage to send a somewhat personalized note of condolence from the head of state to the family of every single person who dies. They could probably send a card of congratulations from the head of state to every single high-school graduate. That would be very cool.

Another poll they should do

Some people believe "If I can achieve success, anyone can," and if someone doesn't achieve success it's their own damn fault for not working hard enough or being virtuous enough.

Other people view their own success as a matter of good luck, and feel that things could have turned out very differently due to circumstances completely beyond their control.

I fall into the latter group, and this is because I know and know of a number of people who have the same or better credentials, virtue, and willingness to work hard as I do, but are less successful. (This statement holds for every measure of success I can think of, although the same people don't always count as more successful or less successful by each and every measure.) This is also because I have been in situations where I was unable to achieve a certain success due to circumstances entirely beyond my control; I have also been in situations where I was nearly unable to achieve a certain success due to cercumstances entirely beyond my control, but did end up achieving it by making use of some resource to which not everyone has access (and I had access to said resource because of good luck or a random fluke or other circumstances beyond my control.)

So I'd like to see a poll of the people who think that if you don't achieve success it's entirely your fault. Do they know anyone who has the same or better credentials, virtue, and willingness to work hard, but is less successful? Have they ever not achieved success due to circumstances entirely beyond their control? Have they ever achieved success purely because of good luck? Basically I'm wondering if they have the same range of experiences as me but are interpreting them differently, or if they came from a completely different set of experiences.

In court

In courtroom dramas, two things always happen:

1. Everyone takes an oath to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
2. At some point, a lawyer forcefully insists that some witness answer a question with simple yes or no, with no further information.

But if you answer a question with a simple yes or no when more specific information is necessary, you're not telling the whole truth, and you're not telling nothing but the truth.

On TV, they always present this situation as the evil witness is cowed into answering with an incriminatory yes or no, and implicates the bad guy, and the good guy wins. But in real life what are you supposed to do if you're on the stand and the lawyer questioning insist that you answer in a way that would be perjury?

A trick of the light

On TV, they have what appears to be a temporary studio set up in what appears to be a hotel room. They're sitting in hotel-looking chairs interviewing people in front of what looks like a window that offers a stunning view of the urban skyline.

Problem: It's a nighttime skyline.

The lights from the studio should be reflecting off the window and showing a mirror image of what's going on in the studio, not a stunning view of the nighttime skyline. Is there any possible way to pull this off with TV studio lights, or is the window just a fake?

Do you wear purple? If not, why not?

I'm finding myself tempted to buy a purple jacket (for outerwear), but I'm hesitant. The colour looks really good on me, as deep jewel tones usually do, but I always think twice about wearing purple because so few people do wear it. Is that just because purple doesn't look good on many people, or is it an old lady colour, or is there some other reason?

The word purple looks really funny now.

Barbershop bunny, free for the taking

In the shower this morning, my brain started playing a barbershop arrangement of King Herod's Song from Jesus Christ Superstar (lyrics) (YouTube). As far as Google can tell me, no one has done this IRL, and since I don't have a keyboard to help me write it out (or a barbershop quartet who can use it) I'm tossing it out here for anyone who's randomly Googling for something new to barbershop. I think it would work in straightforward close harmony, with judicious use of scat in the bassline to allude to what the tuba and piano are doing in the original.

Question for Americans

Why do y'all refer to your amendments by number only? It makes them very hard to learn and seriously hinders my Jeopardy game!