Things that make a snowy day easier

First major snow of the winter, mixed in with some freezing rain. (Yes, in mid-January. It's been a mild winter).

However, thanks to the nice grippy soles put on my boots by Centre Shoe Clinic at Yonge-Eg Centre, I was able to walk around in 2.75-inch heels with no difficulty whatsoever. Elly Patterson, take note.

Last month, I bought a cashmere sweater on sale at Fairweather. Why cashmere? Because I was in the market for a black sweater, and the best one readily available happened to be cashmere at a very good price. My mother told me cashmere is especially warm, but I didn't believe her until today. I was wearing just a simple blouse and this thin sweater under my usual winter coat and scarf, and I was perfectly comfortable. Usually when the windchill drops below -10, I add a hat and tall boots, but today I was hatless with short boots, and perfectly fine. The only difference is that my sweater was cashmere instead of my usual proletarian poly-cotton blend.

The TTC is a mixed blessing. Of course, it lets me have my nice underground commute, making a snowy day no more difficult than a sunny spring day. However, because the TTC is so on top of things, snow days are very rare in Toronto. Growing up in a part of the province that enjoys lake-effect snow, we usually had about three snow days a year when I was a kid. That's one of the few aspects of childhood I'm nostalgic about - waking up in the morning to the radio telling me that I don't have to go to school today, rolling over and going back to sleep, then waking up again when I'm done, watching Sesame Street and Mr. Rogers and Price is Right (even well into adolescence), drinking hot chocolate, usually there'd be some failed attempt to make a snowman in there and our nice snowy lawn would end up looking all ugly afterwards. We had all these rules and rituals: you had to finish your homework and chores the night before or the snow day wouldn't come, you had to get to bed on time, no looking out the window to check on the snow after dark, you have to set your alarm for the usual time - we'd do our little voodoo and hope for the best, and a few times a year it would work. I did my voodoo last night, went through all the usual rituals, followed all the usual rules, but there was no snow day. The standards are much higher when your commute is a one-block walk outside followed by an underground section that isn't affected by snow at all.

Thoughts from the first 3 seconds of Little Mosque on the Prairie

That's an awful lot of trees for a prairie.

Veronica by Mary Gaitskill

This book didn't do it for me. The concept was good - the beautiful people decades later when they're old and haggard and wasted with STDs - but it lost my sympathy early on. The first part of the book deals with the protagonist's life as a young model, and it completely lost my sympathy because every decision she made was presented as something that happened to her, rather than an actual decision. That's a pet peeve of mine, both in fiction and in life, so it caused me to lose all sympathy for the book and finish reading it just for the purpose of getting to the end.

Things the Globe and Mail missed

I finally finished reading the Globe and Mail's Kids Today article (Don't know how long until it is put behind the firewall), and I noticed there are quite a few salient points they didn't mention at all.

- They present adult children living with their parents as pure laziness on the part of the kids. They never mentioned that sometimes parents want their kids to live at home. When I was starting university (at 18), my family considered it irresponsible for me to move out and live in res instead of continuing to live at home to save money). Some of my peers have families that consider it irresponsible to move out and rent rather than living at home until they save up a downpayment. (I was once in a training with some people from another department, and some older ladies I'd just met were lecturing me for throwing money away by living on my own.) I know other families that expect their kids to live with their parents until marriage, and still other families where all parties simply prefer living together because they don't like living alone.

- They don't even mention the role of employment insecurity in all this. The article seems to assume that because the economy is good on paper, anyone can just go out and get a nice secure full-time job whenever the hell they want, and not doing so is due entirely to laziness. They completely ignore the fact that even if economic indicators are good, more and more jobs today are insecure, term or contract positions, increasingly low-paid and without pension or benefits. Jobs for life stopped existing in the 90s. This has the dual effect of a) making it riskier for people to move out of their parents' (would you move out and sign a one-year lease if your job was just a three-month contract?) and b) giving people fewer reasons to stay in whatever job they have (imagine, in the first person, the difference between quitting a job with benefits, disability, and a pension because it sucks, and quitting a job with no benefits whatsoever because it sucks).

- The article briefly mentions that even in adolescence, Kids Today are generally more dependent on their parents, but it fails to mention the role of suburban sprawl in this. With suburban sprawl, kids have to be driven everywhere. There's no choice, because there's insufficient public transit and walking is too far and not really safe. In the 1990s, with the introduction of graduated licencing, the minimum age at which one could drive alone was raised to 16 years and 8 months with driver's ed or 17 years without, and a few years ago Grade 13/OAC was eliminated, so kids now spend only four years in high school. The result of these two changes is that, compared with previous generations, suburban kids necessarily spend the majority of their high-school years dependent on their parents to drive them around, which changes the whole dynamic of high school compared with when OAC was still around, when the majority of high school kids were old enough to drive alone, and before graduated licencing, where even the oldest Grade 10 students could drive alone. Understand, however, that even though kids are old enough to drive alone, that doesn't mean they can. The family might not have enough cars for the kid to drive to school or work or a friend's house, so a parent might have to drop them off and bring the car back home for someone else to use. Or the parents may not approve of the kid having their own car and thus forbid the kid to even buy a car with their own money. (I've even heard of some parents who deliberately prevent their kids from having a car - or even for learning to drive - so they can better monitor their comings and goings.) Also, the shorter driving-in-high-school time makes it less cost-effective to buy a car for the kid's use in high school, (whether the kid buys it themselves or the parents buy it), because most people don't take their cars to university with them. Before graduated licencing and before OAC was removed, the oldest kids in the year could start driving halfway through grade 10, and drive until the end of the summer after Grade 13, when they'd go away to school. Now, the oldest kids can start driving alone at the beginning of Grade 11 if they've done driver's ed, and can use that car until the end of the summer after Grade 12, when they go away to school. Every time that an adolescent has to ask their parents for a ride because there's no way for them to get from Point A to Point B independently is one missed opportunity for increasing their independence. This influences every single person who grows up in suburban and rural areas, but the article doesn't mention it at all.

- In the print edition, there's a blurb saying "Do you know of any young people who aren't making what they could of their lives? Please share your stories at globeandmail.com." That's a very strange thing to say. "Not making what they could of their lives." Guess what? You're not making what you could of your life! You could be a lumberjack! (If you are a lumberjack, you could be a barber! (If you are both a barber and a lumberjack, please post in the comments - I want to meet you!)) Me, I could be a nun or a lawyer or a trophy wife. But instead I'm a translator, to which I'm much better suited. However, I'm sure that there is someone out there somewhere who thinks I would be better off as a nun, and someone else who thinks I would be better off as a lawyer, and another someone else who thinks I would be better off as a trophy wife. But that doesn't mean that there's anything wrong with how I'm living my life now.

When people go to prison

I wonder if, when people go to prison, there's some mechanism for taking care of their personal affairs. I know that if you are going away for several months or years, you have to arrange for your bills to continue to be paid, you have to stop your newspapers, you have to get someone to water your plants and take care of your pets and children etc. etc. But when you go to prison, they just come in and arrest you - there's no time to take care of any of these things. For example, if the police came and arrested me right this minute and I was put in prison for several years, my landlord would notice that I'm not paying rent and evict me. But they couldn't find me, so they'd probably sell or auction or keep all my personal possessions. Bell would still bill me for phone and internet every month, and Look would still bill me for TV. The Star and the Globe would still each deliver a newspaper to my door every day (and bill my credit card for it), and the TTC would still send me a Metropass each month (and debit my bank account for it). So unless there's some way to stop all these things from happening, I'd come out of prison homeless, possessionless, and in heavy debt with my credit rating destroyed.

Now I know prisoners are allowed to write letters, so maybe it would be possible to fix some of these things by mail. But the thing is, I have no idea where to write. I manage my personal affairs online, and have no idea of the mailing addresses of any of the companies I deal with, or if they're even prepared to handle customers by mail. I wonder if in prison they help prisoners work this stuff out, or if they just leave them to their own devices?

Open letter to media outlets everywhere

Every so often, some media outlet or another does an article on "failure to launch" among Kids Today. Media people, whenever you feel the need to do one of these articles, please think critically about the indicators of adult independence you cite, and ask yourself if they really are necessary to adult independence, or if they're just things that grownups tend to do.

The lastest offender is the Globe and Mail. Just looking at the blurbs, they mention living with one's parents (which I agree is generally a sign of failure to launch, although there may be extenuating circumstances such as if the parents are ill or can't support themselves without the kid's income) or "delaying [one's] career" (for which I agree with the point they're trying to make, but it's worded a bit vaguely - some people can still support themselves with a big capital-c Career).

However, they also include not buying a house and not getting married. Buying a house is so optional! You can also buy a condo or rent a house or rent an apartment, and in all these cases you're living independently. Some people prefer to live in a high-density urban area, or don't want the extra work of a house, or want to rent so they aren't responsible for repairs, but they're still grownups! Think about the characters on Seinfeld - they might be immature at times, true, but they have definitely launched. Except for the period when George lived with his parents, they are all independent, self-sufficient adults. Similarly, getting married is not only highly optional, but also beyond one's full control as an individual. Someone can live their entire life in a way that is by all standards exemplary and beyond reproach, and simply happen to never meet someone who would make a suitable marriage partner. Or they could find a suitable marriage partner, but marriage is unfeasible for one of any number of reasons, and they prefer to continue loving their soulmate rather than ditching their soulmate and taking up a marriage of convenience with someone they don't love. Or they could have found their soulmate and be enjoying conjugal bliss, but not be allowed to marry because they happen to be of the same sex and live somewhere that's stuck in the dark ages. Choosing to marry only when it's the right thing to do rather than marrying someone, anyone, just for the sake of getting married, is a mature, adult way to carry out your life. Making getting married your primary goal and focusing everything on finding someone, anyone, to marry so that you can Be Married simply doesn't belong in the 21st century. Therefore, you cannot judge people as immature or unadult for not being married. Certainly no one would think that, say, Condoleeza Rice has failed to launch!

If you use examples like this, things that aren't actually problems but you're presenting them as problems, it ruins the credibility of your entire article. Use indicators of adult independence that actually indicate adult independence, rather than arbitrary factors. If you can't find enough concrete examples using only appropriate indicators, then maybe that means the "problem" isn't big enough to be writing an article about it.

Um

A blurb on the Globe and Mail's Facts and Arguments page advises avoiding using "um" or "like" "during job interviews or when asking for dates or raises".

Job interviews, I can see avoiding like. Some people are very anti-like. But would they even notice the um? Um seems kind of unmarked to me. I've never had a job where asking for a raise is an option, but I'd imagine that if you've been there long enough to ask for a raise, your boss would be used to your normal speech patterns. If you used your usual um and like, your boss would probably cognate it as your normal speech pattern, and if you used them more than usual because you're nervous, she'd probably just cognate it as you being nervous. If she's a decent boss, she'd judge you on your general performance, not your nervousness when asking for a raise. If she's a judgeosaurus vulture waiting to pounce (how's that for a mixed metaphor?) the instant you show a bit of nervousness, the problem is really your boss, not your ums.

But asking for a date? Since when is a bit of nervousness or uncertainty a problem when asking for a date? Are there really people who would turn down a date because of a few ums or likes, but would accept if the invitation is umless? I think if someone rejects your date invitation because you're nervous, they're not worth dating anyway. What's the point of a boyfriend/girlfriend you can't be dorky around?

Remember when they said that everything would change?

I'm watching the South Park movie, which was made in 1999. At one point, some guy falls off a tall New York skyscraper. That now seems way in poor taste. (Yes, I know the whole movie is in poor taste, but that one scene seems in way worse taste than it was originally intended to be.)

Things Salon should invent: searchable letters

Often I read an article in Salon and I think of something fruitful to say in reply. Salon has a letters page for each article that allows you to do just that. However, sometimes by the time I get there there's already a metric shitload of letters on the letters page, and it would take forever to read them. I know there's no point in posting my letter if someone else has already brought up the point I want to make, but sometimes I just don't have time to read through dozens of other people's letters to check whether my point has been made. However, in my experience, any point that I think of will not be addressed by anyone else about 50% of the time, so it might be worth posting anyway. On the other hand, as a reader, I hate it when people post who clearly aven't read the other letters.

Salon could easily fix this problem by including a search engine for each article's letters page. If this isn't feasible, they could also give us the option of seeing all letters on one page, and letting us use our browser's serach function to find whatever we need to find.

Comment experiment

Because word verification has been being a real bitch in some other blogs I read, I've turned it off for the time being. If I start accumulating spam, I'll turn it back on.

My questions for you, the person who's reading this: has word verification ever refused to verify you in my blog? Has the need to do word verification ever stopped you from commenting because it's too much trouble?

Wherein my inner 12-year-old expounds on the subject of dog breeding

Today in the pet store I saw a puppy called a Cockapoo, which is a cocker spaniel/poodle cross, and a puppy called a Shih-Tees, which is a Shih Tzu crossed with something else, I can't figure out what.

I think they should crossbreed them the other way, so you have a Shihtz-Poo and a Cock-Tees.

What about evacuation?

1.25 years ago, a bunch of people were trapped in New Orleans because there was no contingency for evacuating people who don't have cars. At the time, I thought "Well, at least this means that in the future they'll come up with evacuation plans that take into account the people who don't have cars."

Have they done that yet? I haven't heard anything.

The fluffy parts of the newspaper are particularly stupid today

Jump Start: This doesn't make sense. Dot has always been presented as smart. Why on earth wouldn't she know that you can't bring liquids and gels on the plane? It's common knowledge! And she's always been presented as an English-major type, so she must read the paper! I hate it when comic strips break character for the sake of a gag.

FBORFW: Oy, where to begin? Nothing about what they're trying to set up today makes sense! First of all, why wouldn't Liz call ahead? She's staying with Gary and Viv house, so they would need to know that she's arriving a day early! Yes, they are ready for her already, but she has no way of knowing that they would be. They could have gone into town to get groceries or something and there'd be no one to let her in when she got there! Secondly, why would she so quickly draw the conclusion that Paul is cheating from the conversation at hand? She loves him and has had no reason whatsoever to suspect him previously - surely she'd read it has he's just visiting Susan, since she's an old friend. Thirdly, why would Paul invite her up to Mtigwaki if he's cheating on her? Fourthly, why would Paul transfer south if he's so not-in-love with Liz that he's cheating on her! Or, if he lied about the transfer, why would he do that? Why not just tell her it didn't go through? After all, this is his second transfer in a year, it's perfectly plausible that it wouldn't go through.

Dear Dear Abby: Before you give anyone any more advice, please read The Introvert Advantage by Marti Olsen Laney

Dear Clara in Chicago: Your boyfriend is clearly an introvert. This means that he finds spending time with people draining, and being alone energizing. I know, this sounds bass-ackwards about you, but I've explained it in greater depth here. Introverts are very choosy about their friends, so the fact that he has chosen a romantic relationship with you is a very high compliment indeed! I'm sure he loves spending time with you, it's just that sharing you with all those other people is draining to him. And surely you chose him as a boyfriend because he has some excellent qualities beyond being another person to flutter around your circle! So the solution to your problem is simple: you go out with your circle of friends around you, thus recharging your extrovert brain, and let him stay home if he wants, thus recharging his introvert brain. I know this sounds mean to you, but he won't mind, honest! Then when you come home, you will both be recharged and re-energized, and can each share your best selves with each other.

Things They Should Invent: walking directions for Google Maps

I was trying to figure out how to get from Point A to Point B on Google Maps. It gave me a direction, a distance, and a driving time, but it wasn't clear to me how walkable this trip was. I'm not very good at converting km into walking time. So I decided to compare the distance that of a walking route I knew well - the route I walked to school when I was a kid. Unfortunately, my walking-to-school route was much shorter that the driving directions Google gave me from my parents' house to my old school, because my walking route included shortcuts through parks and through those little paths they put between the ends of cul-de-sacs (culs-de-sac?), so Google couldn't tell me how long my walk to school either.

What I want is to enter Point A and Point B, and click on "Walking Directions". Then Google will show me a route that takes into account shortcuts that pedestrians can take but cars can't, and provides an estimated travel time for walking.

The problem with PDFs on the TTC website

As everyone who cares knows by now, there's discussion in the big Toronto blogs about how to redesign the TTC website. All of these discussions seem to have fallen into pro-PDF and anti-PDF factions.

I fall into the anti-PDF faction, and I've come up with a demonstration to show why:

Here's the TTC system map in PDF form. This is the only electronic format in which the full system map is available, and the full system map is the only way to find out which routes you need to take.

Find someone who doesn't live in Toronto and is not familiar with the city. They can be as tech-savvy as you want. Give them two points in Toronto, and have them figure out what subway stations and bus routes they need to get from point A to point B. Pick two points that require at least one transfer. See how quickly they get pissed off figuring this out with the PDF map, especially if their computer isn't brand new or doesn't have gamer-calibre RAM.

If you're a non-Torontonian and you want to take up this challenge, here are two sample routes for you to try to figure out:

1. How do you get from Union Station to Bayview & Lawrence?
2. How do you get from Yonge & Eglinton to Roncesvalles Ave?

Torontonians will know that these are simple trips, but are they so simple to figure out with the PDF map if you don't already know where you're going?

Ashley

The parents of a severely disabled girl are having her sex organs removed and giving her hormonal treatments to stunt her growth. Understandably, there has been outrage, but I don't think what they're doing is bad.

Some, if not most, of you will disagree with me - and that's fine, I can totally see the other side too - but I think the parents did the right thing here in removing her sex organs, and I don't think stunting her growth is actively wrong. I'm thinking my way through this by putting myself in the little girl's shoes, and the more I think about it, the more I think the parents were not wrong.

How would I feel if my sex organs were removed? Well, in early adolescence, I wouldn't miss them and might even be glad that I didn't have them. (IRL, I felt the trappings of fertility were a burden for several years, and thereafter felt they were a tolerable nuisance.) In later adolescence, I would either have come to terms with the absence of sex organs, or I would resent their absence because it prevents me from having a sex life. But that's the benefit I get from sex organs - they make me more physically attractive, thus increasing my likelihood of finding someone to have sex with me, or they make sex physically possible. Other people also enjoy sex organs because they enable them to reproduce. But none of these apply to this little girl. She will never be able to consent to sex or even comprehend sex, and of course she will never be able to reproduce, so her sex organs are simply a burden for her. I think they did her a favour by removing them, and if I were in her position I would want them removed.

The other issue is that the parents made this decision unilaterally. How would I feel if my parents unilaterally made a decision to have my sex organs removed? I would feel that they are exceeding their authority - I would feel that they should have consulted me, or, if I was rather young, my parents and medical team should have educated me objectively to the point where I could have made an informed decision myself. However, this little girl will never be able to make an informed decision herself. She probably doesn't even grasp the concept of an informed decision. I don't even know whether or not she understands that she's an autonomous being. There is simply no possibility whatsoever of consulting her, at all, ever, so it was not inappropriate for the parents to make the decision unilaterally.

Now for the size thing. How would I feel if I underwent medical treatment to stop me from growing? I would feel cheated. I've long aspired to be a grownup, and part of that is being grownup size. I like being grownup size. I like that I can reach things, I like being treated with grownup respect, I like it when I can come across as authoritative, I like being able to look over the cubicle walls and see where everyone is. Being tall is fun. However, this little girl will never be able to stand up, so she will never be able to actually be tall. She could be long, but being long is an inconvenience (have you ever tried to sleep on a too-short bed?). Because she has the physical and mental abilities of a three-month-old, she will never look grownup or come across as authoritative anyway. None of the reasons why I enjoy being tall will ever apply to her. In fact, given her severe disabilities, I think being small would be the least of her problems.

How would I feel if my parents unilaterally decided to stop me from growing? I would think that's sick and twisted, that they cannot let go and accept the fact that I'm growing up, and that if they wanted something little and cute, they really should have gotten a chihuahua instead. But none of these statements apply to this little girl. She will always be physically and mentally three months old. She will never be an adult, she will never be independent, her parents cannot let go because she will always need care. With the mind of a three month old, I'm not sure if she even comprehends the concept of independence, never mind that she will never have it. Maybe she wants to be held all the time, maybe she has no need for privacy, maybe she doesn't want to be apart from her parents (I'm not a child development expert, but that sounds about right for a three-month-old to me.) Again, this little girl will never be in a position to make that decision for herself, and will never be able to comprehend what might have been. Even if she does perceive herself as different from everyone else, it will be because she is so severely disabled, not because she is small.

The most frequent argument I hear against these measures is that the parents did it for their own convenience, not for the child's convenience. This is a very good point - parents should make their kid's medical decisions based on what's best for the child, not what's easiest for the parents. But we have to ask, are these measures any inconvenience to the little girl? I don't think they are. I think by removing her sex organs they're doing her a favour (although she will never realize it), and making her small is no inconvenience to her whatsoever. While, as a general rule, I don't think parental convenience should be a factor in decision-making, I don't think there's anything wrong with making it more convenient for the parents if doing so is not inconvenient or unpleasant for the child.

I've also seen a few red-herring-type arguments in this debate, so I'd like to briefly address them here. The first is drawing a parallel between removal of her sex organs and female circumsion. I don't think this is an apt comparison, because breasts and uterus will be a burden to her, while the clitoris is no problem whatsoever. If she has or ever develops sufficient motor control (I have no idea whether or not this is possible for someone with the motor skills of a three-month-old), she may even figure out how to use her clitoris to give herself pleasure, which would be a safe and appropriate way for her to enjoy her own sexuality despite the fact that she will never be able to properly consent to sex. Her breasts and uterus can give her no such pleasure. Therefore, removing the sex organs removes a burden that gives her no pleasure, while removing the clitoris would be removing something that's gives her pleasure without any inconvenience.

The other red herring I've seen is that keeping her small is just as bad, ethically, as would be removing her arms and legs to make her lighter. This is not an apt comparison either, because her limbs are some benefit to her. The general consensus among the first page of Google results is that a three-month-old can move their arms and legs and hold things in their hands, and that doing so amuses them. They would also keep her balanced while lying down, and allow her to roll over if that's within her abilities. So removing her limbs would make her smaller and lighter, but at the expense of what little mobility and ability to interact with her environment she does have. However, hormonally stunting her growth makes her smaller and lighter at a negligible cost.

I certainly don't think this situation is black and white. If her parents weren't taking these measures, it would never occur to me that they should be taken. It might occur to me to recommend tubal ligation, but that's about it. I also think we need to carefully keep an eye on the slippery slope thing - this one case shouldn't be a wide-open door to allowing parents to alter their disabled children willy-nilly. However, the more I think about it, the more I feel that the parents in this particular case are not doing anything wrong, and may even be doing what's best for their child.

Question for people who wear glasses

Do you remember how much anti-glare lenses cost X years ago? X can be any number of years ago you happen to remember, but I'm looking for numbers for anti-glare lenses instead of regular lenses, and just the lenses, not the frames.

Why? Because my optometrist prescribes anti-glare lenses for me, and, given the nature of my eyesight, it is very necessary. I never realized it at the time, but lack of anti-glare was the reason why I found driving at night so disorienting when I was in my teens. If I drove now, having the anti-glare would be a matter of public safety. As it stands, it doubles my stamina for just normal walking around city streets after dark, and working at a CRT monitor (which I still use all day at work).

However, anti-glare lenses cost significantly more than my insurance will cover. This is just the lenses, without even taking into account the frames - just what's written on my prescription, without the other stuff that the doctor says is optional.

I've noticed that the cost of my eyewear as a whole has been increasing far faster than the amount my insurance will cover. However, I've only been prescribed anti-glare for a few years, so I can't track anti-glare lenses in the long term, and I'd like to know if they've always cost more than my insurance limit, or if that's just a recent development because insurance hasn't been keeping up with prices. Anyone have longer anti-glare memory than me?

Anyone have TNG DVDs and a ton of spare time?

A lot of the Star Trek articles on Wikipedia - especially TNG articles - appear to have been written by someone for whom English is not their first language. Every once in a while, they just use the wrong word. I've been wandering around and editing a bit, but a lot of the time I can't tell the author actually intended to say, and I don't have the DVDs so I can't check the actual episodes.

If you've got the TNG DVDs and nothing better to do, here's a project for you!

Adventures from the puppy store

Today, after stressing myself out with shopping, I went to the store to look at the puppies. There was this adorable little floppy-eared beagle in with two silly poofy bichon frises. And the bichon frises were using the poor beagles floppy little ears as chew toys! Poor beagle! Mr. Floppy-ears deserves better!

Also, there were a LOT of people taking videos of the puppies with their camera phones. Y'all had better post those puppy videos on Youtube! If you're going to block my view of the puppies, you need to share the pictures with the world!