Not dead yet

Big things are in motion re: my possible new apartment, so I'm just angsty and antsy and on edge this week and probably am not going to be blogging much (or watching my comments) for the rest of the week, unless I get bored on my work-from-home days. On tap for when the drama settles down: my theories on aliens, my superpowers and lack thereof, the semantics of atheism, and at least one either elated or devastated post about the new apartment.

East or West?

I might find myself in the position of choosing between two apartments that are identical except that one faces east and the other faces west.

There are two primary factors involved: sun and wind.

East gets more sun in the morning, West gets more sun in the afternoon. East would be better for my cicardian rhythms and marginally better both in winter and summer insofar as sunlight will warm my apartment (in the winter I'd rather have warmth in the morning, and in summer I'd rather have coolness at night). West would allow me to enjoy sun-filled rooms for more hours a day (since if I'm home during the day, I'm likely to be asleep in the morning and awake in the afternoon).

The prevailing winds come from the west, so West gets more wind and East gets wind only rarely. Wind is very very good in the summer (helps cool and freshen the apartment naturally) and marginally bad in the winter (seeps in and makes things colder). Less wind might also mean that my windows don't get as dirty on the outside.

If everything functions optimally - my blinds can keep out the sun, my heating and air conditioning work, the windows are well-sealed - the primary factor will be my circadian rhythms (favouring East), with the fact that I like having wind blow into my windows in good weatther (favouring West) coming in a not-close but not-distant second.

If my air conditioning stops working, wind becomes far more important (favouring West) and sun somewhat more important (favouring East). The air conditioning system is new, which reduces the chance of age-related difficulties but increases the chance of teething troubles.

Other things that can go wrong have a more marginal effect. The biggie is presence or absence of air conditioning. I guess it's also dependent on whether I can turn on my air conditioning at will regardless of the date, or whether the whole building switches twice a year. I don't have this information yet. Being cool in the summer is more important to me than being warm in the winter.

Any thoughts? Would you pick East or West?

Brilliant Ideas That Will Never Work: magnetize all cars

All cars should have the same magnetic polarity. That way they won't be able to crash into each other.

Ambassador taxis

The City of Toronto has this Ambassador taxi licence program. I don't know the details, but apparently Ambassador drivers are have more training and are generally more l33t or something.

A newspaper article I was reading reminded me of this, so I found myself wondering how a customer would go about getting an Ambassador taxi. Standard googling couldn't tell me. I know you could flag one down if you see one, but I have no idea if you can call and ask for them, or if they have a special phone number, or what.

What's the point of having a special program if you don't tell the prospective clients how to access it?

Dogs in bars

Washington State is considering changing the law to allow people to bring dogs into bars.

I'm all for more dogs everywhere. However, I'm also sympathetic to people who are afraid of dogs. But what would be interesting about allowing dogs in bars is how it would completely change the dynamic of picking up people in bars. Dogs are a great conversation starter, which is wonderful if you want to meet people, but a problem if you have a dog to walk but don't want to have to chat with anyone (or if you're like me and want to talk to every dog you see, but don't want to lead anyone on.)

The legal details of fake police officers

Assaulting a police officer and resisting arrest are both crimes.
Impersonating a police officer is also a crime.
If someone was impersonating a police officer and tried to arrest someone else, I think that would also be a crime beyond the fact that they're impersonating a police officer.

I wonder which crime receives the greater punishment? I wonder what happens if a real police officer tries to arrest someone, but the person being arrested has reason to believe that it isn't a real police officer and thus tries to escape, I wonder what kind of trouble they'd get in?

Why is real estate considered a good investment?

I always thought that buying your home was considered a good thing because then when you're old it will be paid off, thus reducing your operating expenses in retirement. But reading the letters for this Cary Tennis column, I see that it's considered a good investment as an actual investment - a way to make money.

The more I think about this, the less I see it. Help me out here, tell me what I'm missing.

Let's assume you have a nice paid-off house that you paid off yourself over the years, and then it appreciated as real estate tends to do. So your house is worth more dollars than you paid into it. I understand that much.

But suppose you want to get at some of those dollars? My understanding is that you have two options: borrow against your house, or sell your house.

If you borrow against your house, you have a loan that you have to pay back. You haven't gotten at any new money, you've just borrowed some. This isn't a money-making investment, it's just another loan option that's especially important to pay back lest you lose your house.

If you sell your house, you still have to live somewhere. So you have to either buy or rent somewhere else to live. Your home equity is more dollars than you had before, but this is because real estate appreciates, so housing costs everywhere will have increased comparably. I suppose if you rent after you sell your house, then you can use your house money to pay your rent, but it the money still has to be spent. You have to live somewhere, after all. So you aren't really making money, you're just spending it differently.

I suppose it would work if you expect your housing needs to become smaller in the future. If you buy a big house to raise children in and then downsize after they've launched, you might come out with more money. If you're living somewhere expensive and then move to somewhere cheap, you might come out with more money. If you own property and then move in together with someone else who owns property, then you might come out with more money. But for everyday life where your housing needs remain the same, I don't see how you can actually make money out of it. What am I missing?

Lenscrafters

I bought new glasses from Lenscrafters.

Product quality: excellent - I don't feel like I've compromised at all.

Customer service: excellent - friendly, honest, didn't pressure me to spend more even though I (inadvertently) gave them a few openings to do so, went a wee bit above and beyond.

Product selection: decent - could always be better because there are way more frames in existence than shelf space, but I found a few suitable frames so I can't complain.

Store layout: suboptimal - I find it very difficult to browse, I have to deliberately force myself to look at each frame, there are frames in these drawer things that appear to be showing you their entire contents but you actually have to pull them out.

Price: either the prices are way too high, or my insurance is way too low. People who don't have the same insurance of me have told me that my insurance is good, but the fact of the matter is it doesn't cover the lenses on my prescription, to say nothing of the frames. This is always a dilemma for me. I feel like I should refuse to spend more than my insurance covers so as to manipulate market forces, but the fact that glasses are something that I must wear at all times on my face in order to see keeps winning out, and I end up spending 2x-3x my insurace amount on optimizing appearance and user experience. And then I feel guilty for manipulating market forces in the wrong direction.

But, on a positive note, I can see!

Know what I hate?

I hate when something comes up in the media and I have something to say that the media isn't mentioning, so I blog about it and write any appropriate letters, and then a few months later it comes up in the media again, still without my point included.

Realistically I know my blog has small readership, and realistically I know that my elected representatives and any relevant corporations and newspapers' letters to the editor columns get a lot of letters and they can't change their actions in response to every one.

But it's still very frustrating because whenever an issue resurfaces, I feel like I'm negligent if I don't address it, and I really don't have anything new to say. My blog is repetitive enough without my making a point to harp on every single issue that resurfaces. But my silence might also be misconstrued as apathy, which it isn't.

Sally Hansen Miracle Cure

Of all the many nail strengthening products I've tried in my life, this one works best, no question! I used to have 10 nails of various lengths, all with peels. By trimming off the peeled sections as they grew, I managed 10 short nails, all with peels. By using Sally Hansen No More Peeling and trimming off the peels whenever possible, the best I could manage was 10 short nails, four of which had peels. After using Miracle Cure for about two weeks and trimming off the peels as they grow out, I now have 7 long nails (i.e. past my finger tips) without peels, 1 short nail without peels, and 2 short nails with peels. This is the best my nails have ever been in my life, including the period when I ate meat.

Comparing Ashley with Rebecca Beayni

Helen Henderson's column in today's Toronto Star compares Ashley (the severely disabled girl whose parents are giving her medical treatments to make her small and infertile) with one Rebecca Beayni, who, as a child, had the same diagnosis as Ashley, but is now involved in the community and has a supportive social circle. Without saying so explicity, the article rather implies that "the Ashley treatment" is ill-advised, because if her parents would only do something different, Ashley could end up like Rebecca.

With respect for Ms. Henderson's consistently excellent work, I think this comparison is something of a red herring.. What we know about Ashley has to do entirely with the physical aspects of her treatment. What Ms. Henderson writes about Rebecca has to do entirely with her intellectual, social, and professional life. The two are not incompatible. If Ashley does end up being capable of making the same progress that Rebecca has, "the Ashley treatment" will not hinder her. She will be smaller and infertile, yes, but this does not affect her mental or social capacities. If she ever becomes capable of maintaining a social circle and being involved in the community like Rebecca is, this will not be affected by the presence or absence of her ovaries or by her physical size.

Although it would be interesting to learn what Rebecca thinks of Ashley's treatment...

26

The cool thing about being 26 is that 13 was half a lifetime ago.

Maybe sleeping next to the elephant is impairing our judgement?

The other day, I heard an interview on The Current with a British doctor who's working on developing cheap knock-offs of drugs for developing countries. (It's under Ethical Pharmaceuticals if you want to listen.) What really struck me was how this doctor seemed convinced that drug costs are simply not an issue for patients in developed countries. He thought of it more as something that a hospital administrator would have to worry about. The interviewer noticed this too, and asked him about it. He didn't seem to understand what she meant, so she gave the example of the United States. The doctor said he didn't know much about the United States, but he considered the situation there as a one-off, and clearly thought that drug costs weren't a patient issue in the rest of the developed world. You have your indoor plumbing, you have your electricity, you have your drug coverage.

This makes me wonder if our medical coverage in Canada is really as good as we think it is. In my world, everyone knows how much their drugs cost, even those of us with insurance. Drug costs are most definitely the patient's issue here. This makes me think that maybe our medical coverage isn't actually good at all compared with Europe. Maybe we just think our medical coverage is good because we hear about things like this, and we're glad our is good in comparison. Ultimately though, I don't think that's a fruitful attitude. I think if our health coverage doesn't meet our needs, we should openly feel that it's insufficient and lobby for it to be improved, thus raising the bar for everyone. I also think we should be able to readily compare our health care with the rest of the world, not just the US (and the media should help us get to the point where we can do this.) Just because we're not the worst doesn't mean we're good enough.

Things They Should Research: plastic bags' route to the landfill

With all this talk of banning plastic grocery bags, I'd really like to see a user-centric study of how they end up in the landfill. A lot of the suggestions I've seen for grocery stores' alternatives to plastic bags seems to be based on the assumption that people bring their groceries home, unpack them, and then throw the plastic bags straight into the garbage. However, 100% of the anecdotal evidence I've collected (by asking everyone I've been talking to the last couple of days) indicates that people save their grocery bags and then use them to wrap their garbage or clean up after their pets. The bags do end up in the landfill, but as garbage bags, not as garbage. If we didn't have the plastic bags, we'd still need some kind of plastic bag to wrap our garbage and clean up our pet's waste, and that plastic bag would still need to go into the landfill. I'd really like to see some research or stats on user behaviour to see if these anti-plastic-bag people are way off, or if there's actually a "throw out the plastic bag" contingent out there somewhere.

Little Mosque Part Deux

The second episode of Little Mosque just didn't do anything for me. It didn't entertain me, I didn't laugh, I found it formulaic, and a few times I even muted the TV because the characters were making such fools of themselves. If I had found this show while flipping channels, I would have kept going.

They will get my attention for one more episode because I like what they're trying to do, and I want to give them a chance to do it well. This isn't an ultimatum or anything, I still might look at it, but I don't plan on making a point of watching it if the quality doesn't improve. A Simpsons rerun is more appealing.

Actually, come to think of it, that's why I watched Enterprise too. The Star Trek prequel concept was interesting, and I watched to see how it would be carried out. It was okay - I did make a point of catching up with every episode in reruns - but most episodes I wouldn't watch twice unless I was bored. In comparison, major sitcoms like Seinfeld or MASH I can watch in reruns 5-10 times before I get bored of them.

Things I don't understand

Residents of the Beach(es) were opposed to having an Out of the Cold program in their neighbourhood. They quoted one of their major concerns as "safety."

I really cannot understand that. I simply cannot put myself in that headspace. I mean, I can see how you might feel less safe with homeless people around. I'm sure it makes me sound posh and over-privileged to say so, but I do grok the fact that walking down a street with zero homeless people feels safer than walking down a street with one homeless person, whether or not that feeling is justified.

But the thing is, for the homeless people this is a matter of survival. They are giving them shelter from the cold, in the winter, which has become an actual Canadian winter this week. They are letting them sleep in a building with walls and a roof and heat instead of sleeping on the street in -10 with a windchill of -20.

They aren't putting them in residents' homes or anything, they're putting them in a church that isn't otherwise occupied at that time. Residents can still go home and lock the doors. The only difference is that 12 homeless people will definitely be in their neighbourhood that night, which I'm assuming doesn't usually have a lot of visible homeless people or they wouldn't be complaining.

The Out of the Cold program rescues homeless people from a definite threat to their survival. The worst it presents to the residents is a small potential threat to their safety. Survival is below safety on Maslow's pyramid, and normally that includes in our dealings with others. It's like how you wouldn't talk to a strange man walking down the street, but you would give him the Heimlich manoeuvre or CPR if he needed it.

I can get not being 100% thrilled with this program in your neighbourhood (although there is one in my neighbourhood and it's no problem whatsoever). I can get sort of quietly deciding to yourself to avoid the church on those nights. I can even get quietly grumbling about it to your spouse if you feel the need. What I don't get is going out and complaining about it to the church and the organizers. Even if you don't like it, it's the sort of thing that you just suck it up and recognize that it's for the greater good, no? They're not in your home, they're just in your neighbourhood. Even if you do think homeless people are a threat to your property values, and you do think your property values are more important than not freezing to death, why would you want to announce this to the world?

Things Blogger Should Invent: first-time only word verification

Blogger should have an option where users with blogger accounts are asked for word verification only the first time they post a comment on any given blog. Then Blogger takes that word verification to mean "Yes, this is a real person," and that user doesn't have to verify any more. That would still deter the spammers, because I doubt they want to go through in person and verify at each blog, but it would make things easier for regular commenters.

Rimmel is better than Maybelline, pass it on

I've been using Rimmel mascara for years, ever since my mother read somewhere that it's on par with department store brands. However, this time around, I couldn't find the kind of Rimmel I wanted in waterproof. Then, last weekend, I saw an article in the Globe and Mail about the best cheap beauty products, and they picked Maybelline Great Lash mascara, mentioning in passing that many professional makeup artists use it. I remembered reading that factoid about professional makeup artists somewhere else before, so I decided to give Maybelline a try.

It's not that great. I mean, it's perfectly effective, it coats my lashes in black and makes them look somewhat longer and thicker, and the waterproof version doesn't run during the course of a normal day, but Rimmel does all that better, and for only a couple of dollars more.

Parents Today!

A letter in today's Globe and Mail in response to Saturday's Kids Today article. I can't seem to find it online, so I'm going to type it out here. Any typoes are my own. The original can be found on page A16 of the Jan. 15, 2007 Globe and Mail under the headline "Licence to plead"

Re Flirting With Disaster (Jan 13): Are parents of adult off-spring not exacerbating their own problems by allowing the kids to move home (or never move out) in the first place?
How does a "child" live at home if the parents don't want him to be ther? And then have the nerve to complain about it?
I have adult children who suffer from some of the attitudes written about in Alexandra Shim's Article. Their apartments look like dorm rooms and they have no interest in finding a "real" job, despite having university degrees. They still dress like skateboarders, party like co-eds, and shake their heads in disbelief when a friend gets married or buys a house or condo. But they pay their own rent and buy their own food. They know that the only way they can live at home, rent free, is if they are in school. And that offer only stands until age 30.
Parents: Just say no! Decide what is best for you and your family and stick with it.
COLLEEN COOKE, Brockville, Ont.

I could deconstruct this, but I'd just be repeating stuff I've said before. Instead, I'd just like to draw attention to the sections I've bolded. We're working in reverse order because it flows more smoothly that way.

1. "They're paying their own rent and food", but "they have no interest in finding a 'real' job". If their job allows them to pay their own rent and food, it sounds "real" enough to me!

2. "Their apartments look like dorm rooms" is presented as an "attitude" from which they "suffer". This is a problem why? "Dorm room" is a bit subjective, but I'm taking it to mean a cheaply-furnished space that looks like it's inhabited by a young adult. What would you have their apartments look like instead? Given that you feel the need to explicitly state that they pay for their own rent and food, I'm inferring that they're not rolling in money. So isn't using cheap furniture the responsible thing to do when you have no money?

/me puts on Crotchety Gramma Hat

Parents Today! When will they learn to stop being so damn unappreciative? Why, in my day, parents were happy that their kids had a job, any job that could support them, without fussing about whether it's a "real" job that they can show off to all their little parent friends! In my day, if parents weren't happy with the furniture their kids could afford with their hard-earned paycheques, they either showed some initiative and bought them some better furniture as a gift, or they kept their damn mouths shut!

/me takes off Cortchety Gramma Hat

Seriously though, one thing I find really disturbing about all this is all these parents who aren't giving their kids any credit for their own life decisions. This lady is taking all the credit for the elements of her kids' lives that she approves of, and getting all judgeosaurus on their asses for the elements she thinks are suboptimal. This makes me wonder if, somewhere out there, my parents are taking all the credit for my life, when in reality everything good I achieved by going against their wishes (studying translation) or behind their back (mi cielito).