Weirdest corelation ever?

I'm not 100% certain, but I think my acne has worsened since I started taking 1000 IU Vitamin D. So I'm going to cut it out for a bit and see what happens.

Al Gore MUST run for president!

Do I want Al Gore to be president? I don't give a monkey's. Do I think he's make a good president? Haven't given it a moment's thought.

No, I just want him to run for president so I can see how his opponents would give negative spin to the winner of a fucking Nobel Peace Prize! I've done enough work on communications and speechwriting and PR that I can usually anticipate how something will be spun, but this one I can't work out at all!

Hopefully watching the returns isn't an essential part of my good luck ritual

I voted, with full good luck rituals, and I did see a beautiful doggie at the polling station so that's a good sign. But my prospective strep throat seems to have turned into a head cold, so instead of watching the election I'm going to take Nyquill and go straight to sleep. This will be the first time in my adult life I haven't watched the results come in - I hope it won't hurt the outcome.

(You may scoff at my superstition, but there has been 100% correlation between successfully completing my rituals/seeing a doggie/watching the results and favourable election outcomes).

What 2003 would have looked like under MMP

One more link to DemocraticSPACE:

What the 2003 election would have looked like under MMP (you have to scroll down a bit).

What actually happened in 2003.

I've been taking it easy lately because my body is trying to decide whether or not I'm about to get strep throat. More later when the idea of writing down the thoughts in my brain becomes more appealing than the idea of drinking juice and sleeping.

For if you have the choice to vote in more than one riding

Democratic SPACE has some information on in which ridings your vote might be more influential

Election Roundup

Before I forget, here's a repost of my election stuff. This is from the last federal campaign, but it applies to the current Ontario election. (This might be the provincial election where I can reuse these!)

How to vote
Where to vote
How to vote strategically.

Update, because some of the strategic voting links have moved:

Election Prediction Project is here
Hill Knowlton predictor is here
DemocraticSPACE's strategic voting guide is here (it isn't up yet, but they say it's going up today.

I really shouldn't read the G&M comments page

Apparently abortion wait times in Ottawa are six weeks.

So how do we fix this?

They say we're complacent about our abortion rights. I'm not sure if that's the case. I think it's just that, like with anything, we tend to assume the situation's the same unless given further information. I know about the Morgentaler clinic, I have a family doctor, I could go to the Bay Centre or Planned Parenthood or Hassle-Free, and if all else fails Telehealth could probably refer me. I have a plan and a series of backup plans, my elected representatives are all pro-choice, so what else would they have me do? I don't think having fully processed all available information and made an action plan = being complacent. Now I know that there's waiting times, so now I start following up after I miss one period (which I never actually have) instead of waiting to see if I miss the second. But aside from that, what?

They also say people are hesitant to speak out because of the stigma of having an abortion. I'm totally willing to represent as a potential abortion patient, but I don't know how much that would count since I'm not pregnant and not in Ottawa. But yeah, because people are afraid to speak out, I'm going to out myself here: Until I reach menopause or get a tubal, I consider myself a potential abortion patient. I'm just not sure what I'm meant to do with that.

Unfortunately, I made the mistake of reading the comments page. I don't recommend it. It's full of assholes and will just make your blood pressure go up. But I do have two productive comments arising from all those assholes (in addition to all my usual comments, which we'll take as read because they are in the archives and in everything I've said in my life.)

1. A lot of people in the comments seem to take great personal offence that anyone would ever get an abortion. I'm not sure why. However, for those types of people, I'm offering you a fabulous once in a lifetime opportunity. You, yes you, can stop me from ever getting an abortion! All you have to do is get me a tubal ligation! Just one successful tubal, and I can promise you I will never get an abortion ever in my life! The tricky part: I'm 26, never married, no children, never been pregnant. Because botched surgery can result in incontinence, I require an experienced surgeon in the top quintile who has never once performed an operation that resulted in incontinence. Hook me up, and you'll have removed one person from the pool of people who might possibly have abortions.

2. If you think about it, it's mind-boggling how many times you ovulate in your lifetime. Do the math - it's close to 500 times! I, personally, have been through nearly 200 menstrual cycles. Two hundred! That's 200 times I have successfully avoided getting pregnant. So if I found I needed to have an abortion next time around, that would be one abortion I did have, and 200 abortions I didn't have. People should really do this math before condescendingly assuming that people who need abortions don't know how to prevent pregnancy. I'm sure if you do the math, you'll find an astounding success rate in almost everyyone in the world.

Upgefu(c)kt

Of my own initiative, I started using the word upgefukt about 10 years ago. However, I'm not the only person in the universe who has come up with this revolutionary linguistic innovation, and it seems the prevailing spelling is upgefuckt (1380 google hits, compared with 58 for upgefukt).

The advantage of upgefuckt is it uses the actual root of the verb, and more strictly follow German past participle formation rules. The disadvantage is that if you pronounce it in German, it comes out "upgefutskt".

So should I go with prevailing usage and start spelling it with a C?

Breast self-exams

They recently did a study that found that breast cancer survival rates are the same for women who do self-exams and women who don't.

I found it really weird that they were focusing solely on survival rates. What about quality of life issues? Lumpectomy vs. masectomy? Need for chemotherapy? Duration of treatment and recovery period? Ability to resume one's normal lifestyle vs. not ever being able to get back to the exact same quality of life?

I don't know much about cancer treatment, so I can't even begin to guess at the answers. But if, for example, doing a self-exam means catching a lump early enough that you can get a lump early enough that you can get a lumpectomy and don't need chemo rather than a masectomy with chemo, I'd say it's still worthwhile, even if there is a higher risk of false alarms. All survival is not created equal.

Referendum

I've noticed two things lately:

1. I keep being innundated with referendum ads. There are large ads in every newspaper I look at, those clever "Make sure you understand the question" ads are on whenever I watch TV, I'm getting mailings like every other day, my MP is talking about it - the referendum is everywhere!

2. In the newspaper and the blogosphere, I keep hearing "OMG, NO ONE knows ANYTHING about this referendum! We need more public awareness!"

I think I've become completely incapable of judging what the average person does or does not know.

This Is My Country, What's Yours? A Literary Atlas of Canada by Noah Richler

This is one of those "read this to feel smart" books. It's a literary psychogeography of Canada, which is kind of WHOOSH ***/me swishes hand about a foot over head*** but I managed to follow it well enough anyway. It was easier to follow when the author was talking about works of literature or places that I was familiar with, but I didn't get lost in other parts of the book. Interestingly, people kept striking up conversations with me when I was reading this book in public, which has only ever happened with Harry Potter and Life of Pi.

The author starts with the idea of Canada as Nowhere. It's an old-fashioned idea from back when we were still functionally a colony - the wilds of Canada were the kind of place that people would be banished to - but it does appeal to me. Our leaders are so obsessed with making Canada a significant global power and making Toronto a world-class city, but I like the idea of being nowhere and being globally irrelevant, being thought of as just a few million people in this vast wild wasteland. (Well, I like the idea as long as it doesn't affect our performing arts scene so badly that it's no longer reasonable to say "Oh, I'll just wait for that play/opera/tour/whatever to come to Toronto.") I like the idea that people might sometimes forget about our existence, only to be reminded with things like "Well, you could always go to Canada to marry your same-sex partner." Like the kid in high school who would never be part of the cool crowd, but it doesn't matter because they've got their own life and hobbies and friends outside of school.

The other interesting idea the author raised is The City (as in all cities, I'm not getting all San Francisco on you) as a distinct society.

In the city, [borders] lose significance. The city, as it develops, becomes bigger and more complex than any of its parts. Consensus falls away and difference becomes the lifeblood of a place where a multitude of stories compete for recongition and dispute and build on what has been said before. The City is a "distinct society" because communities live on top of and in between one another and no person is any one thing for all of the time. borders do not matter any more because the living is diffuse. The city has its own rules, its own accords. It is a generic place but also multiplicitous.

I like this because it articulated something I've had in mind but haven't been able to articulate. When you live in a city, where you're from (both geographically and socially) can be allowed to become as irrelevant as you want it to be. Which is something I find appealing. In media/literature you sometimes come across the idea that a young person is abandoning "who they are" when they decide to live in a way that's different from their family. (I've seen this most recently seen this as a criticism of Didi in The Riches, which doesn't make sense as something to criticize her about but that's a whole nother post.) Whenever I encounter this idea, I always think it's unfair, because you, not your background, should get to define "who you are". The distinct society that is urban life allows us to do that.

The real problem with Britney Spears at the MTV awards

I know this is old news, but I'm just really surprised that no one has mentioned it yet, so I'm bringing it up myself.

A bunch of people got all judgey on Britney Spears for her how she looked at the MTV awards. (I'm not talking about her performance here, just her appearance.) Then a bunch of other people jumped down their throats for criticizing a woman who has had two babies in the past 2-3 (?) years for having a less than perfectly flat tummy. I once again saw this mentioned in passing, and I still haven't seen anyone bring up the real problem.

The real problem is that her costume was poorly designed and unflattering. Any decent costume designer/stylist should have been able to make her look better.

If the top of her bottoms was about halfway between where it was on that costume and her navel, and the legs were more high-cut rather than straight across, she would have looked far better. If she were dressed the same as her backup dancers, she would have looked great. But the costume she was wearing was not flattering to her body, which is a failure on the part of whomever was dressing her. I can look far better than that using what's in my own closet, and I've probably got 20 lbs. on her and no aesthetic talent. Professionals should be able to do even better than I can.

The real reason why Burma changed its name to Myanmar

There's some serious shit going down in Burma/Myanmar right now (it's a whole political thing about which name to use and different media sources use different names and I haven't decided yet what I should do personally). Human rights struggle, oppressive regimes, social and political upheaval, oppression, rebellion, people being killed - it's very hardcore and serious and important and complex and I should be reading and learning everything about it I can in order to be a fully-informed citizen of the world.

But all I can think of is Graham Chapman, dressed as a frumpy housewife, corpsing himself ("I panicked").

I think that's why they changed their name. It's hard to be taken seriously with that image in mind.

A crappy joke

Two flies are having a fight. One says "EAT SHIT!" The other says "Why, thank you, don't mind if I do!"

Blasts from the past

If you used to read Baby-Sitters Club, you might enjoy BSC Headquarters.

If you used to read Sweet Valley High, you might enjoy The Dairi Burger.

Question for anyone watching the Simpsons right now

What's tha music playing when Homer's in the fast food restaurant?

Information

Having a connectivity scare always makes me think about the place of the internet in my life, and I realized that I feel absolutely entitled to any information I might possibly need being at my fingertips.

Who's that actor and what else have I seen him in? What's up with that 0.1g of trans fat in my cheese? At what time will it start getting humid today? What's up with those cranes at or near Sunnybrook? What is salsa americana and how does it differ from what these Spanish-speaking people on TV define as regular salsa? And is anyone having the same problem with their computer that I'm having? I fully expect to be able to find out all of these things within seconds, in one google and on the first page of results. And if I can't, something's wrong.

Fifteen years ago, this would have been a ridiculous expectation. Now, I can't imagine living any other way.

I wonder if 15 years from now I'll be looking back on today and marvelling at how on earth I managed to get by with so little information.

Pissed off at Rogers

I got a voicemail from Rogers today alleging that my computer was launching a DOS attack, so they disabled my internet connection. I'm very pissed off at how this was handled though. First, I had to wait half an hour just to speak with a human being - while constantly being told by a recording that I should go online to their technical support website (Gee, I'd love to!)

Then I talked to a guy and he escalated me to a security guy, who told me that I had a virus. But he couldn't give me any information on what kind of virus it apparently was, or what IP address it was apparently attacking (he gave me the last three octets, which is meaningless), or what port it was apparently attacking, or even agree on what time this alleged attack occurred. So how am I supposed to fix it? His only suggestions, after a very condescending lecture on what exatly constitutes a DOS attack, were to format the drive and reinstall windows, or to call a technican (by which he meant a futureshop-type technician, which is on par with my own technical skills if I'm allowed to have Google) In the meantime I'd run a full virus scan and ad-aware, and they both found nothing. Which is unsurprising because I run a full virus scan (and update defs) on a daily basis and do the same for ad-aware on a weekly basis. So I told the guy I'd bet him $10,000 that there was no virus on my computer, and he said he'd reconnect my connection, but if the DOS attack happened again my account would be suspended for a week. Without any warning or further information. So I said fine. This was at 7:30.

By 9:00, my account still hadn't been reactivated. So I called again, waited again, got another tech who went through the EXACT SAME SCRIPT! And then told me that the previou tech hadn't said he's reconnect me when he did say so explicitly! And then lectured me extensively about having malware on my computer! So dude FINALLY agreed to reconnecct, reread me the whole disclaimer thing again, and told me to unplug my modem for 10-15 minutes(!) and then I'd be reconnected.

Which I was. And now I'm running TrendMicro Housecall just to double check things. But I really resent how there is no leeway in this process for an honest mistake. The whole thing is based on the assumption that I'm either malicious or incompetent. If I could have specific information about the IP address being attacked or the port or the exact time of the attack, I could track what my computer was doing at the time. But no, instead they don't even give me the leeway to make a reasonable diagnosis and talk to me condescendingly. I have impeccable technological hygiene, I have the tech knowledge to fix whatever the problem is, but I just don't know offhand. But these security guys are working from a script and can't help me diagnose. And meanwhile, every test I know how to run, all my logs, everything I can google up, shows that my computer is not doing anything wrong. It's behaving the same as it has for the past 2 years, I can identify every single process that's currently running, and I have no sign whatsoever of what this alleged problem is. But if this alleged incident reoccurs again, they'll cut me off for a week without even telling me. I'm not happy.

Edited to add an analogy:

If I had some problem that was on Roger's end and they couldn't resolve it on the first try, it would be unreasonable for me to demand a week's free service. The most reasonable way to troubleshoot an unknown problem does involve some trial and error, and as a user I have to accept that. Now, if my computer does start launching a DOS attack, I'm perfectly fine with them cutting me off mid-attack. But the most reasonable way for me to troubleshoot an unknown problem would be to eliminate all processes and then reconnect them one by one. So, to successfully identify and resolve the problem, the attack would have to be relaunched. What should happen then is they disconnect me and call me automatically to inform me of the attack, then I say "Okay, I've just identified what's causing it, I'll eliminate that." Then they reconnect me and everything's fine. To arbitrarily disconnect me for a week if the attack reoccurs just once is completely counter to good troubleshooting principles. A three strikes rule, with notification (including specific time and duration) of each offence would be far more appropriate.

Post examples of invisible letters here!

A convergence of recent thoughts:

We do, in fact, have invisible letters in the English language.

The F in lieutenant (non-US pronunciation).
The R in colonel.
The F in draught. Or cough.

I've also noticed that the Pythons sometimes pronounce "idea" as "idear", which would be an invisible R. But I don't know whether this is a legitimate dialect or a failed attempt at an accent.

Can you think of any more examples of invisible letters?