Things someone with magical powers Should Invent

1. A way to block advertising for stuff you already know about. I know Head & Shoulder makes dandruff shampoo, I know I shouldn't drink and drive, I know about my OHS rights. Showing me those ads doesn't do anything but annoy me.

2. Whenever you go to interact with someone, you get some kind of automatic brain dump informing you of everything that both of you know and everything that both of you agree on. So if the best metaphor is iść/chodzić, I'll know whether I can use that or whether I have to come up with something else. Or if the person asking me where I'm from lives a block away from where I grew up, I can say "The brown house with the funny roof" instead of "Canada".

Dear Google, please make a workaround for the POPLINE problem

Dear Google:

The US government is fucking up academic databases. You are perfectly positioned to fix this.

You are a search engine whose mandate is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful. This is information that is being made inaccessible because of ineffective search.

I know it's not as simple as indexing it and posting it, but you have money, you have a team of geniuses, and you're important enough to the world that you're immune to political interference.

You need to do penance for China. Why not this to start?

Things They Should Invent: torch extinguishing as an olympic sport

I'm having so much fun with this olympic torch extinguishing thing that I've decided it should be an olympic event

The rules are simple: every time the torch gets extinguished, the person who extinguishes the torch gets a point for their country.

Countries don't field their own torch extinguishing teams, instead anyone in the world can play. There's no official time and place, anywhere the torch happens to be is fair game.

There's some kind of points handicap for the country where the torch is located at any given time, to mitigate any home field advantage.

The IOC is required to to increase security around the torch au fur et a mesure que it is extinguished. Security people aren't allowed to extinguish the torch, and inside cooperation from security people is seen as just as unsporting as steroid use.

At the end of the olympics, the country with the most points wins. It's that simple!

Boarded up houses

Whenever they show pictures of foreclosed houses in the states, they're always boarded up. Why are they boarded up? Who does the boarding up? Does the bank do it? If I was kicked out of my home I certainly wouldn't make the effort to board it up (plus I probably couldn't afford boards).

Essure leads to surreality

I just found out about Essure (obviously I need to spend more time in CF communities since this was the first I'd heard of it) so I was doing some googling about it. In my travels, I came upon a blog where someone had seen a TV commercial for Essure and was outraged that it was portraying a family with something like children. "Wow," I thought, "This is one of the most militant radical childfree people I've ever seen! OK, so you don't like children, but why get so upset about having to see them in an Essure ad? If you're that upset about children, you should be glad they're promoting Essure to people who have children, so they won't have more." Then I read on in their comments, and realized they aren't militant radical childfree, they're militant radical breeders who were upset that OMG poor innocent children are being used in an ad for a big evil sterilization procedure! Just goes to prove Eddie's circle theory. (And kind of makes me want to invent a sterilization procedure that involves sacrificing your existing children into a volcano, just so something will exist that's worthy of this dude's outrage.)

Then later on I was talking to my friend about how I was very excited to have learned about a new sterilization option. "Oh, it's so cool!" I was saying, "they stick something up your vagina and through your cervix into your uterus. Then they put these little bits of metal in your fallopian tubes, and they somehow irritate your fallopian tubes and cause permanent scarring! Isn't that great?" If you take that out of context, it might possibly be the weirdest thing I've ever said in my life.

Half-formed idea: sterilization on demand to ease the burden on the health care system

The vast majority of the times I've gone to the doctor in my adult life have been to keep up my birth control pills. The vast majority of the prescriptions I've had filled in my adult life have been for birth control pills. The vast majority of claims I've submitted to my insurance have been for birth control pills. If I could have gotten sterilized on demand when I first became sexually active, my entire burden on the health care system in my adult life would probably be about 25% of what it has been so far. (More like 10% if it weren't for Gardasil, which is pricy and required four appointments).

We know that 10 million Canadians use prescription contraception. What would the burden on the health care system be like if all those who never wanted to have children (ever or again) got sterilized?

The first page of Google results rather vaguely suggests that just under 20% of the population is childfree. Given that some childfree people are already sterilized, and given that some childed people might want to be sterilized but not be able to (perhaps because they're young, perhaps because they only have one child, etc.) let's work with the assumption that 10% of the people using birth control would like to be sterilized. So that's 1 million people who would like to be sterilized. So let's sterilize them. Snip, snip. Now what happens to the health care system?

I use up one standard annual appointment slot a year for my birth control needs. If we assume that everyone has simple birth control needs and only needs one appointment a year (a very low estimate, since some methods require 4 appointments a year and some people have to try a number of different methods before they find the right one) that would open up one million appointments across the country. The first page of google results gives numbers between 2.4 million and 5 million for Canadians that don't have a family doctor. But in any case, one million free appointment slots would make a significant dent!

Other factors that I have been unable to quantify:

- How many free doctor appointment slots = room in the doctor's practice for a new patient?

- Sometimes unwanted pregnancy occurs, even with birth control. Getting an abortion surely takes up more medical resources than simply maintaining contraception, and carrying the baby to term anyway would take up even more, plus produce a whole nother human being who is also going to need medical resources.

- A lot of people, if they don't need to go to the doctor for their birth control every year, aren't going to get a pap smear every year. Come on, we all know it's true. How would this affect overall public health? And how would it be affected by the introduction of Gardasil, once enough of the population has been innoculated to wipe out the major strains of HPV?

- Would the reduction in the number of people taking hormonal contraception (which can increase blood pressure) have any appreciable impact on the instances of heart disease in the general population?

- With the baby boomers, the issue of contraception has recently become/is about to become moot for a huge chunk of the population. Would that make the impact of sterilization on demand negilgible? What would the impact have been if it were available as the baby boomers were starting to become sexually active? (And as an aside, is the fact that this huge chunk of the population no longer requires contraception going to have an impact on the sexual health of the overall population? I once heard the boomers described as the generation that had the drinking age (in the US) lowered to 18 so they could drink when they were in college, then had it raised to 21 so their kids couldn't. Are they going to do the same thing with birth control now that they no longer need it? Although it might be too late for that now anyway - I'm the child of boomers who started their family relatively late, and I'm far too old for my parents to be interfering in my contraception.)

OMG!

Drop everything and go look at the baby polar bears now!!!!!!!!!

Elizabeth Patterson is not Elizabeth Bennet

I blogged previously about how Elizabeth and Anthony in FBOFW do not make a convincing couple.

It occurred to me today that what Lynn Johnston is probably trying to do is set up a Jane Austen-style marriage-as-happy-ending sort of thing.

Now Anthony actually would make a good Jane Austen happy ending bridegroom. He's kind and decent, fulfills his responsibilities, gets along well with Elizabeth. He's make a perfect match for an Austen heroine. But the problem is that Jane Austen's heroines need to get married. Austen is very careful to set up situations with entails etc. that leave her heroines in a situation where marriage is the only thing that will allow them to continue living in the manner to which they were accustomed. So for them, a kind decent man who fulfills his responsibilities and wants to marry them is a total score. It's like if any of us thought ourselves unemployable, then suddenly landed a job for life that pays enough and has decent benefits and involves work we don't entirely mind doing.

But FBOFW is set in Canada in the 21st century. Elizabeth Patterson has no special need to be married in and of itself; marriage only makes sense for her if she wants to spend her life with a particular person. It's like if you were already independently wealthy and didn't need to work, you wouldn't take a job just because the compensation was decent and you didn't entirely mind the work. It would need to be valuable or fascinating or mad crazy fun work that you actively enjoy.

Elizabeth Bennet needed to get married so the fact that a man was kind, decent and responsible was reason enough to marry him. Elizabeth Patterson does not need to get married, so we need to be shown, on-"camera", why this is the right choice for them.

Strange as it seems my musical dreams are rather bad

Lately I've been having recurring bad dreams about having to practise music. It's different music every time - sometimes I'm playing clarinet in the high school band, sometimes it's piano, sometimes it's something I've never done publicly IRL like singing or playing guitar. I can't quite classify them as nightmares because they aren't terrifying, it isn't the "OMG exam and I haven't studied!" dream, it's just that I'm obligated to practise because other people are depending on me to be able to play competently, and it's this huge burdensome chore. It's not even the standard "Aww man, another thing on my to-do list!" ennui that everyone gets once in a while, it's this massive burden, disproportionate to what it ever was in real life. It's like I never had any choice about getting involved in the musical performance thing that's requiring all this practising, but I can't quit and people are depending on me to deliver a good performance just like people depend on me to deliver good translations.

I wonder what this all means?

Things They Should Invent: a study of how people on the receiving end of "I'm sorry" process the statement

Nan Connolly said I erred in saying women should decline additional assignments when they were already swamped at work by telling their co-worker, "I'm sorry. I'm on deadline."

"Too many times women say they are sorry," she wrote. "People bump into women in airports and they, the women, apologize. I see this all the time, everywhere. Someone out of your department waylaying you for additional work should not be told you are sorry not to do it."

She continued ... "I really think women give up some authority by frequently apologizing."

I've heard this idea before, that you shouldn't apologize if you haven't done anything wrong strictly speaking. I've heard various reasons given for this - that it makes it look like it's your fault, or it makes you look weak, or something like that.

But does anyone actually think this when someone utters the words "I'm sorry" to them?

I come from the traditional Canadian school of apologizing when someone steps on your foot. When I say "sorry" here, I don't really mean that I'm sorry, or that I accept blame, or anything. What I actually mean is "I am acknowledging the occurrence and now let's just get on with life." When I barge into a co-worker's cube with a question and say "Sorry to bother you," I'm not actually sorry. What I actually mean is "I have given thought to the fact that I might be bothering you, and this is important enough that I'm bothering you anyway." When they try to give me more work and I say "I'm sorry, I simply do not have room for any more work," I really mean "I do understand that this needs to be done, and I'm refusing because it's impossible, not just because I have the right to refuse overtime." In all cases, my key message is "It is not my intention to be an asshole."

And that's how I process a "sorry" when I hear it too. I process it as "It is not my intention to be an asshole," so I then assume goodwill on the part of the other party. It means they aren't just being cocky and self-absorbed, they have given some thought to the fact that they're inconveniencing me.

So is there anyone who gets a different message when they hear "sorry"? And if so, are there demographic patterns?

In Re: Lukiwski

Sixteen years ago, I was homophobic. Disgustingly, shamefully so. If you've lost all respect for me, I don't blame you.

Today, I am not homophobic. My homophobia was coming from a position of ignorance. The more I learned, the less homophobic I became.

I am very fortunate in that the world has been kind and generous enough to forgive me my stupidity and take me as the person I am today.

I would be a hypocrite if I did not suggest that Tom Lukiwki should be given the same consideration.

Soldiers. With guns. In our cities.

This is a Liberal attack ad from the 2004 election. (Note: Just ignore the link at the beginning. I have no idea who it is and haven't even visited it, it's just the only copy I could find on youtube.)



This is a brief overview of the fallout. You can find a bunch more by googling "soldiers with guns in our cities".

Here's something that happened in August 2005.

Slinger writes about wanting reassurance that he can walk around through life normally without being tased. I want the same reassurance that I can walk around through life normally without being beaten up by soldiers.

I know the main focus in this story should really be the homeless guy who was killed, but I'm finding myself far more interested in Valerie Valen. As socially unacceptable as it is to say, I've never felt particularly safe around soldiers, and I feel even less safe the more I learn about military training. People often try to reassure me about this, pointing out that I'm a civilian so I'm the kind of person soldiers are trained to protect. And if it's a sort of quiet, private conversation that isn't going to be repeated with someone to whom I'm close enough that we can get politically incorrect, my interlocutor might point out that I'm also female and white and clearly Canadian-born and don't look like I could possibly present any sort of threat to anyone. I'm basically as close as you can get without being a child or a puppy to being the poster child for everything military brainwashing training has them protecting on the home front.

But so is Valerie Valen. Ms. Valen has every quality that anyone has ever completed the sentence "You don't need to be afraid of soldiers because you're ________" with.

So all I can conclude is that soldiers will beat me up if I ever try to be a good citizen in a way that is inconvenient to them.

Dear Canadian Forces: Do you want me to feel safe about your soldiers being in my city? What are you going to do about it?

Half-mast

Half-masting the flag on Remembrance Day only is like going to church on xmas and easter only.
Half-masting the flag as needed every time there's a significant death is like humbly praying to your god every time you genuinely feel the need for guidance.

Half-masting on Remembrance Day only is like buying your partner a dozen red roses on Valentine's Day and never doing anything romantic for them the rest of the year.
Half-masting as needed is like buying your partner a bouquet of these really cool-looking blue flowers you saw, just because you were thinking today at work how wonderful it is to have such an awesome partner.

Half-masting on Remembrance Day only is like calling your mother because it's Mother's Day.
Half-masting as needed is like calling your mother because you thought she'd enjoy your story about the funny thing that happened on the way home from work.

Half-masting on Remembrance Day only is like buying your friend a gift certificate to Indigo for their birthday.
Half-masting as needed is like noticing when your friend mentions "Oh, there was this book I had as a kid that I really liked, I forget what it was called but there were blue people in it, and a monkey and a dog," then googling madly and asking reference librarians and finally finding the title and going through three ebay bidding wars to get it for them for their birthday.

Half-masting on Remembrance Day only is like telling your kid you're proud of them on their graduation.
Half-masting as needed is like telling your kid you're proud of them when you caught them doing something innocuous yet surprisingly mature when they didn't know you were watching.

Half-masting on Remembrance Day only will not make it more meaningful; quite the contrary. Removing all thought from something, making it nothing more than a clockwork ritual, can only take away from its meaning.

So how Aspie am I?

Your neurodiversity (Aspie) score: 105 of 200
Your neurotypical (non-autistic) score: 96 of 200
You seem to have both Aspie (neurodiversity) and neurotypical traits



Asperger/HFA/PDD: 127 You very likely will be able to receive the diagnosis

Social phobia: 121 You will probably be able to receive the diagnosis

OCD: 82 This isn't a primary diagnosis you should seek

ADD/ADHD (Attention Deficit Disorder): 76 This isn't a primary diagnosis you should seek

Dyslexia: 48 This isn't a primary diagnosis you should seek

Quiz is here

I do wish they elaborated further on the words on the corners of the octagon though. "Hunting" is a bit WTF.

What Google should do for its next April Fool's joke

Google's April Fool's joke next year should be to announce that they've reviewed their core policies, and their mission statement is now Be Evil.

If you've never seen an elephant ski then you've never been on acid

Everyone who cares has already seen these, but I just feel the need to squee about this one because they make lego elephants1 There's such thing as lego elephants!

So how much power does Nelly Furtado's microphone use?

Nelly Furtado did a concert in Nathan Phillips Square to mark Earth Hour. It was described as an acoustic candlelight concert. But the picture in the paper shows her holding a microphone, which means there was also some sort of PA/amp/speaker system.

Now from a performance perspective this is eminently reasonable. I don't think you could ask even an opera singer or a musical theatre performer to handle an outdoor performance to a crowd of 10,000 on lung power alone. But how much electricity did this require, and was it worth it?

Happy thoughts

I'm not into the spiritual aspect of yoga, I'm just in it for the stretching. (I know, I know, white people like yoga, but so do my tendons.) Perhaps this is hypocritical, but I'm hoping this is mitigated by the fact that I'm doing it quietly in the privacy of my own home without making any spiritual claims. I doubt even the Vatican would mind if people spent some time going sit-stand-kneel-stand-sit in the privacy of their own homes. At any rate, my point is that when the yoga lady on TV is talking about the spiritual aspects, I'm usually off googling something, waiting for the stretching to start.

But today something she said piqued my interest. I don't have an exact quote because I was only half listening, but she said something to the effect that if you find yourself thinking bad thoughts you should replace them with good thoughts, in order to achieve a state of bliss. And apparently in yoga, pushing away bad thoughts and thinking good thoughts and achieving bliss are all a good thing spiritually.

Now this is interesting to me, because I've been deliberately trying to do this for the past few months. I'm not doing this for any grand spiritual reason, I'm just doing it because it makes my life easier. It was the complete opposite of a diligent virtuous New Year's resolution to buckle down and start living life perfectly - it was a resolution to practically embrace my flaws and in fact live them even more enthusiastically, not even trying to do stuff I find hard. It was an anti-resolution specifically designed to fly in the face of what resolutions usually do. So I was very surprised to see something similar as part of a legitimate religious/spiritual thing.

The thing is though, as I've been aggressively pushing away my bad thoughts, Catholic guilt and Protestant work ethic have been teaming up to make me feel guilty for doing so. (It's amazing what you can do if you put aside your historical differences and work together!) Most of my bad thoughts are the result of bona fide personal failings, so I feel like by pushing them away I'm shirking the deserved punishment for my failings. I fucked that thing up and I should know better so I should be agonizing over it and replaying the most cringe-worthy moments in my head, not thinking about the wonders of the human tongue or laughing at the latest thing on YouTube.

So I was thinking about this and googling around it, and I found that some people actually consider this to be a xian principle too. They tend to cite Romans 12:21, which says "Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good." Now to me this says "Do good things instead of bad things" and if you google neutrally for interpretations of the verse the general consensus agrees with my interpretation, but I did find a number of different sources citing this verse as evidence that when you find yourself thinking bad thoughts you should think good thoughts instead. So this suggests that somewhere out there, there are xians who would applaud me for rejecting my guilt in favour of happier thoughts.

Of course, I think what the ancient yogis (or St. Paul for that matter) had in mind was that I should use the sheer strength of my mental discipline to push the bad thoughts out of my mind and meditate on the beauty of the lily or something. I don't know if they would quite approve of my technique of eating white chocolate and dancing around the apartment singing along to Nugget (warning: shitloads of swear words) at the top of my lungs.

How to fake Earth Hour

Set up candles so that you're between the candle and the window. Don't turn on any lights that are closer to the window than the candle is. Then any shadows thrown on your windows and visible to the outside world will be cast by candlelight, and anyone who's snooping will think that you're just going about life by candlelight. You can then use your computer with impunity, as long as the screen doesn't face the window.

That said, I didn't want to be one of those assholes like in the Globe and Mail comments but I didn't want to be bullied into doing Earth Hour either. So I closed the blinds (which I normally do for privacy after dark anyway), turned out the lights (which I normally do after dark when I don't need them anyway, not out of environmentalism or thriftiness but because it's better for my circadian rhythms), set up my decoy candles, and went about doing the task I was dreading most of all the tasks on my to-do list. Then at least there was some element of sacrifice, although not environmental. (But ultimately, getting that task out of the way contributed more to my overall fulfillment of all my current responsibilities than reading by candlelight for an hour would have. It didn't contribute to the greater good of humanity, but I don't think anything on my to-do list at the moment does. Overall, I probably contribute most to humanity by keeping out of its way.)

But looking out the window, everything looked the same as ever. Some lights were on, some lights were off. There were one or two areas that might possibly have been darker than usual (I'm not sure exactly, I don't normally pay that much attention to how many lights are on) but if I hadn't known something was going on I wouldn't have thought "Wow, it's really dark over there." So nobody would have noticed if I'd gone about life normally anyway, which is reassuring.

Actually, another problem with Earth Hour is that it's impossible to invisibly opt out, but if you do participate it looks exactly the same as if you happen to not be home at the time.

The Toronto Star updated during Earth Hour, which seemed inappropriate. Since they're the primary proponent, they shouldn't really give people reasons to be going on the internet during Earth Hour, should they? I do like what google.ca did though - they made their page black instead of white! It doesn't actually save monitor energy, but I have to give them credit for a very visible and effective way of raising awareness, even though I don't agree with what they were raising awareness for.

Here's a proposal for next time: instead of everyone turn off their lights for an hour, how about everyone take their car off the road for a given hour? Let's see which gets more participants. Let's see which has greater effect.