Tuesday, April 29, 2008

More information please

So this guy in Austria...

He keeps his daughter prisoner in the basement, fathers seven children with her, and has three of them come live with him and his wife (leaves three more in the basement and one died).

Investigators say they believe his wife, with whom he had seven children, was unaware that the daughter she believed ran away to join a religious cult in 1984 was living as a prisoner beneath her feet.


So where did the wife think the three children that came to live with them came from?

Obviously she thought something, but none of the news outlets seem to be telling us.

New Rule: pronounce OB/GYN like two words instead of five letters

I recently learned that OB/GYN is pronounced O-B-G-Y-N. That's F-U-C-K-E-D. It should be pronounced ob-gyn. Two words, two syllables. Everyone started doing that right now.

Monday, April 28, 2008

Anyone up for a real-life word problem?

I'm trying to figure out if I could do more good by playing freerice.com for an hour, or by donating an hour's pay to...somewhere. I don't know where. And I'm not going to tell you how much an hour's pay is either.

How Toronto works

Um, quick question...

Do the people of Indonesia know that there are ways prostituting oneself that don't require taking one's pants off?

Actually, if they really want to prevent prostitution, shouldn't they lock the clients' pants?

Sunday, April 27, 2008

Brief thoughts on the TTC strike

I've got a hugeass TLDR post coming up with more in depth on the TTC strike and other things, but a couple of quick things that don't fit into there:

- I think if the TTC was declared an essential service, that might result in more public goodwill and better salaries and benefits in the long term. After all, you don't hear people complaining that firefighters and paramedics and nurses are overpaid. (Police officers sometimes, but that's not because we think they're overpaid for protecting us and catching bad guys, but because we think they're overpaid for beating us up and knocking our teeth out when we're just peacefully protesting, and tasing us to death when we're frightened and confused.)

- Perhaps it would have been better for the union to announce that the 48 hours notice is no longer in effect. If they had specifically announced that because their workers had been threatened during the last 48 hours, they could no longer give 48 hours notice, that would be one thing. But not giving notice when all signs seeme dot indicate that your previous offer of notice still stood is just not going to help in the public goodwill area.

I before E except after C

The only word I can think of that makes the "except after C" part of the rule necessary is receive. Can you think of any others?

Saturday, April 26, 2008

Naming rights to TTC stations

There's talk of selling naming rights to TTC stations.

One thing I haven't seen mentioned yet, surprisingly because it is very important: they should only be allowed to name stations after things that are located near that station! For example, Museum Station is fine because the ROM is right there. Yorkdale Station is fine because you step out of the station into Yorkdale. They could rename Don Mills to Fairview Station because Fairview Mall is right there. But they shouldn't be allowed to rename Eg. Station to Walmart Station, because there's no Walmart there. You know how whenever they rename a theatre after its new corporate sponsor, you always have to google it to see which one it really is? The last thing we need is for that to happen to subway stations.

Speaking of naming things, why did Rogers rename the Skydome the Rogers Centre instead of the Rogers Skydome? Why take the distinctive identity out of the name? With the word Skydome there, you can look and point and go "Oh, THAT'S what it is!" With Rogers Centre, you have no way of knowing that it's even a stadium - it sounds exactly the same as the Air Canada Centre or the Eaton Centre or the Sony Centre (WTF is the Sony Centre anyway? I know it used to be called something else, but I have no idea, which just proves my point.)

Weird turn of phrase

"And we hope to gain support of all parties to ensure that TTC service is restored quickly for the families and businesses of Toronto."


So if you don't have a family or a business, he doesn't care if you can get where you have to go?

OMGWTFTTC???

Dear TTC:

I want to be on your side, really I do. I'm a worker too, solidarity and all that.

But no warning? After you said you'd give warning? Not cool! Especially since people who work on Saturday are more likely to be people who have to be at work on time and have to be at their workplace, unlike office workers who can flex their time or work from home.

Oooh, you know what? I'll be they're doing this to get essential service status! Recent commentators have said that essential services generall get better contracts, and in the long term if something is an essential service, the public is most likely to be okay with them being well-paid.

Restraining orders

Once upon a time, mi cielito and I came up with the idea of getting a restraining order against someone and then running towards them, forcing them to run in the opposite direction.

XKCD has just topped us.

Thursday, April 24, 2008

Why universities shouldn't be expected to act in loco parentis

Other people have already mentioned that students over the age of 18 are as much legally adults as you and I are and therefore no one can have any sort of custodial relationship over them whatsoever. Other people have already mentioned that if your doctor is required to report your condition to your parents, you'd probably respond by just not seeking help. People have even pointed out that the parents knowing about it wouldn't necessarily have stopped her from committing suicide. (And I'd like to add that having your parents constantly supervise you so you don't commit suicide might be enough to drive one to suicide if one weren't there already).

But what I want to blog about here is something I haven't seen mentioned yet: we must make sure that university students continue to have the same rights and freedoms as their peers who are not in school.

Whenever something tragic happens involving a university student, it's easy to call upon universities to do something to prevent it, usually by supervising students more heavily or placing restrictions on students. I've seen several calls for universities to be accountable to parents instead of to students, I've seen calls for alcohol to be banned on campus (even in residences), all kinds of things like this. But the thing is, in our society, going to university is a) not something everyone does, and b) generally considered the most laudable choice. Not everyone gets to go to university, and there are lots of people in that age group who aren't in university. If you're 18 years old and you, say, dropped out of high school, got knocked up, and are living on welfare and working for a gang as a drug dealer on the side, no institution is meddling in your life and trying to supervise you and reporting your medical situation to your parents. University students shouldn't have to face more restrictions and limitations just because they took what our society considers the optimal path.

Edit: This is the story that sparked this discussion.

Why HPV vaccine is important

This article misses the point.

The thing about HPV, the thing that makes it different from all other STDs, is that a) you can't test for it when it's dormant, b) it can be spread while dormant, so you can carry and spread it without having ever experienced any symptoms, c) it can spread from skin-to-skin contact outside the areas covered by condoms, and d) it may or may not go away by itself, after a period of time that varies from person to person and in a process that medical science does not understand or know how to expedite.

So basically, unless you know the complete sexual history of every single person who has sex with every single person who has sex with every single person...[ad infinitum]...who has had sex with you, you have no way of knowing whether or not you've been exposed or whether or not you carry it.

AIDS you can test for. Herpes you can see if you've got an outbreak or not. But HPV you can't always tell. It's the biggest hole in our safety net. Oh yeah, and it causes cancer too. So something that will sew up I think it's 70% of this hole is significant.

Macleans magazine revved up the tone with a front-page story referring to our young girls as guinea pigs involved in a huge vaccination experiment to prevent a virus that a) most women are exposed to; and b) is easily cleared from a woman's system. Is this virus a problem? It's hard to say, but we know that the pap smear currently detects the early signs of cervical cancer so it's not clear how this vaccine would do much more.


Translation: "You're going to get it anyway, but it will probably go away by itself so don't worry your pretty little head about it. Besides, if you get a bunch of foreign objects stuck up your cunt on a regular basis, they'll probably be able to catch any cancer it causes before it kills you."

I dunno, personally I think not getting any STDs at all ever and not having to get my cervix scraped with a pointed stick every year are valid goals in and of themselves.

Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Snow on green deciduous trees

The following pictures were taken on November 22, 2007. An unseasonably warm fall had left some of the decidious trees still green and leafy, and then there was a sudden snowstorm. I'd never seen snow and green leaves together, so I took some pictures. Please forgive the quality, these are literally the very first pictures I've ever taken with a phone.





Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Telecommunications

Telecommunications companies have this really quite remarkable talent for making me feel like I'm getting screwed over when I'm not. Whether it's Bell's habit of making touchtone service a separate item on the bill even though it's mandatory, or Roger's pricing their home phone service entirely too high but it all evens out once I bundle my Rogers services, or Fido's obscenely high data fees, I always come away from any telecommunications billing change feeling like I've been cheated somehow.

It's really weird that they manage things that way. Most, if not all, other types of companies I do business with try to make me feel like I'm getting a good deal even when they are screwing me over. Reitman's tags their clothes as though they're on sale even though I don't think they were ever the "original" price. My shoemaker has a loyalty card - 10th heel lift free, as though I'm going to get 10 heel lifts within any reasonable amount of time. People on ebay constantly overcharge for shipping, but the products themselves are so ridiculously cheap (or commercially unavailable in Canada) that I still feel like I won. But with telecom, they aren't even trying to make me feel good, they know I'm dependent on them and their prices are close enough to the competition's to make switching pointless, and they're rubbing my face in it every day.

Monday, April 21, 2008

Why do chaplains have to be religious?

This train of thought started with this article, then wandered a bit.

So you have a group of people brought together by or for some purpose other than religion. Then you think it would help for them to have a chaplain. So why does it help that the chaplain is religious?

I can sort of see in military deployments abroad how it would help to have someone on hand who can conduct religious services, although the chaplain can only be on denomination at a time so I'm not sure how well it helps (Father Mulcahy on MASH claimed to be able to do multiple xian and Jewish denominations, but I'm not sure whether that counts properly.)

But in the workplace, you don't need that. When people finish their workday they go home every night, and their place of worship if they need one is right there. If they require spiritual guidance specifically, they can go wherever they'd normally go for that sort of thing.

So what else do chaplains do other than their specific religious jobs? Counselling and morale, essentially. So why does being religious help for that? If the person they are helping is an active and devout practitioner of the same religion it might help (or it might be irrelevant), but because the workplace is a group of people gathered together for a purpose completely unrelated to religion, you have no way of knowing what religion the employees are going to be.

So suppose you need counselling or morale, and the person you go to has some kind of pastoral training in a religion that is not your own. What's the best that could happen? The best that could happen is they help you without introducing any religion into the matter at all. But any intrusion whatsoever by a religion that is not your own would be simply detrimental. You'd be worse off than you were before, because now not only do you have this problem, but you have to deflect the person the company has sent to help you with it.

But suppose you need conselling or morale, and the person you go to happens to be the same religion as you, but their training and the help they give you is completely secular. So what's the best that can happen? The best that can happen is they help you in every aspect of your problem except the religious aspect, for which you'd have to go to your place of worship. What's the worst that can happen? They can't help you at all because it's too spiritual a problem. So you go to your place of worship for help.

So if the best thing a religious chaplain can do for employees of a different religion is keep their religion out of it, and the worst outcome of a secular chaplain for religious employees is that people who go to church have to go to church, why bother to hire religious chaplains? Why not hire people with secular training in counselling etc.?

Sunday, April 20, 2008

There's no TTC strike

Just in case for some weird reason you're reading my blog instead of the news.

Brilliant Ideas That Will Never Work: total war to save the world

Think about World War II. Not the war part, what was happening at home. Everyone and everything was completely mobilized towards the goal of winning the war. Food and clothing and fuel were rationed. Recycling was invented so raw materials wouldn't go to waste. Geeky students and posh housewives went to work on farms and in munitions factories. Barriers were broken down, assumptions were challenged, there was constant innovation, and eventually they achieved their goal.

So let's do it again. Not the war part - it's so frightfully noisy! - but the complete mobilization of all society's resources to some greater goal for the good of the world, like ending hunger or weaning ourselves from fossil fuels, for example.

The advantage of the total war model is that your role is handed to you, you don't have to work out the right decisions for yourself and you'd have to go to a good deal of trouble to make the wrong decisions. You get your ration cards, and that provides you with your fair share of food. You go to the war office and say "Hello, I'd like a job," and they send you to the aircraft factor and teach you how to make airplanes. You just do what you're told and sacrifice for a bit.

For this to work, they'd need a tangible goal and a carefully detailed, workable plan for how to get there. To get society to buy in, the goal should be achievable within a relatively short period of time - say between six months and two years - with the promise that all rationing and restrictions will be lifted as soon as the goal is achieved. The goal should also be such that its positive effects will be felt for a long time afterwards. Under any rationing or restrictions, everyone should still be adequately fed and clothed and sheltered. Small pleasures like coffee and wine and cigarettes should still be somewhat available, even if they are not as abundant as they were before. Jobs that work towards achieving the goal should be available for the asking, and the jobs should provide full training (just like then-Princess Elizabeth - and other posh girls like her I assume - was trained to be a mechanic during WWII rather than being told "Sorry, you can't be a mechanic because you don't know how to be a mechanic.") The internet must continue to exist just as movies continued to be made during WWII. The sacrifices required must be feasible, productive, well-thought out and temporary, ultimately achieving a goal that will bring about greater good in the long term.

But people will never go for it.

Things They Should Invent: one-handed rubber gloves

Especially now that I have a dishwasher, many of my rubber glove chores really require only one hand to be gloved. This means that my right-hand rubber gloves get used and dirty, but the left-hand ones are still fine. Unfortunately, I'm not ambidextrous enough to do these chores with my left hand, so I'm throwing out a bunch of perfectly good left-handed gloves.

Instead of buying a pack of two right-handed gloves and two left-handed gloves (i.e. two normal pairs), I'd like to have the option of buying four right-handed ones.