Do blind people ever just want to be left alone?

I often see blind people on the subway, and random strangers always help them. Most people have obviously read the same pamphlets I have, because almost everyone does it right. They give them specific verbal instructions ("The subway door is two feet to your left"), they allow the blind person to take their arm and guide them to a seat, basically whenever there's someone with a white cane, everyone's looking out for them and someone almost always jumps in and helps.

I wonder if this gets annoying for the blind people though? If every time I see a blind person a stranger is helping them, then blind people must get helped by strangers all the freaking time! I wonder if that ever gets annoying to them? Sometimes when I'm making my way through the crowded city, I really just don't want to deal with any people at all. I wonder if blind people ever feel like this and wish people would stop helping them?

Wherein the LCBO makes me feel like a disenfranchised child

One day, when I was a kid, my family was visiting the zoo when it started raining hard. Since we had already seen most of the zoo and didn't have umbrellas, we decided to go home. I started walking towards the car. My parents started walking in the other direction. I told them that they were going the wrong way - we came in over the bridge, and the bridge is right there! They insisted that I stop dawdling and go with them. (Unfortunately, at this point I was still young enough that being walking away alone without my parents would have been too big and scary.) So we went the wrong way, walked across the whole entire zoo, got directions, then walked back across the whole entire zoo. By this point I was soaked to the skin, and if we had gone the way I said to in the first place we would have been literally halfway home by then. So I was really pissed off, and doubly disgruntled that my parents thought I was unreasonable for being pissed off. I was smart and diligent enough to remember where we parked, I did everything right, but I still got inconvenienced because the people who were wrong were bigger and stronger and louder.

This is exactly how I feel about the LCBO banning plastic bags. I've already solved this problem! I saw the problem coming, came up with a solution has more positive outcomes than a ban and is more convenient for everyone, wrote up a nice pitch, and sent it to the powers that be. I'm the one who came up with the best possible solution. (And this isn't ego, I haven't heard a single better solution. Got one? Post it in the comments.) And yet, I still have to be inconvenienced every single time I buy wine for the next 75 years just because the people who like the suboptimal solution are bigger and stronger and louder.

If I wanted to be treated like this, I'd go to the zoo with my parents!

Things They Should Invent: don't check warrants on people who call 911

This guy calls 911 to save his own life, and the police arrest him on an outstanding warrant.

So now people with outstanding warrants aren't going to call 911. You're thinking "But it was to save his life, of course he was going to call!" And I can see either side on whether they should check warrants on people who call for themselves.

But they should definitely never ever check warrants on people who call 911 on behalf of someone else! Imagine if you're injured or you've been attacked or your house is on fire, and the only person around doesn't want to call 911 because they have an outstanding warrant! Imagine if a driver with an outstanding warrant happens to get in a car accident, and instead of calling 911 to help the person in the other car they drive away so they don't get caught!

People who call 911 to help someone else, or who otherwise get involved with the authorities to help someone else, should have immunity from being arrested as the result of their helping.

Things They Should Invent: retirement homes that AREN'T like high school socially

Apparently retirement homes are like high school.

So someone fix this! Redesign it! Rethink it! Give people more privacy! Locate it somewhere within an easy (for seniors!) walk to amenities and transit so residents aren't dependenton the retirement home to provide their social life!

This only increases my determination to deteriorate and die in my own apartment, forgotten and unnoticed, my automatic pension deposits (if pensions still exist) feeding my automatic rent withdrawal, until someone starts noticing a smell. I quite deliberately left the fishbowl, there's no way I'm going back.

It is possible to make institutional environments not like high school. I lived and worked on campus throughout my undergrad, but I didn't feel like I was in the fishbowl. I can't articulate why it worked, but it did. So someone better figure out how to do the same thing with retirement homes.

Low-flying planes

Today in my five-minute walk to Shopper's, I saw two different airplanes that seemed to be flying really low, like way lower than usual. This was around maybe 3 or 4 pm. I'm in midtown, nowhere near the airport. Anyone else see anything like this?

Things They Should Invent: a place for used cleaning cloths in every home

I use a lot of disposable cleaning materials - paper towels, swiffers, those disinfectant wipes, etc. My parents, whose household I grew up and learned how to clean in, use reusable cloths for almost everything.

So what made me stop using reusable cloths? They have to be washed after you use them, and I have nowhere to put them between when I use them and when it's time to do laundry. My parents put them in their laundry tub, but I don't have a laundry tub in my apartment. I don't want to put them in the laundry hamper because sometimes I put clothes that I intend to wear again in the hamper (pyjamas, bras, my sitting-at-home-feeling-fat pants). I don't have room for another hamper in the bathroom (which, bizarrely, doubles as the laundry room with the laundry machines stacked in a closet in the bathroom), and I don't exactly want a bucket of wet dirty smelly used cleaning cloths in my bedroom or living room. I only have one kitchen sink and one bathroom sink (and nowhere nearly enough counter space) so it's not like there's anywhere else I can leave them for several days. And coordinating all my cleaning so it happens right before an appropriate laundry day just isn't going to happen, not when I also have to earn a living.

If there was somewhere in my apartment that was conducive to leaving wet dirty used cloths, I'd use cloths for cleaning. Because there isn't, I use disposable stuff. If you want me to make less garbage by using reusable cloths, find me a solution.

Things They Should Invent: bottles that easily dispense every last drop of product

How often do you throw something out with the last centimetre of product (moisturizer, shampoo, bathroom cleaner) still in the bottom of the bottle because you just can't get it out, or because it's too much work to get it out?

Now multiply that by everyone in the world.

Imagine how much waste we could save if every container dispensed every drop of product just as easily as the first!

Things They Should Invent: trade a channel that is in your cable package for a channel that's not in your cable package

I recently reduced the number of TV channels I get, to get closer to an optimal cost/viewing choices ratio. Just now I noticed that I no longer get BBC Canada. Now BBC Canada isn't important enough to me to pay any more for it, but I wouldn't mind watching it from time to time. However, while looking for BBC Canada, I noticed I get an all-NFL channel, which I am quite certain I am never going to watch. I also get three versions of SportsNet, which I am also never going to watch, and probably some other channels that I'm never going to watch.

What they should do is let you trade the channels you're never going to watch for channels that you might watch. Or if for some reason they'd lose money on doing this, let you trade two channels you're never going to watch for one channel you might watch. I just can't imagine why it would be to anyone's benefit to have me receiving channels I'm not going to watch.

What I want my elected officials to do with my emails

This started with this article and then went off on a tangent.

When I write to my elected officials, I don't care one bit about whether they send me the standard reply or not. I know that the standard reply is nothing more than an acknowledgement of receipt, and it's completely meaningless to me.

What I really want is for the elected official to look at and actually think about anything that I've introduced in my email that's new to them. See, a lot of the time, I get the impression that they've reduced the issue to A vs. B, and they're set up to deal with people writing in and saying "A! A! A!" and other people writing in and saying "B! B! B!" But a lot of the time I write in and say "Hey, I have a better idea, why not C?" or I say "Actually, here's why A is a better choice to achieve the B people's goals," or I say "Both options would be unfeasible for people who don't have cars, so you should do something about that." I want anything new or extra that I introduce into the debate to make its way to the elected official's brain, and I never get the impression that this has happened.

Don't ever ever ever listen to He Stopped Loving Her Today by George Jones

This is the saddest song ever. Seriously. Don't listen to it. Ever. My iTunes gave it to me just as I was about to go to bed, and it had me weeping into such a funk that that a shot of vodka and never-before-seen Eddie Izzard bootlegs and Cake the band and cake the food couldn't even get me back to neutral.

There is no good reason for a song this sad to be allowed to roam freely thoughout society. It should be carefully restricted as a dangerous weapon.

I wonder if doing speeches in school makes people fear public speaking?

(I just noticed that the noun is speech but the verb is speak. No wonder it took me forever to learn how to spell!)

When I was a kid, we had to do speeches in school. It was like three or five minutes of talking in front of the class on a prepared topic. And this was so scary! You had to think of something, and research it, and make a speech out of it, and hold your peers' attention, and talk in front of EVERYONE! And your appearance and topic and eloquence and interestingness and who knows what else are all up for the very worst of elementary school scrutiny!

I'm wondering if this made us more afraid of public speaking than if we hadn't had to do it until we were older. No adult audience is as judgemental as a classroom full of 12-year-olds. Plus, (as I've blogged about before but can't find now) when you're in school your presentations are all about stuff you don't have any particular knowledge of - you have to do the research and become an "expert" specifically for the presentation - whereas in real life we're only ever asked to speak publically about stuff we are already experts in. I'm a very shy person, but I find that speaking in front of other adults about something that I know enough about that other people might ask me to speak about it isn't even in the same order of magnitude as doing a speech in front of my Grade 3 class. And actually, now that I think about it, doing Show and Tell in front of my Grade 3 class (about something I'm knowledgeable about and interested in, and on a completely voluntary basis) was something I could do without a moment's though, but doing The Speech for the same amount of time was the Worst Thing Ever!

I wonder if by making speeches such a big deal, they inadvertently taught us that public speaking is Big And Scary?

Open Letter to o.b.

Dear o.b.:

Your Mighty Small tampons are a very good idea. I wish they'd been around back when I was first trying to master the art of the tampon! However, why not make an applicator version too? A lot of the people who are in the market for smaller tampons are going to be the people who aren't used to wearing tampons, and if you aren't used to wearing tampons it's extremely difficult to insert them by hand, because you don't know what a properly inserted tampon feels like. An applicator makes the insertion a no-brainer - you push the tube into the other tube and then the tampon is automatically in the right place. You say on your website that finger insertion is easier because many people's vaginas are curved but applicators are straight, but the flip side of this is that you need to be very familiar with the shape of your vagina to do a proper finger insertion, while your vagina will give a bit against the stiffness of the applicator so you don't have to know exactly where you're going. You also promote the fact that the absence of an applicator means these tampons produce less waste, but if a girl can't get a tampon in properly she's going to wear a pad, which makes even more waste. Besides, they are a medical device, and people accept that medical devices have to produce a certain amount of waste.

The lack of an applicator option is the only thing standing in your way of being the tampon of choice for all new users. Everyone starts their menstrual career with the smallest products available and works their way up as needed, but lots of people struggle with insertion early on and need all the help they can get, which sometimes means an applicator. A "too bad, you should be woman enough to do it by hand" attitude is going to send these customers over to Tampax and Playtex, who are just waiting in the feminine hygiene aisle with nice smooth easy applicators. But if you provide an applicator, these customers will buy your product because it's the smallest available and just as easy to insert as anything else. As you know, brand loyalty is built early. Not providing an applicator version is just poor business sense.

Children's classics revisited

1. The Bare Necessities from Jungle Book: a wee bit Freudian?



2. Sesame Street: no comment

Things They Should UNInvent: webpage code that automatically tells you today's date

I care when your webpage was last updated. That might be useful or relevant. I don't need your webpage to tell me what today's date is. I can get that information from the bottom right corner of my screen, or any number of gizmos within reach. Worst case your page tricks me into thinking it was updated today, which isn't helpful either and damages your credibility.

Things They Should Invent: use "&" instead of "and" in all names and titles

Many times in the text I'm working on there's a list of organizations in a complex mult-clause sentence. Many of the organizations have "and" in their name. It's very hard to keep the sentences clear with the "and" in the organization names and the "and" preceeding the final list item and any other sundry "and"s in the sentence.(Unfortunately, restructuring the sentence or listing the organizations vertically isn't an option.)

If the name of your organization, or the title of your book, or anything else that serves as a proper noun contains the word "and", you should use a & instead. Then if you ever end up in a confusing list, it will be obvious which words go together.

Things They Should Invent: acquaintance-rape-proofing

Most rapes are committed by someone the victim knows. We know this, it's common knowledge.

But I've never seen anything telling us what to do with that information. You can easily google up signs of an abusive relationship if it's someone with whom you hve an actual relationship. There's all kinds of stuff about reducing your risk of being attacked by a stranger. But there's nothing about simple straightforward acquaintances.

Whoever's in charge of awareness stuff needs to come up with warning signs or something for acquaintances - people to whom you've been Properly Introduced but you don't actually know very well. A friend of a friend. A new co-worker. A relative's boyfriend. What signs should you look for to tell you you shouldn't accept a ride home from one of these people, and how do you do it politely?

I can't work out a good set of keywords to get me rape statistics for these kinds of relationships, but it has to be non-zero. Why is there no information about it?

Open Letter to Rogers

Dear Rogers:

If #-####-#### is not a valid account number, please do not print it on the bill next to the words "account number." If you want that 12-digit number instead, please label the 12-digit number "account number" instead of "cable account reference."

Thank you.

Free mash-up idea

Someone needs to mash up the songs Piano Man, Guitar Man*, and Mr. Tambourine Man. I don't know if the end result would have any particular aesthetic value, but it needs to be done as a matter of principle.

*Insert Bread/let them eat Cake joke here, with an appropriate donation to the pun jar if necessary

OMG, this is, like, SO wack!

Author/historian David McCullough in a graduation speech:

“Please, please do what you can to cure the verbal virus that seems increasingly rampant among your generation,” he said, slamming the “relentless, wearisome use of words” such as like, awesome and actually.

“Just imagine if in his inaugural address John F. Kennedy had said, ‘Ask not what your country can, you know, do for you, but what you can, like, do for your country actually.’”

I use all those words. I also translate speeches. But those turns of phrase don't end up in the speeches I translate because they're inappropriate to the speaker and the context. I'll use it when I'm talking to a colleague trying to work out exactly how to word something. "This needs to be, like, more assertive but not assholic. Right now it's kind of, you know, [insert hand-waving to express my point]." But the final product will be intelligent and articulate and the right level of language and even sound masculine if the speaker is male. The fact that I use the linguistic constructions of my demographic in my own everyday speech does not negate my ability to do this.

This isn't new information. Everyone can do this. You can talk dirty. You can also describe a sexual health complaint to your doctor in clinical terms. You could probably talk like a lolcat if you really wanted to. You can also do your job every day without ever betraying the fact that you can talk like a lolcat. Just because you can swear like a motherfucker doesn't mean you can't also have a completely appropriate conversation with a child without a single swear in it. Anything I say or write comes out in English unless there's a reason not to, but I can still throw together a decent business letter in French.

If this were a regular 74-year-old man talking, I wouldn't expect him to grok or care about this nuance. But from an author I expected better. An author should be aware that people have access to different levels and types of language for different contexts.