A baby deer!

Via Cute Overload, a baby deer!

Anyone know how Craigslist works?

Craigslist postings have an alphanumeric @craigslist.org email address at the top. I assume this is so you don't have to post your personal email address.

So suppose I post something on Craigslist, someone emails me at the @craigslist address, and for whatever reason I don't want to respond to them. Do they know what my real email address is? Or does my real email address stay absolutely unconditionally secret until I choose to respond to someone's email?

Original Soundtrack

All my soundtracks say "Original Soundtrack" in the title. What's the word "original" doing in there? What other kinds of soundtracks are there?

Car colours

Why are silver cars so popular? Why on earth would you choose a silver car when you could have a red one? Silver is so boring, but red is VROOOM! I can see why people would choose boring colours for things like clothing or decor - you can't have everything being bright and fun or it gets overwhelming. But a car is self-contained, so you don't have to worry about it going with anything else.

Wherein I mishear a lyric for nine straight years

The first line of the last verse of Ani DiFranco's Cloud Blood is "It's been way too long since I've been behind the wheel."

Up until just now, I've been hearing it as "It's been far too long since I've been behind the wheel."

I just checked the liner notes (I have the actual CD), and it is "way". I've been mishearing it since I bought the CD in 1999!

Oops

I somehow managed to completely miss the fact that the terms "baby mama" and "baby daddy" have negative connotations. I recognized that they're casual, but thought they were neutral and have been using them as such because they're convenient.

So apologies to anyone in reference to whom I've used those terms. Please understand that my word choice was coming from ignorance, not malice.

Rainbow

June 8, 2008, 8:50 pm, just after a mad crazy thunderstorm with tornado warnings, there was a rainbow just out my window. So obviously the thing to do is attempt to photograph a rainbow with a camera phone. Click to embiggen.

I think I might have discovered the secret to push-ups

Today I put a newspaper down on the floor and read an article while I attempted to do my push-ups. And I did 9 in a row! (My previous record was 6 in a row, which I was only able to do once before today.)

Half-formed theory: the majority doesn't identify with the factor that makes them the majority

People in many parts of Canada identify with their regions (Westerners, Quebecois, Maritimers), but I don't think Ontario does. I've lived in Ontario all my life, and to me it's nothing more than an administrative category. I identify as Canadian, I identify as Torontonian, I might identify with my neighbourhood or with the place where I grew up if that scale of identity were relevant to the situation, but I have no sense whatsoever of being Ontarian. I've asked around, and I haven't found any Ontarians who actively identify as Ontarian. It's used in politics sometimes, but that's about it.

Similarly, I am white, but I don't identify with it. I identify as Canadian, I might identify with one or more of my heritage cultures if it's relevant, but my skin colour means nothing more to me than a factor to be addressed in my fashion and cosmetics choices.

So I'm thinking maybe the majority doesn't actively identify with whatever the thing is that they're the majority in. They don't feel it. It's unmarked, to apply linguistic terminology. I'm not quite sure where to go with this next.

While I was writing this, I was also trying to figure out if I actively identify with being female or not. I can't quite tell. I experience female on two levels. The first level is that it's simply a physical reality that sometimes has to be accomodated. I need birth control pills, I need a bra, I have to be wary of strange men in some contexts. But this isn't something I feel or identify with, it's about equal to how I have long skinny feet so I need shoes in a large size with straps in the right place. The second level is that I like to present as female. I just feel...more myself, i.e the best part of myself, more confident and competent, if I look girly. This is very bizarre because I've never heard this sentiment expressed by cisgendered women, I've only ever heard it from MTF transgendered people. So I don't know if with this sentiment I'm articulating the usually unspoken and unidentified sense of actively identifying with and feeling one's majority status, or if I have some kind of unidentified gender issues or what.

The anti-circumvention clause would discourage people from legally purchasing content

I'm not going to get into excruciating detail about why the anti-circumvention clause is stupid. I'm sure we all had the same "One of these things doesn't belong here" moment when reading about it, and if not the whole entire internet has already commented on it.

I'd just like to add that, on top of everything else, this clause will actually make it more desirable for the consumer to download pirated content instead of purchasing it through legitimate channels.

Under the proposed bill, consumers could be liable for $500 in damages for "private use infringements" pursued by the copyright holders.

However, the penalty could rise to up to $20,000 in damages if a consumer hacked a digital lock to make an illegal copy. That includes hacking the anti-copying mechanisms of a computer game to make illegal copies.

Suppose you want a certain movie on your iPod, to watch during a long plane trip. And suppose it is available on DVD, but not through iTunes because Canada sucks that way. You have two options: get the DVD and convert it, or download it. Now suppose you like the people who made the movie and want them to get rich from the movie, so you purchase the DVD through perfectly legal commercial channels. You then remove the copy protection, rip the movie, and put it on your iPod. Guess what? You've just broken the law, and are liable to a fine of up to $20,000. However, if you had simply gone to your favourite torrent site and downloaded the movie, you would be liable to a fine of up to only $500.

The situation in which a person would ever find themselves circumventing copy protection is if they have a legally-purchased commercial copy of the product in hand. If you make the fine exponentially higher for an act you can do only with a legally-purchased copy (and would have to do as part of the perfectly-legal act of converting content you own for a device you own), then the more enforceable you make the law, the more people will be encouraged to download a bootlegged copy and be liable to a much smaller fine.

Open Letter to women who are wondering if their boyfriends will ever change their mind and want to have children

Dear R who wrote in to Cary Tennis and lady who wrote into Claudia Dey:

My first thought was to implore you, speaking as a childfree 27-year-old (who was recently a childfree 26-year-old), to take your boyfriends at their word.

However, I quickly realized that if you aren't going to listen to a 27-year-old whom you like well enough to date, you clearly aren't going to listen to a 27-year-old stranger.

So instead, I'll give you a little piste de réflexion. Just think about this, quietly and to yourself, at your leisure, and see what you come up with:

If you were dating a 27/26-year-old man who said he does want children eventually, would you assume that in his youthful folly he doesn't know what he's talking about and may yet change his mind?

Open Letter to Elizabeth Patterson

Dear Elizabeth:

You can't expedite your wedding in the hope that your grandfather will still be alive for it, because there's something more important. Your first priority when setting a date for your wedding needs to be that Françoise is prepared for the major life change of having a stepmother in the household.

Having your grandfather there for your wedding day is nice, but his presence at one important day isn't nearly as important as a smooth transition for Françoise, who is not only the most innocent party in this whole situation, but is also the one person who will be most affected by it.

Does everyone know how immigration works?

Sometimes I read about immigrant parents who aren't happy that their kids are assimilating into the new culture, or I read about how there are parenting courses specifically for immigrant parents to deal with this, and I always wonder "Didn't they see this coming?"

I just occurred to me: maybe they didn't see this coming?

I think it's obvious to us here in North America. We all know first generation immigrants, and most of us know exactly when our families came over. We all know that the first generation will work jobs below their education level and always speak with an accent, we all know the second generation will overachieve and assimilate more than their parents are comfortable with and serve as the family interpreters, we all know that the third generation will never be fluent in the mother tongue (unless they're language geeks) and rebel slightly against their parents' work ethic and reach the family's maximum assimilation threshold by adulthood. This is so obvious to us that it doesn't even bear mentioning.

But do people know this in countries that don't have a tradition of receiving immigrants? Or are they going into this situation with no idea of what to expect?

I don't know the answer. I'm second generation myself (second-and-a-half if you count that way) so I have no frame of reference. Maybe it's a stupid question, maybe it's an insulting question, but I'm completely ignorant here.

Bad headline (sub-headline, actually)

Most brides-to-be and their parents say asking for her hand in marriage shows respect.

It doesn't say anywhere in the article that most brides-to-be think this. It says that 47%-50% of grooms (surveyed by a wedding magazine, which means it probably skews more traditional than the general population) did ask for their prospective bride's father's permission, but there's nothing statistical. about what brides-to-be and their parents think of this. It goes on to say, non-statistically, that this reflects that my generation is allegedly more traditional than previous generations and citing the fact that 69% of brides take their husband's name (aside: isn't it inappropriate to publish something so heterocentric on the fifth anniversary of same-sex marriage?), but I don't think the two things are related, because I would take or append my husband's name for exactly the same reason that I would be offended if he asked my parents for my hand in marriage.

But the reason why this headline worries me is because I'm afraid it will make people think that asking your intended's parents for permission is de rigueur. But the fact of the matter is it isn't a neutral act. For people who don't like it, it's downright insulting. A lot of people work very hard and go through a lot of angst to assert their independence from their parents, and the last thing they need is to suddenly be treated once again like an incompetent chattel of their parents by the one person they love most in the world. For me, this might even be a dealbreaker. Intellectually I'd probably be able to see that it's just a well-intended fuck-up, but emotionally I don't know if I could stand to share a bed with someone who would think even for a minute that my parents would have a say in something so personal. To say nothing of what its implications for the balance of power within the relationship! I don't get to make my own decision about marriage on my own authority but my spouse does? That's so...Taliban!

So, to people who are considering proposing marriage: do not do not DO NOT ask your intended's parents for their hand in marriage unless you are absolutely 100% without a doubt certain that your intended actively wants you to do so. Err on the side of treating your intended with the respect they deserve as an autonomous human being. You can always ask their parents afterwards.

To parents: if you can put your parental ego aside for a moment, you have a great opportunity to do some good here. If anyone ever asks you for your child's hand in marriage, tell them "No, I won't have my child marrying someone who doesn't realize she's an autonomous human being who gets to make her own decisions." Then they will, of course, have to defy you and get married, but you will have given your child a vote of your confidence in their abilities as an independent adult, and the symbolism of the whole thing will be so much more powerful than the antiquated symbolism of asking the parents' permission and **shudder** giving away the bride.*

*Added bonus theory: the most symbolically appropriate person to give away the bride would be not her father, but her previous partner.

How to solve your stripper staffing problems

Apparently strip clubs are having trouble finding enough strippers (NSFW warning: photo of clothed-in-lingerie stripper in the context of a newspaper article) and they're trying to find immigration loopholes to work around the problem.

Here's a better idea: improve the working conditions, and you'll get way more applicants. A lot of people have at least considered the idea of stripping during times when money was tight, and a lot of people would do it for the right price. It doesn't even have to be straight-up money; change the working conditions to make it a Good Job.

For example, as I understand it, strippers are essentially working on commission. I've even heard of cases where they have to pay the strip club for the privilege of working there (sounds like a line from the Four Yorkshiremen but it's true), and then their earnings are whatever cash the patrons give them. So instead of this, pay them a salary, so they can depend on their income. Give them benefits - not just health and dental, but gym membership, clothing allowance, free laser hair removal. If you're worried about them sticking around too long until they're not hot any more, give them free tuition as a perk and set the salary levels at a point that would be a lot of money for someone with no post-secondary but nothing special for a white-collar professional position. Make doing lap dances optional - maybe pay dancers a bonus for doing lap dances, but still have a respectable salary level for just stage dancing. Kick out patrons who don't treat your workers with respect, even if they have a lot of money.

Then once you've done all this, advertise the fact that you're a fair trade strip club - there are prospective patrons to whom that would be a tipping point. Charge your patrons as much as it costs to do all this, and if the costs go way up you can market it as high-end.

There are plenty of people already in Canada who would be strippers for the right price and the right working conditions. Be brave and bold and innovative and revolutionize your industry.

Good communications

1. The entrance to the subway consists of about four doors all next to each other, all interchangable. One door is out of order. The sign says "Out of order. Please use other door. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused."

I love that "may have caused"! They're subtly putting the inconvenience not only in the hypothetical, but in the past. There's a bunch of other doors, you use one of them, the inconvenience is over! I must remember that trick!

2. There's this clothing repair place I go to for sewing that's too difficult or important to do myself but can't wait until I next visit my mother. The proprietor is a very large and intimidating-looking man, and he always addresses me as "my friend." Never "ma'am" or "miss", always "my friend". That's a very masculine form of address without being explicitly masculine - if you extrapolate from his accent and appearance to fill in the blanks about his history with stereotypes, you can totally see him in a market in the Old Country addressing some man with a beard as "my friend" while haggling with him for a purchase. And that's actually a good thing to do in his position, because if I went to him for alterations our interaction would become far more intimate - he'd have to stick pins in me and scrutinize how clothing drapes over my curves. Addressing me as "my friend" is an indicator that he sees me as a pants-wearing equal, which helps the balance of power and professionalizes our relationship should it ever involve his manipulating the fit of my pants. (It hasn't completely worked - I'm too shy to have any stranger of any gender put darts in my pants so I save those jobs for my mother - but I can see what he's trying to do and appreciate the cleverness of the strategy.)

Happy anniversary!

Tomorrow (June 10) is the 5th anniversary of same-sex marriage in Ontario.

The traditional 5th anniversary gift is wood.

Pennies

Whenever I give the cashier one cent more than the total cost of my purchase, I feel stupid standing there with my hand out waiting for one cent in change. So my first thought is that I should say "Keep the penny," like my customers did to me when I was a cashier. But that seems a bit condescending, magnamiously offering the prole the penny as though it's such a gift to them (even though I didn't mind it when I was a cashier). So then I started saying "I don't want the penny," as though I'm just some demanding eccentric instead of an upper-class twit who thinks a penny is important to a cashier. But that seemed to assholic, so now what I'm doing is saying "I don't want the penny" with an apologetic smile, as though the cashier is doing me a kind favour by keeping the penny. We'll see if I find something wrong with that approach in a few weeks.

How did the Bridge of Death get there in the first place?

Gratuitous Python in service of a serious question:

Bridges like the Bridge of Death (I don't know what that kind of bridge is called - I keep thinking suspension bridge but that's like the Golden Gate Bridge) are a mainstay of the historical adventure/fantasy genre.

But how would they build a bridge like that in the first place? How do they attach it to both ends when there's no way to get across in the first place?