You can have your stem cells next Tuesday

They can make stem cells from menstruation!

It occurs to me that perhaps I should master use of the menstrual cup.

Things They Should Invent: let The Hunger Site hijack your browser

I try to click on The Hunger Site (and its affiliates) every day, but sometimes I forget. Back in the days of dial-up I would use it as my home page, but now that I'm always on I find myself opening a new browser way more frequently so having it as my homepage would be an inconvenience the vast majority of the time.

It would be awesome if we could have the option to let it hijack our browser if we haven't done our clicks for the day yet. Have something check to see if the cookie is there, and if it isn't it redirects to The Hunger Site. We could override it if we were in a hurry, but it would be nice to have option of making it mindless.

Things They Should Invent: wheelchairs that can take passengers

Apparently those scooter-type wheelchairs can go like 16 km/h, which is faster than most people can walk. Which must be annoying when a wheelchair person wants to go somewhere with a pedestrian - it would be sooooo bloooooody slooooow! So then the wheelchair person might be inclined to give the pedestrian a ride, but that wouldn't work if you didn't have a lap-sitting type of relationship, or if the pedestrian is bigger or heavier than the wheelchair person.

My idea: make it possible for someone to stand on the back of a wheelchair behind the seat, like on a dogsled. That wouldn't make the wheelchair much bigger (we don't want them turning into minivans) and it would maintain an appropriate physical distance while allowing the wheelchair user to drive unfettered.

Why you want to avoid double translation

Sometimes your translator might call you up and ask you to send her documents that are referred to in the text she is translating. If you're really busy that day and have a lot of things to do and not have time to dig through your files, you might be inclined to tell the translator to just translate the text as written. At this point she'll warn you that doing so might make the overt and hidden quotes in the translation come out different from the original document they were citing. You might be inclined to say this is not big deal and instruct her to just carry on with what she has.

Here's why you don't want to do that.

I don't speak Chinese (I'm not even 100% certain that language is Chinese), but it seems perfectly feasible to me that this could be a perfectly competent translation (albeit lacking in-depth knowledge of North American commercial products).

Conspiracy theory anyone?

What if the real objective of the Westboro Baptist Church is to get hate speech legislation introduced in the US?

I've always been rather apathetic about the whole hate speech vs. free speech issue. I can see where both sides are coming from, but the status quo doesn't bother me and there are many other things I'm more interested in reading and thinking and talking about.

But when they threatened to protest Tim McLean's funeral, I instantly became an ardent supporter of our hate speech laws. Nothing I might ever conceivably have to say under any imaginable circumstances is nearly as important as getting them to STFU.

What if their intention was to produce this very sentiment in a large segment of the population? What if they brought their act to Canada so people could see how much easier it is to get them to STFU in a country with hate speech laws? What if their ostensible thesis is OMG TEH GAY despite its irrelevance to the things they are picketing so that the public will support including homophobia under the definition of hate speech?

Telegrams?!?!?

I think you can still send a telegram, like for real, in real life. Check this out!

I'm so tempted to send someone a telegram sayin "OMG a telegram!"

Open Letter to my iPod

Dear iPod:

You contain 3,363 songs. About 20 of these songs are by R.E.M. I did press shuffle. So what's the deal with three R.E.M. songs in a row?

Warning: the Borat DVD is dangerous for langlings

It all started with a simple plan: I'll watch Borat on DVD. I haven't seen it yet and it may or may not end up being funny.

But it's in broken English, which means I have to watch it again with the French and Spanish subtitles to see how they addressed that.

And the DVD case and some of the captions on the DVD and in the movie are in Cyrillic letters, wich means I have to work out if it's real or fake, and if it's real which language, and if it's Russian what does is say, and is the sloppy English a logical bad translation of the Russian? (All this being complicated by the fact that my attempt to learn Russian didn't take.)

So in my original plan I'm in for two hours of movie, and maybe the extras if I feel like it. Now I'm in for six hours plus, like, learning Russian.

Edited to add: This is compounded by the problem that I don't find the movie particularly entertaining. I see what they're trying to do, and I appreciate Sacha Baron Cohen's talent in creating the character, but it just didn't entertain me. I laughed maybe three to five times during the whole thing, and the idea of watching it again for the subtitles seems like a chore (but I'm going to do it at least in places anyway.)

Things Livejournal Should Invent: Expand All Threads button

In LJ, if there are over X comments (where X might equal 50 or 100, but I'm not sure), it collapses all the threads so you can only see the first comment in each thread and have to click to see the replies. There's now a handy "Expand Thread" function so you don't have to click and wait for the page to reload, then go back to the main post to read the next thread, but you still have to expand each thread separately. I'd very much like the option to expand all the threads in one click, because most often I'm interested in seeing all the comments.

More information please

Norway knighted a penguin! Cute and funny and awesome!

But how on earth did the penguin get into this line of work in the first place?

If you feel the need to make a friends forever pact, you're too immature to get married

I am the same age as Elizabeth Patterson, so I can tell you on the best of authority that this is not age-appropriate behaviour.

I do have a few very awesome friends with whom I very much hope to remain friends forever, and I cannot imagine any circumstances under which we'd be moved to make a friends forever pact. Occasionally we do sit back and marvel at how long we've been friends, but we'd never make a pact about being friends in the future. We just do it.

Actually, maybe that's what this is commenting on. A friends forever pact is the sort of thing you'd find in like Baby-sitters Club, where they can't imagine a bigger world than the one they inhabit now, but you know they'll have gone their separate ways by the end of grade 9. Come to think of it, Elizabeth hasn't seen Dawn and Shawna Marie on camera outside their own weddings (although we don't often get to see her IM/email conversations) so maybe they aren't as friends as they think they are, and maybe, despite her sojourns to university and on the reserve, her world hasn't gotten bigger yet.

What if a can-do attitude leads to consumerism?

I've been feeling insecure lately, and that has me considering trying new beauty products/techniques, generally at increased expense (in terms of money and/or time) compared with my usual regimen.

Conventional wisdom is that this is because the media has created an unattainable image and then the fashion and beauty industries are exploiting the resulting insecurities for profit.

But I find myself wondering if this is partly because our society values the whole can-do, self-help, Protestant work ethic attitude? You can do it, you just have to put work hard! If you want something badly enough, the universe will give it to you! Stop whining and take charge of your life by making the 10 quick and easy changes listed in this magazine article! You just have to make an effort!

I can see how working hard and making an effort could translate into a time-consuming skin-care routine, or how taking charge of your life could translate into biting the bullet and going to that expensive hairdresser, or how a person who believes that if they want something badly enough the universe will give it to them could see the prominent display of a brand new high-tech foundation as the universe giving them a solution to their problem.

Maybe if our culture as a whole was more zen about things, more "it is what it is" rather than "with hard work and the right attitude you can achieve anything!", maybe we'd be less susceptible to consumerism. (Assuming, of course, that being less susceptible to consumerism is a good thing - the consumerism in which I do indulge does makes me happy, although I try to indulge mindfully which is why I'm writing right now instead of shopping for beauty products.)

Would abortion patients actually care if abortion had a negative impact on their health?

Salon debunks the idea that having an abortion has a negative impact on women's health.

Which got me thinking: even if it did, who cares?

You get an abortion, you go insane. You get an abortion, you get breast cancer. You get an abortion, you become infertile. Even you get an abortion, you go to jail.

All of those are so incredibly negligible compared with the alternative of going through an unwanted pregnancy and bringing an unwanted child into the world!

If someone actually thought "Well, I've thought it through thoroughly and determined that it's best for this child to be spared the misery of existence. Oh, but wait, if I did that then I'd have to take Paxil for a little while! We can't have that!" then they'd be entirely too selfish to have a child anyway.

Added Aug. 15 11:30 pm: Some people aren't going to like or grok or agree with this post because it's about abortion. But I just realized it isn't really about abortion at all. I wrote about abortion because the article that triggered these thoughts was about abortion, but it's bigger than that.

So reread the post, but cross out the word abortion and replace it with whatever your personal family planning goal is right this minute. For me, that's never becoming pregnant. For other people, it is becoming pregnant. Or perhaps having four kids. Or perhaps getting a vasectomy. Or perhaps adopting kids. Whatever your goal is, replace the word abortion with your goal and reread the post.

See how all those potential health effects are so completely negligible?

How insecurity works

I looked good as I was leaving for work today. My makeup worked, making my complexion look smooth and my eyes look big and bright and my teeth look white. My hair was clean and shiny and mostly obediant, staying in a sleek and flattering style. The cut and colour of my clothes was just right, and my undergarments were doing their job very nicely underneath.

That was 16 hours ago.

Now my hair is starting to look oily again. It's braided in a way that's completely unflattering but good for sleeping. I'm wearing no makeup, there are splotches of zit cream on my zits and wrinkle cream on my wrinkles, and the circles under my eyes are darker than usual. I'm wearing an old t-shirt in an unflattering cut and colour, mostly because it's convenient to sleep in. My upper lip is hinting that it might want to be waxed sometime soon, and my teeth are suggesting that I ask the dentist about the whitening options available.

When I look in the mirror now, I can't see the person who was looking back at me 16 hours ago. But when I looked in the mirror 16 hours ago, I could still see the person who's looking back at me now. And when I picture myself in a situation where I need to look good, it's the now version that comes immediately to mind, oily and oozing in a big old t-shirt surrounded by perfectly coiffed beautiful people.

Things Wikipedia Should Invent: stop trying to be encyclopedic

I love Wikipedia. It always seems to contain exactly the scope of information I'm looking for. However, its attempts to be encyclopedic are undermining its usefulness. For example, apart from protecting living persons, I don't think the notability rule should exist. Apart from obscure translation-related purposes, the most use I get out of Wikipedia is finding small information. Who was this song written about? What is the significance of this pop culture reference? Most of this isn't Notable, but it is what I'm looking for.

I also wish they'd stop eliminating trivia sections. Even when the trivia sections don't contain the precise information I'm looking for, they (and things along the same spirit) are the parts of Wikipedia that are most likely to make me go "This is AWESOME!" (as opposed to "Yes, I see.")

Storage is dirt cheap, text has a negligible effect on bandwidth, there's room to make Wikipedia infinite. While I do see the point of being encyclopedic in style, using encyclopedic standards to limit content simply is not an improvement.

Does Google localize its search results?

Help me test Google please.

1. Where are you (geographically)? You can post anonymously if you don't want to reveal your location.

2. Google solutions. Just the word solutions. Is the first result www.solutions-stores.ca? If not, what do you get?

3. Google the unicorn. No quotation marks, but make sure you get the the in there. Is the first result www.theunicornpub.com? If not, what is it?

Why am I asking this? Because those two searches worked for me, producing exactly what I was looking for as the first search result, even though they seem far too vague to work. But those two businesses are also located right in my very neighbourhood. So is Google a pure genius, or is it a genius because it's localizing search results?

Why do I care if it's localizing as long as it's producing results? Because localization is great for normals under normal circumstances, but it's a real PITA for translation research. If I'm trying to confirm terminology or phraseology, I need my results to be neutral.

We already know that it localizes linguistically, which is problematic for translation research. If I'm using English-language Google (which I do by default beause it's both my and Google's first language) and I google an expression that contains a French word that's spelled the same in English, it will favour English results. (Elephant in English Google, elephant in French Google And yes, Google is supposed to be diacritic-blind.) As a translator, I find this problematic because it's more likely to lead me to use calques or faux amis. As a lazy Anglophone I find this problematic because I have a poor memory for diacritics and prefer to type on an English keyboard like I originally learned to type on, so sometimes I like to google up a foreign-language word without diacritics then copy-paste the proper spelling into my text. (This is especially useful with Polish, because my computer won't do all the Polish diacritics.)

I did send Google a feedback about this, but I don't know if it will help. Linguistic and geographical localization are still helpful to normals, even if they are problematic for translation research. But then again, I sent Google a feedback a while back asking for multilingual Google News search results (which, again, are generally not useful to normals) and now that option is there.

Get rich quick scheme

So apparently someone is suing someone for loss of faith.

So if this lawsuit works and the legal precedent is set, let's have a class action suit against the Vatican! They're insanely obscenely indescribably rich, and they're the world's largest producer of atheists. It's totally the next logical step!

Things They Should Invent: "when does this stop being creepy?' calculator

We already know how to calculate your datable age range based on your own age. But someone should come up with the inverse: you enter the couple's age difference, and a website automatically tells you how old they have to be to start dating.

I'm astonished that the internet hasn't invented this yet!

Deviating from the script

So I'm on my way home, carrying six grocery bags. I get on an escalator to go down to the subway platform. The guy in front of me is getting off the escalator around the same time and presses the stop button on the escalator, nearly making me fall down (and causing me to miss the train - and causing himself to miss the train because he would have made it if he hadn't stopped to press the button). I made it down to the platform in time to see him walk down the platform systematically spitting twice on each bench. He didn't seem angry or unstable or fucked up or anything, he seemed perfectly calm and cool and collected, it's just he was doing these weird things that were vaguely cruel to random strangers. I had no idea what to do! I kept an eye on him and tried to memorize his description (but he was a really nondescript white guy and I can't even tell age in men), but I was completely flummoxed. This was completely outside the range of things I thought might possibly happen, and I couldn't come up with an appropriate reaction.

This is why I don't think it's appropriate to blame the people on Tim McLean's bus for running away. I wasn't going to dignify this blame with a response, but my experience on the subway today just reminded me of it too much.

We've all given some thought about what we might do in every extreme situation we've ever thought of. We've thought about what we'd do if we saw someone being swarmed in the subway or pushed onto the subway tracks. We've thought about what we'd do if we were on a hijacked airplane, then rethought it after 9/11. We've thought about what we'd do if we walked into a bank robbery. We've thought about what we'd do if we were taken hostage. We've thought about what we'd do if we were deported to Syria. And we've thought about what we'd do if we witnessed some guy trying to kill some other guy. However, in all the mental scripts we've run through, I don't think anyone ever thought there wouldn't be any yelling or scuffling or altercation first, that you'd just wake up on a bus to a guy with a knife in his neck. They were, quite understandably, completely unprepared for that situation and had no idea how to react.

In most situations in life, if you can't think what to do and are completely unprepared for this situation, you get the fuck out of the way. The people also had their self-preservation instincts pushing them out of that bus, and Tim was already quite clearly dead.

I don't think it's fair to blame people who find themselves in a life and death situation that they never in their craziest ideas ever thought would happen at all ever anywhere or anytime in the world for not instantly pulling themselves together and saving the dignity of a dead man. Even if you think it would be appropriate to blame them for not helping if, say, a nice loud altercation had broken out first to give everyone plenty of warning, you can't expect them to have the same presence of mind under these circumstances.