Google is scary smart

I wanted to go to The Weather Network's website, so I typed www.thew into my address bar, trusting the autocomplete to do the rest. The autocomplete didn't take for whatever reason, so I had this random www.thew sitting in my address bar dropdown.

So, as with everything in life, I decided to google it to see what would happen. I googled the w, no quotation marks or anything. The very first thing at the top of the page under Related Searches was The Weather Network.

Hairdressing FAIL

You know how sometimes with updos people have wispy little curls around their faces? I tried to make that happen (just the wispy little curls bit, not the updo).

I came out looking like an Hasidic rabbi.

Things They Should Invent: WhatHappensWhenThisExpires.com

Right now, somewhere in your home, is expired cough syrup. You are completely unaware of this, and won't give it a moment's thought until the next time you get a cough. Then you'll find your cough syrup, notice that it expired 18 months ago, and ponder whether you should take it. What will happen if you take it? Will it poison you? Will it just not work? Will you have all of the side-effects and none of the benefits? You don't know and it's difficult to google.

We need a website that tells us what happens to stuff when it expires. For everything in the world. Then we can make informed decisions. Animal products turn into food poisoning? Don't eat them. A certain over the counter medication simply stops working? Try it anyway to see if it does any good, and if not run out to the drugstore. Condoms stop working? Throw the out right away so you don't reach for the wrong one in a fit of passion. We need answers!

Things Youtube Should Invent (or, rather, reintroduce): shrink poor quality videos down to their original size

I don't have the technical vocabulary to describe this phenomenon, so please bear with me and feel free to politely put it in more grownup words.

When youtubes are poor quality (low resolution?), they don't have enough pixels to fill up the standard youtube screen size, so everything gets enlarged and the pixels take up more than one pixel's worth of space, making the whole thing look kind of fuzzy and pixely and poor quality. (If you don't understand what I'm talking about, take a normal-quality youtube and expand it to full screen.)

YouTube used to have an option where you could shrink the video back down to its original size. So you could have tiny and crisp, or regular and fuzzy, or full-screen and even fuzzier. I think they should bring that option back. I'm not a technical quality geek at all (the technical quality geeks in my life are apalled at my hardware), but even I'm noticing the poor quality and wishing for the option of a smaller but crisper image!

My predreams are carnivorous

Last night as I was waiting to fall asleep, I predreamed that I was in my kitchen preparing breaded chicken. The chicken was in a baking pan thing, and I was expertly seasoning it as though I knew exactly what I was doing.

I've never prepared breaded chicken in my life. I don't think I know how to prepare breaded chicken. There has never been chicken in this apartment. And yet I was seeing this image in the first person. It was definitely a predream as opposed to a proper dream, because I was awake and deliberately shifting position as I settled myself in my bed and thinking about something completely unrelated, but I've never before had a predream image that did not come from reality.

Where my priorities are

Long story how I came to be thinking about this, but today I realized: I don't care if someone steals my cellphone. I'd just buy a new and better one, not a huge deal. However, I would care very much if I couldn't get my phone number back (I don't know offhand how permanently attached to the SIM card the phone number is) because it's a 416 number. For a cellphone. I think I'd even decline to switch providers for a better deal if I couldn't take my number with me. I've been here long enough to have a 416 cell number, I want my Toronto cred dammit!

Why they need to stop renaming Toronto theatres

[the following is an unofficial transcript]

Me: Where's Spamalot playing?
Poodle: The Canon
Me: Is that the one where we saw it last time?
Poodle: I think we saw it at one of the ones on King St.
Me: No, I'm sure it was the one that used to be the Pantages, because I remember I was wondering about the chandelier.
Poodle: I think the Pantages is the Elgin.
Me: No, the Elgin is the Elgin.
Poodle: Okay, then the Pantages must be the Canon, so it's the same one as last time.
Me: They have to stop renaming these fucking theatres! I'm blogging this.

Things They Should Invent: quick and easy general fertility test

There are all kinds of ways to test if you're fertile (i.e. ovulating) today, and there's a lot of medical science that diagnoses specific problems that may cause infertility. But we could also use a quick and easy pee-on-a-stick type of test to give you a rough idea of how fertile you are in general compared with the average woman. It doesn't have to diagnose the reason behind any reduced fertility it finds, just the presence or absence (or, ideally, the degree) of fertility.

For example, I put a lot of time and energy and resources into not becoming pregnant. But I don't actually know if I'm fertile. I've never been pregnant, so there is room for the possibility that I cannot become pregnant. I'd really like if there was an easy way to confirm that I am in fact fertile before I go through any invasive and time-consuming sterilization procedures.

This isn't just applicable to the childfree. People who want children could do a quick general test for the presence of fertility to decide how much time they want to spend on "trying" or whether to go with adoption or artificial conception. People could take the test every year to see if (or how much) their fertility is declining as they age, and plan their lives accordingly. If you want to impress upon teens the importance of responsible sexual behaviour, you could have them take the test and see just how must of a risk they'd be taking. People who have recently had babies could see when their fertility returns and make their family planning decisions accordingly.

Things Ticketmaster et al. Should Invent: find best available seats over multiple days

Sometimes people want to go to a show on a specific day, which is what the current system accomodates. But sometimes you could go on one of several days. Like any Friday is fine, really, and you'd go on a Thursday too if it meant getting really good seats. It would be really convenient if you could search for the best available seats of all the shows, or of all the Friday shows, or all the shows in the one particular week when you'll be in town, etc.

Did they know alcohol was bad for fetuses in the 1950s?

Check this out:



Major Houlihan thinks she's pregnant, and she has two or three standard drinks in this scene. Her reaching for the bottle is context- and character-appropriate, except for the fact that she's a medical professional and has reason to believe she's pregnant.

Is she being irresponsible, or is she being historically accurate?

I've got someone's dream job right here

From an article about the Cancon porn channel:

Northern Peaks would also have to ensure it close captions all of its programs.

Ladies and gentlemen, right now, at this very moment, somewhere in our great nation, there is a job opening for a close captioner of pornography!

Weirdest thing ever

This sounds like something from The Onion, but I just saw it advertised on TV. Is it wrong if I laugh hysterically?

And once again, children provide perspective

So I finally got off my ass and did my errands. Behind me in line at the grocery store was a lady with two small children - I'd estimate their ages at 2 and 4* - who clearly needed some food and a nap. Mein Gott what I have to do is easy in comparison - in comparison to both the mother and the children!

I can go about life without ever having to worry about someone else's Dora the Explorer doll, and if all I want to do is go home and curl up with my favourite stuffed animal I can just go and do that. I can buy what I need at the grocery store without someone wheedling for some junk food every two seconds, and if I want some junk food I can just throw it in the cart without asking anyone's permission. I don't have to organize my life around someone else's bladder needs, and if I have to go to the bathroom I can just go without someone telling me to hold it or scolding me for not going earlier.

All I have to do is put on some music, pour a glass of wine, and tear through 3,000 words of translation. (Don't worry, it gets carefully revised tomorrow without the influence of music or wine, it's just most efficient to do the first draft by brute force and the distractions make that go easier.) Compared with grocery shopping with a 4-year-old and a 2-year-old, dead easy!

*Most people I know who are in a two-child family spaced two or three years apart think this is a bad spacing. The eldest is old enough to get used to being an only child, but too young to really appreciate (both in the sense of "think is little and cute" and "empathize with the greater needs of") a baby, and still needs a lot of parental attention that might take away from the baby's needs. With a wider spacing, like five years, the older sibling is more independent and more able to appreciate a baby. And apparently (or so I've heard) with really close spacing the older sibling doesn't become accustomed to or remember being an only so they don't resent the lack of full parental attention or the need to compromise to accomodate the younger sibling. And yet so many people continue to space their children at two to three years. I wonder why? Perhaps no one tells them. (I certainly couldn't think of a tactful way to tell someone to space their children differently.) Perhaps they grew up in different family configurations themselves. Someone should do a study on how the configuration of the family in which people grew up affects their later family planning as an adult.

The problem with introversion

Introversion is inefficient. I've spent the better part of today inside my head, maybe eating or drinking coffee or experimenting with my hair, but mostly inside my head. But the problem is I have 3,000 words of overtime this weekend, plus I have to go to Dominion and Noah's and the LCBO and the library and Futureshop and BSO and Beddington's, plus my apartment needs probably about 10 hours of housework, plus I have to exercise enough not to lose momentum and there's about six things I want to blog and a dozen things I want to watch on youtube. (Watching youtube or TV or anything is external stimulation. It entertains me, but doesn't give me those inside-my-head hap hits.)

All of this would be so much easier if I actually found it more interesting to do things than to do nothing and spend time inside my head. But not only is getting all this stuff done work, it's also more boring than doing nothing.

Times like this I wish for an extrovert pill.

How to save the planet with one simple rule

I think we can solve all our environmental problems if every human undertaking from this moment on follows one simple rule: everything must be made easier for people using less-polluting modes of transit than for people using more-polluting modes of transit.

Whether you are building a building or opening a business or planning an event, it must be easier for pedestrians than cyclists, easier for cyclists than transit users, and easier for transit users than for drivers. All other rules intended to directly or indirectly promote or discourage use of any particular mode of transit are void. You can do whatever the fuck you want, it just has to be easiest for pedestrians (always using the skirt/heels/handbag standard)and hardest for drivers.

So go ahead and build a drive-thru on a busy, high-density thoroughfare. However, you must arrange things so that the cars in the drive-thru don't get in the way of pedestrians, and so that it's faster to walk in than go through the drive thru.

Go ahead and build a Walmart in the middle of a giant parking lot right on the waterfront. But arrange things so that people don't have to dodge cars to get to the door from the sidewalk or the bus stop (but it's fine for cars to have to wait for buses to get out of the way).

Go ahead and move your office from an expensive urban transit hub to a cheap industrial park in the middle of nowhere. But you must do something to make the commute easier for non-drivers than for drivers, for exampe provide a free shuttle from the old, convenient location for transit-using employees (or multiple shuttles to accommodate people's flextime) and pay for the service by charging employees for parking Or if employees decide to move closer to the new office so they can bike to work, you must compensate them for their moving trouble and expenses.

Shout-out to the plastic bag wars: make a rule that you can have your purchases bagged or you can have your parking validated, but not both.

This approach doesn't stop anyone from driving, it doesn't impinge on real or perceived rights or freedoms or entitlements, it doesn't impinge on free market economics (if the market dictates that cars should be accomodated you can accomodate them all you want, you just have to accomodate pedestrians a tinch more.)

If everything from now on was made more convenient for pedestrians than for cars, more and more people would reach the "not worth driving" tipping point as time goes on. With any luck, that will happen before the oil runs out.

Open Letter to the extremely attractive couple on the subway with the pointy yellow puppy

Dear yellow doggie's humans:

You have the most awesome and adorable puppy in the world. But you can't just let him wander around the subway car on a long loose lead and lie across the aisle. I see that he's harmless and I totally get that interacting with him is a privilege and a joy - seriously, it made my day when he jumped his front paws up on my lap and let me pet him.

But there are people who are afraid of dogs, there are people who are allergic to dogs, there are children who might not know how to behave around dogs, there are blind people who might not be expecting a leash stretched out against the aisle, and there are people who just don't want paws on their lap or a snout up their skirt.

Please, before anything goes wrong, make sure that when you're on the subway you keep him in a sit or down right next to you and on a tight leash so he doesn't wander around. I don't want such a happy and adorable dog to get in trouble.

Sincerely,

Someone who doesn't want to give anyone any reason to prohibit dogs on the TTC

Wherein a foreigner tells the US how to judge their politicians

I've seen a few people on the internet dis US presidential candidate John McCain because apparently he owns multiple houses. I see that this isn't the kind of thing the average person can identify with, but maybe we should be open-minded. Different people have different needs - I'm sure there are a lot of people who think it's decadent that my sister and I each had our own room growing up, even though this was probably the only reason we both survived to adulthood - and as long as he isn't hurting anyone it isn't an actual problem.

However, I might humbly suggest that a trait USians should look for in a prospective president is that they know exactly how many houses they own.

Things They Should Invent: a device that automatically separates menstrual blood from used feminine hygiene products

Yesterday we learned that they can make stem cells from menstrual blood.

So now we need an effective way to harness all the menstrual blood that people throw out every month in their used pads and tampons. We need some way to take all the used FHPs from those bins in public washrooms and throw them all in a giant machine or something and separate out the menstruation. You know how for the Toronto green bin program they came up with a way to automatically separate plastic bags from organic waste, so people could sanitarily wrap their organic waste in plastic before throwing it out? We need something similar for FHPs and menstruation. Then we'll have an infinite supply of stem cells.

Bottled water

1. Does anyone actually drink a bottle of water and then throw out the bottle? Like systematically on an everyday basis? Everyone I know refills them. Every once in a while you leave it behind or it starts tasting yucky or you start using a new one because you have a cold, but in general you refill it. I always see people at the drinking fountain refilling their water bottles. That Aquafina bottle in my purse? Full of tap water, and I use like six a year.

2. Does anyone actually consider bottled water to be a status symbol? The blamosauruses are all "OMG they're just carrying it around to show off!" (and they say the same thing about cell phones) but I can't imagine anyone actually thinking that a bottle of water that you can get at the shadiest convenience store in your neighbourhood is a status symbol.

3. Now Toronto is talking about banning bottled water. If they want to ban selling it in municipal buildings like they did in London (I think it was?) that's perfectly fine, but they can't ban it from the city. Why? Think back to the 2003 blackout. Did you have running water? People in highrises didn't. The water pumps run on electricity. So people ran around the neighbourhood until they found a corner store that was still open and bought bottled water. I'm worried that if they get overzealous with this ban, we won't be able to buy bottled water at the corner store any more. I'm worried that someone might bring up the fact that it's an emergency provision and they'll attempt to address it by making it possible to buy those big blue cooler bottles at like one Home Depot in Scarborough, which is useless if you're carfree like they're trying to encourage. (It's like how when they talk about banning plastic bags people always say "You can get biodegradable garbage bags at Home Depot," but Home Depot is a half-hour bus ride completely out of my way.) I mean yeah, we're supposed to have 72-hour kits in our homes, but that doesn't mean that people should die of dehydration if they don't manage to get it together.

Dear City of Toronto:

Whatever you do, please do not ban or make it more difficult to acquire bottled water as an emergency provision.