Things They Should Invent: viable alternatives to plastic

This train of thought started with this article but drifted far enough that I'm not actually quoting the article or anything.

There seem to be two attitudes towards plastic packaging today. One is that it's bad and evil and we must ban it. The other is that we need it.

The "Ban it!" contingent seems intent on changing people's behaviour, often in ways that are less convenient. But is anyone actually thinking about inventing something that will fulfill the same functions with the same convenience as our plastic products currently do, so people won't have to change their behaviour at all?

If you've been reading for a while, you'll know that I'm a huge fan of plastic. But it isn't the plastic itself that I like, it's the functionalities of the various plastic products. I like getting my shopping packaged in plastic bags because then I don't need to carry giant totebags around with me all day just because I might want to pick up a few groceries on the way home. I like that the plastic bags are disposable because then I can use them as garbage bags. I like plastic bags as opposed to paper bags because the plastic bags have handles, so I can carry way more of them at once and hang them on my forearms when I need my hands free. I like take-out food containers because then I can eat my food at my desk when work is busy, or take it somewhere else when the Tim Hortons is full (which the one near my work often is). I like disposable take-out containers rather than bringing my own reuseables because then I don't have to wash dishes in the poorly-equipped office kitchen or carry dirty dishes home with me.

So is anyone actually thinking or researching about alternatives to these products that won't require the users to change behaviour? There's definitely a market for this and it's going to be a money-maker.

It also occurs to me that replacing disposable products with non-disposable products might not always be a good idea. If you create a product designed for permanence that the user doesn't actually want to be permanent, it's probably going to end up in a landfill next time they move. For example, several businesses have given me free totebags, with the idea that I'll reuse them when shopping next time. But I never use them, because I don't shop that way. They're just cluttering up my apartment. Eventually they're just going to end up in the clothing donation box (which I know isn't where they belong, but the alternative is the landfill.) As I've mentioned before, a more effective alternative would be biodegradable plastic bags, which would be used as garbage bags and biodegrade, rather than taking up room and being useless. And I'm sure there are similar alternatives that could be created for other currently-plastic products that people don't actually want to be permanent. Our scientists and engineers and inventors shouldn't view permanence as panacea and as the only alternative to the landfill; they should look at what the user actually wants out of the product, and create more environmentally-friendly impermanent alternatives when the user doesn't want permanence.

Texting lowers your IQ?

Mentioned in a larger article I found via Language Log:

“The act of texting automatically removes 10 I.Q. points,” said Paul Saffo, a technology trend forecaster in Silicon Valley.

I'm not questioning that it's distracting. It's way distracting to me. I stop texting when crossing streets, stepping on and off trains and escalators etc. because if I don't I'll fall or crash into something or get hit by a car. But is that really IQ? Are people with higher IQs really better at not getting hit by cars? And, conversely, do people with lower IQs get hit by cars more?

And if it is IQ, it's way more than 10 points. There's no way the average person is as stupid as I am when texting (and I test significantly more than 10 points higher than average - I know it's obscenely gauche to mention this but I don't know how to make my point without this factoid). If that were true, society couldn't function. Everyone would be tripping and falling and crashing into each other.

Also, if it is IQ, does it lower everyone by the same number of points? Or does it lower everyone to the same number of points? Maybe, instead of knocking X points off everyone's score, maybe it makes everyone act like they have an IQ of 80 or something. This would make more sense. If it just knocked 10 points off your IQ, then MENSA members should still be allowed to text while driving.

Anyone know stuff about employment law?

Employment laws require employers to give employees notice - on average, six months, although that could be shorter or longer depending on the length of employment and seniority - when their jobs are being terminated; employees are entitled to be paid for that time.

Six months? Is that correct? Like even for ordinary people? That seems really high to me, I always thought it was like two weeks.

Explain economics to me please

Economists warn of deflation threat.

Why is deflation threatening?

With inflation, each dollar buys less. So it stands to reason that with deflation, each dollar will buy more. On a personal level, this means that I can buy more stuff. It means that, even if I don't manage to get a good interest rate, the real value of my savings isn't going to decrease. It means that if I lose my job, I can stretch my savings further.

On a broader level, if people can buy more stuff that will stimulate the economy, which is generally considered a good thing. If we can buy more stuff, we can buy more discrete consumer products (i.e. instead of buying shoes I can buy shoes AND a dress), each of which has its own supply chain involving several jobs that will be supported by the purchase. If real prices are lower, we'll be able to afford more local and more ethical purchases rather than buying the cheapest made in china stuff from the dollar store, which will support local and ethical businesses and manufacturers and, again, boost the economy.

So why is deflation a threat? What am I missing here?

What To Expect When You're Aborting

I mentioned earlier that I've been reading what might be the internet's first abortion blog.

I went in hoping to learn more about the procedure itself, and I learned some very useful things about the timing of the procedure. Turns out you can only get a medical abortion (i.e. using pills) until 7 weeks and you can't get a surgical abortion until later, which ultimately means you need to find out that you're pregnant as soon as possible. I used to think that since I'm on the pill I'd wait until I missed the second period, just so as to not to cry wolf. Then I learned there are sometimes waiting times, so I decided I'd act as soon as I missed my first period. But now, knowing how important the timing is, if I don't get my period on Tuesday afternoon like I have every month since I started taking the pill, I'm buying a pee-on-a-stick test on Wednesday!

But there was one thing brought up in this blog that never even remotely occurred to me before and completely blew my puny little mind:

Between conception and abortion, you experience pregnancy symptoms!

This makes perfect sense, of course. Your body doesn't know you're getting an abortion, so it's merrily gestating away. But I never thought of this before. Yes, I've been planning my abortion for the last 12 years, but I've always been thinking of it as a mcguffin to acquire, a mission to fulfill. Where can I get one? What will it cost me? What hinderances might I face and how can I overcome them? For 12 years I've always had in the back of my mind how I might scrape together hundreds of dollars in a real hurry (even though they're covered by OHIP) and face down protesters (even though many, if not all, clinics have an injunction) and get to, through, and home from the appointment without a support person (even though I can think of half a dozen support people offhand) and get out of whatever obligations I might have at any given time without telling anyone who might try to stop me or whose reaction I don't want to deal with managing what I'm really going off and doing. I have a massive mental decision tree that I'm constantly updating. But I never once gave a moment's thought to what my body might be doing at the same time. I'd always thought of pregnancy symptoms as something that happened to other people, to people who were going to have a baby. In trashy women's magazines it's in the Pregnancy & Baby section, which I always just skip over when I'm looking for hair styles or crappy advice columns or stupid quizzes. I'd always thought of it as Someone Else's Problem, I'd never thought of it as something I might have to deal with myself.

And, frankly, the prospect of going through pregnancy symptoms is scary! I haven't even thrown up since I was like 13, I wouldn't know what to do! Having your body do anything new for the first time is always exceptionally scary and difficult. (My first menstrual cramps I spent the afternoon curled up in a ball on the family room floor, desperately trying to teach myself how to swallow pills so I could take adult-calibre painkillers, sobbing at the prospect of going through this once a month for the rest of my life. Two hundred cycles later, worst case I take my heating pad to work with me.) And because abortion is a sensitive topic, I might have to go through all these pregnancy symptoms without telling anyone. If I threw up from the flu or food poisoning, or even from a wanted pregnancy, I could call my mother and say "Mommy help I threw up!" and she'd comfort me and tell me what to do and probably even come take care of me if I asked her to. If I were at work experiencing pregnancy symptoms from a pregnancy that I intended to carry to term, I'd only have to drop a hint into the rumour mill and half a dozen women would flock around me bearing soda crackers and pickles and advice and old baby clothes. But I don't know how any of these people would react if I told them I was having an abortion, and I wouldn't necessarily want to manage their reaction when also dealing with pregnancy-induced bloating and nausea and mood swings for the first time in my life. Oh, and guess what, it turns out there's also another round of hormonal shit after the abortion, because your hormone levels change again!

The blogger behind What To Expect When You're Aborting (you know, the thing I'm REALLY talking about in this post even though I just went off on a me me me tangent about something that's completely hypothetical) recently mentioned that she's disappointed in herself for experiencing this emotional drama and was hesitant to blog about it. But I'm very glad and grateful that she did blog about it, because if she hadn't it would never have occurred to me. As scary as pregnancy symptoms are, it's not like they change anything in my decision-making. But now that I know about them, at least I can have an idea of what to expect and maybe eventually come up with some coping strategies. In my limited null gravida experience with hormonal mood swings, I find they're easier to deal with when I realize that my mood is hormonal. Now that I have some idea what to expect, maybe that will help.

Pop quiz

Read the following line aloud.

I can't, can you? You can't, can you? I can't.

Did you read it aloud? Seriously, not in your head, aloud.

Are you sure.

Okay, then you can continue.

Did you pronounce can and can't with the same vowel sound?

Before you did that, did you think you pronounced can and can't with the same vowel sound?

I was absolutely 100% certain I pronounced them the same. But it turns out I don't. I wonder how many other things I don't pronounce the way I think I do. Maybe this is why I always had so much trouble with phonetics.

It's official, they don't want my vote

I recently theorized, based on the campaign literature I've received so far, that the Conservative party doesn't care about me at all.

I was right, I am officially of no interest to them.

The Conservatives have given fictional names to demographic segments in the electorate that they've identified.

“Zoey” is a central city inhabitant who eats organic food and is of no interest to them; ditto with “Marcus and Fiona,” a high-income urban couple with no children and professional jobs.

I know, I'm not as cool as Zoey, Marcus and Fiona. I'm only organic when it's convenient, I'm not high-income, and I'm not in a couple household. But that's basically what I identify with and aspire to be.

I'm glad we all understand each other.

Store cats

You know how sometimes small non-chain stores have a cat that hangs out in the store and purrs at and/or sheds on the customers? Does it live there full-time, or does the owner take it home at night? If so, does that mean they have to coerce the cat into a carrier twice a day?

Our immigration policies disgust me

Holy shit! Immigration Canada investigates immigrants' marriages to make sure they're "real" and not marriages of convenience. I am shocked and appalled and disgusted!

Even if they are marriages of convenience, as long as everyone in the marriage understands and agrees to the terms, who cares? As citizens, we can marry whomever we want under whatever circumstances we want and the state doesn't care. We can ask our parents to arrange a marriage, we can seduce a billionaire centenarian, we can have a chaste arrangement with someone of incompatible sexual orientation, we can post an ad on craigslist saying "I have breasts and insurance!" and marry the first person to respond, and the state is going to give a moment's care. But immigrants have to prove that they know each other well enough and like each other well enough to meet some functionary's qualitative standards? How dare the state demand this? We established, before I was even born, that the state has no place in the bedrooms of the nation. But apparently it's allowed to poke around in the hearts and minds of the nation to make sure they like each other enough like some asshole father who enjoys tormenting teenage boys by interrogating them about their intentions towards his daughter, even if his daughter just wants him to STFU so she can take her date somewhere private and get some cunnilingus!

At this point some of you are wondering "Why are you, a huge fan of serious till-death-do-us-part marriage, advocating marriages of convenience?" I'm not advocating them. I certainly wouldn't want one myself! But then, I wouldn't want a marriage that involves child-rearing either. However, some people strongly believe that the purpose of marriage is "for the procreation of children" (I think that's the exact wording of wedding vows in some Protestant denominations). Now suppose I had some relatives who thought that and disapproved of my childfree marriage. Then suppose I died. Then suppose my relatives tried to get my spouse disinherited and kicked out of the country on the basis that our marriage wasn't real because we didn't have children. Then suppose some government agency took their complaint seriously and investigated it and interrogated my spouse and might actually kick them out on the basis that we didn't have children, even though we both agreed on being childfree, because the vast majority of Canadian marriages do have children?

That's just what they're doing here. They're investigating immigrants to make sure their marriages are similar enough to most Canadian marriages without even allowing for the possibility that they're consenting adults with their own unique arragement, even though citizens are allowed to have whatever bizarre arrangement they want without the state even throwing a glance in their direction.

I'm ashamed of us, Canada! This also makes me want to go get a marriage of convenience to somewhere cooler than us, like Europe or something, just out of spite.

Why has no one made this mashup yet?

Fat Bottomed Girls vs. Baby Got Back vs. Bootylicious. It's so obvious! Sure, they're melodically incompatible, but it's so obvious that one or two songs could be represented with only nominal snippets, or they could be medlied more than mashed.

How to get through abortion clinic protest lines

What To Expect When You're Aborting, which is possibly the internet's first abortion blog (and which I'm going to blog about more later because it's kick-ass and very helpful and makes me think - I hope she doesn't mind the attention) gets credit for making me think of this.

The patient approaches the clinic with two support people, at least one of whom is female. (This could also be executed with one female support person, but with two people it would be more convincing and take less acting.)

As they approach the clinic, they patient and the other support person flank the female support person, put their arms protectively around her, and hustle her into the clinic. The female support person serves as a decoy patient and takes all the abuse, leaving the real patient with nothing to do but play bodyguard.

Not that anyone is obligated to be gratuitously awesome in this situation, but bonus awesome points if the decoy patient pretends to have a change of heart in a big dramatic way, distracting the protesters and making them think they won while the real patient slips quietly into the door. Logistical problem: then the support people aren't inside to take the real patient home.

Bunny break

Baby bunnies!

Can people with prosthetic hands use microwaves?

Long story how I stumbled upon this, but it turns out the touchpad on my microwave only works if you press the buttons with actual flesh and blood. Pressure alone won't make them work, they need the warmth (I assume it's the warmth) too.

Every microwave I've ever met had a touchpad, I assume they all work the same.

So what about people with prosthetic hands? Are they forever locked out of microwaves?

Brilliant Ideas That Will Never Work: yellow bike approach to reuseable containers

Toronto wants to ban disposable coffee cups in addition to plastic bags.

If they do this, then if you want a coffee while away from home, you'll have to carry a mug around with you all day. This would work for office workers, who can keep their mug on their desk and wash it in the sink, but it won't work for people who are on the move all day or work outdoors or for whom spontenous coffee comes up. ("Want to go for a coffee?" "I can't, I don't have a mug with me.") If this goes through, people will have to carry a couple of totebags and a coffee mug around with them all day just so they can go through the normal everyday activities of grabbing a quick coffee if they feel the need or pick up a couple of things for dinner on the way home. This isn't a huge deal for car people, who have basically a small room in which to store anything they might have to carry around, but it's a major inconvenience for pedestrians and transit users. We're supposed to be getting people out of their cars too, and this doesn't pass the skirt heels handbag test.

It would be brilliant if they could solve this by taking a yellow bike approach to mugs and tote bags. You can pick up a reuseable at the place where you buy your coffee/groceries, then you can just leave it somewhere when you're done. Maybe you could leave the tote bags in the lobby of your apartment building. Maybe you could leave the mugs anywhere in the city that sells coffee. In any case, drop-off locations would be plentiful and convenient. Then someone would pick them up (job creation!), the mugs would be washed sanitarily, and they'd be taken back to retailers for reuse.

Obviously the logistical problems are overwhelming. They'd need massive numbers of drop-off locations to make this convenient for people. Getting the right numbers of containers back to the right retailers would be complicated. Who would pay for all this? I have no idea! That's why I classified it under Brilliant Ideas That Will Never Work instead of Things They Should Invent, but I'd love to be proven wrong.

Today also needs some music from high school

Today needs some Sesame Street

Things They Should Invent: hot compress mask

If you have a zit or clogged pore that won't come out, you're supposed to put a hot compress on it. The problem is that you can't go about your everyday activities with a hot compress. You need one hand to hold it on, and depending on where it is you might have to remove clothes or glasses or something.

What we need is a mask that serves as a hot compress. Not a mask in the sense of an object that you wear on your face, but mask in the sense of cosmetic goop that you put on your skin. You take a bit of goop, put it on the affected area, and it sits there and acts like a hot compress, opening the pore and bringing the contents to a head. It would have to come in a tube or something so you can dispense only a small amount to cover the zit.

Biore Self-Heating Mask does this sort of. It helps a bit with the pores in general and cystic acne drains faster after I use it (plus on occasion it has even tightened up wrinkles, which doesn't make sense but it did happen) but I'd like something more targeted that serves specifically as a hot compress.

What if infertility is hereditary?

Extraordinary measures to address infertility are very recent. I think the world's first test tube baby is about my age, so the first children born of artificial conception might be starting families themselves right about now if they're into that sort of thing.

What if it turns out that whatever caused their parents' infertility is hereditary? We would just be finding that out right about now or maybe within the next few years. Up until now, we would have no way of knowing if infertility is hereditary, because people who were infertile never had children before my generation was born.

I don't really have a point here, I'm just appreciating the mindfuck aspects of this idea.

Sophisticated voter targeting?

Mentioned in passing in an only tangentally-related article:

Both are evidence of what Canada's political parties and for-hire election campaign tacticians have known for some time: that the Conservatives are doing the most sophisticated, intense and widespread voter-targeting in the country.

I wasn't going to mention it this early on, but I've gotten two pieces of literature from the Conservative campaign so far, and they were both addressing me very specifically in my capacity as a parent.

Thing is, I'm not a parent. Not only that, but very few people in my postal code are. If they had done any demographic targeting at all, they wouldn't be sending me this stuff.

Originally I was going to comment on how I've never before gotten political propganda targeting me as something I'm not. I've gotten material targeting me as having an opinion I don't have, but always in my capacity of something that I am. I've gotten both "As a tenant, here's why you should support rent control" and "As a tenant, here's why you should oppose rent control." I've gotten "As a hard-working citizen" as a premise for nearly every political platform I've ever heard of. But I've never been targeted as something I'm not. And they consider this sophisticated voter targeting? All I can assume is that means they don't give a flying fuck about me.