Weird

Typealyzer thinks I'm an ISTJ

ISTJ - The Duty Fulfillers

The responsible and hardworking type. They are especially attuned to the details of life and are careful about getting the facts right. Conservative by nature they are often reluctant to take any risks whatsoever.

The Duty Fulfillers are happy to be let alone and to be able to work int heir own pace. They know what they have to do and how to do it.

IRL, I'm right on the threshold between INFJ and INFP

I'm glad Dalton McGuinty isn't my father

"Perhaps the most precious thing we have in society is our children, and that includes our older children," McGuinty said at Queen's Park.

"We owe it to our kids to take the kinds of measures that ensure that they will grow up safe and sound and secure, and if that means a modest restriction on their freedoms until they reach the age of 22, then as a dad, I'm more than prepared to do that."

"As a dad" doesn't get a vote for people over the age of majority. Even my over-protective parents understand that. Dalton McGuinty has, what, four adult children? He should understand this. Since OAC was eliminated, people finish high school at 17 or 18. That means they'd finish a four-year university program at 21 or 22, or a two-year college program at 19 or 20. These aren't children, they're young professionals just starting out. They are legally adults, they need to be treated equally to all other adults rather than put under specific restrictions just because of their age. While it is true that many, if not most, people under 22 haven't fully launched yet, that doesn't justify the law as treating them as less than fully adult. Their not having launched is between them and their parents, a private arrangement between familiy members. My mother does my taxes (Q: Why? A: Because she's a professional and I'm not.) but that doesn't mean it's reasonable for the law to require that people under 30 get their tax return signed by their mother. When my parents travel I help them find information on non-English websites, but that doesn't mean it's reasonable for the law to require that people over 50 get their travel arrangements vetted by a professional translator. Experience-based restrictions? If you must. Age-based restrictions? Completely inappropriate, arbitrarily treats younger adults as subhuman, and violates section 15 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

For example, I'm a horrible, nervous, skittish driver who hasn't been behind the wheel in a decade (aren't you glad?). I didn't finish graduated licencing within the allotted five years, but I have a G1 to use as ID. I also happen to be 27 years old. Under these proposed rules, I could go to one of those crammer driving schools that promises to get you through the road test in 24 hours, pass my G1 exit test and get a G2, and drive around with as many screaming idiots as I can fit in the car. However, a fully-licenced 21-year-old who's been driving every day since they were 16 (and who is, in fact, qualified to be my accompanying driver as I frantically practise for the road test) can't road-trip to the cottage or drive their whole band to the gig in the same van. But if the 21-year-old scootches over, nervous skittish me with a day or two of intensive driving practice and a freshly minted G2 under my belt can drive the whole lot of them.

I'm worried about this government. They seem to be tabling a lot of bills that might sound like a good idea at first glance, but really the issues are much more complex and the simplistic solutions might actually be detrimental. For example, recently they were talking about banning bottled water. Period. Problem: bottled water is also an emergency provision and we'd have enormous potential for disaster if it was banned without contingency plan. They did ban plastic bags at the LCBO without giving any thought to the fact that plastic bags end up in the landfill in their capacity as garbage bags and to actually divert plastic from the landfill they'd need a solution that addresses that. I shouldn't be spotting these problems, the government should be spotting them and addressing them before they even get to me. The government needs to be smarter than me, because, frankly, I'm not that smart! Get on it Mr. McGuinty!

This all came about from lobbying from MADD after some kids died in a car accident. I know it's bad form to speak ill of anti-drunk-driving organizations, but frankly the more I hear from MADD the less respect I have for them. They seem more focused on putting restrictions on people (especially young people) than on actually reducing drunk driving. For example, I distinctly remember in the early part of this decade (either when I was in uni or shortly thereafter) they wanted to ban alcohol on campuses - including res!. Yeah, brilliant thinking there. You've got an area where some of your target audience lives, a lot more of your target audience lives within walking distance, and that probably serves as a transit hub for the community. So make it so your target audience has to go further from their homes and the transit hub if they want to have a drink. Yeah, that's really going to cut down on drunk driving! (To say nothing of making it illegal for on-campus university students to enjoy a legal drink in their homes even though it's perfectly legal for their high-school dropout peers to do the same).

Why don't we ever see them lobbying for things that are non-punitive to prospective drinkers and prospective drivers? For example, why not lobby for the TTC to run the subways after last call? Why not lobby to make it easier to get alcohol permits for non-car-dependent locations than in car-dependent locations? Why not use all their resources to come up with a workable taxi voucher system for those take-the-keys-away situations? (Off the top of my head: 1. The bartender takes your keys and gives you two taxi vouchers - one to take you home tonight, the other so you can collect your car tomorrow. The next day you pay them a nominal fee that's less than the taxi rides would have cost and they give you your keys back. 2. With every purchase of a keg you get a certain number of taxi vouchers. How to fund it? Contributions from MADD, contributions from governments, contributions from alcohol taxes, bulk discounts on taxi vouchers. There are flaws, obviously, but that's at least 50% of the way to a workable system and that's just me off the top of my head in a mid-rant digression. Surely MADD with all their researchers and experts and influence can do better.) If MADD does do things like this and I just haven't noticed them and wasn't able to google them up, please post links in the comments to let me know. I don't want to dislike them, but they seem way more M than ADD and it's getting very difficult for me to have any respect for them.

Things Youtube Should Invent

1. Give us the option to have embedded videos start at a defined point. You can do this in a link to Google Video by adding #1m25s to start the video at 1:25. But I'd like to be able to do that with embedded youtubes, so I don't have to post the embed and then add "The part I'm talking about is at 5:00" and then my users have to wait for it to load and scroll around to find 5:00.

2. Let us mark a video as "This doesn't need to be a video!" For example, today I found a video that was essentially a list of sentences. They appeared as text on the screen while irrelevant music played in the background. It was five minutes long, and I could have read it as text in 10 seconds. This is inappropriate use of the medium! Or, if you want to be more positive, how about letting us mark videos as "Transcription requested." Then the person who posted it or a friendly volunteer user could post the transcript in the comments, thus increasing googleability, helping viewers who have trouble hearing every word (poor sound quality, strange accents, lyric-deafness), and saving people having to sit through a five-minute video when a simple text list would do.

3. Or, barring that, how about a fast-forward button, so we could play the video at 2x or 4x speed to skim through and see if we want to actually watch it?

How to do a reverse apology

Via Language Log, some guy walks around New York City apologizing to people who bump into him.

That took a minute, didn't it? We all do that automatically, it a basic part of Canadian etiquette.

The problem is, the guy in the article is overdoing it. His reverse apologies are really pointed and come across as passive-aggressive. A proper reverse apology has to come across as perfectly automatic, as automatic as saying thanks when the cashier hands you your change. It needs to be non-specific. "Sorry" or "Oops, sorry" will do just fine. "Sorry you dropped my apple" is petty and passive-aggressive. However, even if you are just saying the word "Sorry" and saying it automatically as soon as the incident occurs, you also need to say it like it's no big deal. Imagine you're walking through a subway station, busy day, a lot on your mind, striding briskly towards the platform (the train isn't there yet so you aren't running) and you bump into someone else. No big deal, no one is hurt, really your bag just hit their bag, no need to break stride, you say "Oops, sorry" and continue on your way, the encounter forgotten two seconds later. That's the kind of tone you need. In my corner of the world, that will elicit a sorry of equal or greater value. Doing anything bigger or more pointed for a minor incident in which you are not at fault will come across as passive-aggressive and put the other person on the defensive.

It would be interesting to repeat this experiment with someone who is fluent in reverse apologies, who does it automatically, and who isn't so actively seeking to change behaviour. Canadians who are currently in New York City (I'm sure there are some Canadians in New York City at any given time): spend a day apologizing like a Canadian and blog your findings!

A hamster eating broccoli

I'm very tired and cranky today, and am going to be doing some cranky blogging as soon as I get less cranky (cranky blogging isn't nearly as effective until I'm post-cranky, but the material still needs to be blogged). But this made me melt, so I'll share it. That way if you're reading my blog from the top down you'll get a smile after all the crankiness. (If you're reading chronologically, you've been warned.)



(via the awesome Malene Arpe)

In re: today's Corner Gas

1. Brent Butt has had his teeth whitened to TV standards. Perfectly normal thing to do if you're going to be on TV (I'd totally get it done if I had to be on TV even once, but I'm insecure that way), but it looks WAY out of character. Brent would never get his teeth whitened.

2. My mother's lasagna recipe totally involves the food processor. I can't figure out how you'd make lasagna without one.

Generosity

I think true generosity isn't giving people things or money or time. I think true generosity is giving people the benefit of the doubt, and not begrudging them whatever good fortune they might have.

It's hella hard and not nearly as personally rewarding. Dropping a quarter in the tip jar at Tim Horton's is way easier than thinking "Poor girl, she must be having a rough day" when they mess up your order after you've already waited in a line that goes out the door. Spending an afternoon sorting cans a the food bank is way easier than thinking "Good for them, that's a much-needed increase" when you hear about social assistance rates going up while you sort through paying the bills after a long day at the office. Picking something pricey off the wedding registry is exponentially easier than convincing yourself to be genuinely happy for them even though you were supposed to get married first. Generosity of time and money get noticed, get thanks, get people thinking of you as generous. Generosity of attitude goes unnoticed.

But I really think if everyone could just somehow figure out how to muster up benefit of the doubt and non-begrudgeal of good fortune, the world would be a far better place.

For the person googling for the definition of "stanaist"

"Stanaist" is a typo of Satanist. :)

Dear Google: You might want to add this to your autocorrect thingy.

From PostSecret

An email commenter said that they did this too, and several other people in the community agreed. And, it feels bizarrely personal to admit, my first thought after he was elected was to wish that I was able to pray so I could pray for his safety. Later on I did try to pray, but I'm still incapable of it. I'm still just empitly going through motions, even though I actually wanted to be able to do it.

But it occurred to me, this might be the one thing in the history of the world that has inspired the most atheists to attempt to pray. That would be...kinda weird, kinda cool, kinda sad, kinda scary.

Things They Should Invent: garbage bins that are too small to be too heavy

I've recently heard of people whose green bins or blue bins weren't picked up by the garbage collectors because they were too heavy (the bins, not the people).

Simple solution: make the bins small enough that they won't be too heavy even if they're full, and give each household two or more bins. It seems to me that the weight of organics and recyclables should be relatively predictable. Assume each bin is completely full of the heaviest possible materials that might go in that size of bin, adjust bin size accordingly, issue each household a sufficient number of bins.

Outside my window, October 27, about 4:30 p.m.

I know the buildings look overexposed, but the colours actually are just about accurate. A massive rainstorm was heading out to the east (i.e. the direction the camera is facing) and bright sun was shining in from the west, lighting up the buildings.

Things LJ Should Invent: have locked posts show up in feeds

I don't actually check my LJ friends page that often because it's such a very small part of my overall internet rounds. I've added some people's feeds to my Google Reader, but that doesn't show friends-locked posts so I miss stuff.

To solve this, LJ feeds should show the presence of friends-locked posts. Not the contents, of course. Just show that there is a post there. Then people could click through, log in, and read the post. That would accomodate both the internet's general shift to feed readers and LJ users' need to maintain some privacy.

Things They Should Invent: limited number of "offensive" votes per user per day

I've noticed that people in newspaper comment threads (yeah, I know) are way overusing the mark as offensive option. In some threads, nearly every post has been marked offensive.

Each user should only be allowed to mark one or two things offensive per day. Things that actually are offensive would still get marked, but it would stop people from marking everything willy-nilly.

Open Letter to Rogers

Dear Rogers:

If you're experiencing higher than usual volumes that mean it will take nine days for you to respond to my email, you might want to change your autoreply so it no longer promises me a response within 24 hours. A realistic timeframe would be nice, or just have the autoreply tell me you've received my email and it will be handled in the order received. I wouldn't be disgruntled at your response time if you hadn't promised me 24 hours.

That said, a reply saying nothing more than that my issue needs to be handled by phone is unacceptable. I sent email in the first place because I don't like the phone, so you need to give me a good reason why this has to be done by phone. It only takes like 30 seconds to do this. If that channel actually isn't part of my package, as my readers have worked out faster than you could, you can tell me that in an email. If it is part of my package but for whatever reason you can only activate it by phone, you need to tell me that in the email. Ideally you should put some note on my file so when (if) I call, the phone person will know right away why I'm calling and I don't have to go through the whole story again. (If you want to be really awesome, set up something so that people who have contacted you already by email only to find that they need to call get bumped to the front of the queue.)

In any case, waiting nine times the promised wait time only to be told I need to call is unacceptable. You could very easily do better.

Best fanfic rant ever

Read this now. Seriously. Even if you aren't into fanfic. Really.

Famous people twittering

It seems John Cleese and Stephen Fry are both actually and legitimately on Twitter. (This is confirmed on their official websites.) What surprises me is that other users, who seem by all appearances to be just regular ordinary people, are sometimes replying to them, and sometimes they reply back! I envy that confidence, to think that of course you're allowed to reply to a famous person just because they're on Twitter!

Of course, if I had the confidence to think I'm allowed to talk to famous people, I'd probably end up like Mel on Flight of the Conchords.

Ratings and censorship

Lately I've been noticing how much things like movie ratings and censorship are focused on protecting children from adult concepts. This is odd, because that's such a small portion of your life! Before the age of, say, 8 you're more into child-focused media, and by the age of about 16 you can handle adult concepts well enough that you don't need to be protected. It's also starting to annoy me a bit, because I keep coming across things that censor things that are so massively unlike anything from which I need to be protected, and the censorship is way more obvious than the offending concept would be if left alone. For example, I saw a youtube of Christina Aguilera performing Candyman on TV, and they censored the word panties. (The line, as part of a descriptoin of a charming and seductive man: "He's a one stop shop, makes my panties drop, he's a sweet talking sugar-coated candyman".) I saw a video of Nickelback's Rockstar where they censored the word pills (The line, as part of a laundry list of sterotypical rockstar behaviour: "I'm gonna pop my pills from a pez dispenser"). Actually, they also censored the word drug in "Everybody's got a drug dealer on speed-dial," which is ridiculous because "Everybody's got a * dealer on speed-dial" means exactly the same thing! I also somehow ended up with a censored version of Hate Me by Blue October (I think I got it from a Big Shiny Tunes album), where they censor the word fucking (line: "I'll drive so fucking far away that I'll never cross your mind"), but they kept the line about cockroaches leaving babies in your bed. I don't need to be protected from the word fucking, but I certainly wouldn't mind being protected from the image of cockroaches leaving eggs in my bed, thank you very much!

I wish it was possible for us to choose more specifically what does and doesn't get censored in the media we consume. For example, I don't want to watch rape scenes, but I don't need happy sex scenes to be censored. (I don't mind if they tone them down to protect the actors' modesty, but I don't need them toned down to protect my delicate sensibilities.) I don't mind blood, but I'm completely squicked out by broken bones or eyeballs. I don't mind snakes or monsters, but bugs will give me nightmares. Profanity I don't give a fuck about, but I don't want hate speech unless it really is absolutely necessary in the broader context. Remember that V-chip thing they were talking about in the 90s? Wouldn't it be awesome if you could fine-tune it to censor only the precise things you don't want to see?

Blast from the past

Once upon a time this was the coolest thing ever:

Are people with white earbuds really more likely to be mugged?

A piece of information that is often repeated in the media is that you should get headphones other than the distinctive white ipod earbuds, because people like to steal ipods and the headphones are a big flashing sign showing that you have an ipod.

I find myself doubting whether this is actually true.

I see a lot of headphones walking around in my daily life, so one day I decided to count the number of ipods. On my walk from the subway to my apartment, I saw 30 confirmed ipods (either I saw the ipod itself, or I saw the ipod earbuds). I'd previously counted that I cross paths with 100 people on the same walk. (I haven't counted how many of those 100 people were wearing some kind of headphones that couldn't be confirmed as an ipod, because it's diffcult to keep multiple running tallies at once.)

So given that level of market penetration, wouldn't it behoove the thieves to assume that any headphones they see are attached to an ipod? And why would they only want ipods anyway? I haven't done extensive research (at the time when I bought my ipod the ipod was the best device for my own personal needs, but I haven't researched since), but the ipod has been on the market for seven years, surely other brands are generally competitive by now?