Saturday, January 31, 2009

What people need to know before commenting on Employment Insurance

Employment Insurance benefits are 55% of your weekly income, to a maximum of $447 a week (which is equal to just over $23,000 a year).

This means if you make $100 a week, you'll get no more than $55 a week in EI.
If you make $500 a week, you'll get no more than no more than $275 a week in EI.
If you make $1000 a week, you'll get no more than $447 a week in EI.
If you make $2000 a week, you'll get no more than $447 a week in EI.

All these amounts are before tax.

Friday, January 30, 2009

Things They Should Invent Words For

1. When something fucking obvious that you have trouble actually explaining it because it is so incredibly fucking obvious. (e.g. "Why would you want to retire? What on earth would you do with your time?")

2. When you read or hear something about someone that makes you think they're an asshole, then time passes and you forget why exactly you think they're an asshole but you remain convinced that they're an asshole.

3. The phenomenon where someone in one breath tells you not to worry about the thing you're worrying about, then in the next breath says that you should be worrying about something else that you've already thought about and have determined to the best of your judgement is not worth worrying about.

Thursday, January 29, 2009

Terminological note

For reference, the updated definition of saddleback.

Me and my problems

A few weeks ago, an ATM gave me half of a $20 bill. It was ripped clean in half and only one half came out of the ATM. I went into the bank and they had me fill out a form and they swapped it for a normal bill.

Problem: It happened again a few days ago. I didn't notice at the time, but now there's half a $20 in my wallet and I think it was from the same ATM. But I'm too embarrassed to go into the bank and have them fix it because I already did it once and I'm afraid they'll think it's some scam or something.

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Currently wondering

To what extent would the current financial crisis have been mitigated if no one had invested in anything they didn't understand?

Write or Die!

This is awesome!

I wish it was feasible to use it for translation.

Monday, January 26, 2009

Pnau vs. Pink Floyd vs. Country Joe McDonald vs. John Lennon. Hell yeah!



Prominent but inconsequential profanity. It won't offend you, but you might not want your boss/parent/kid to hear it.

Newsreel accent mystery

This is a US newsreel from 1944.



Hear the guy's accent? (He starts talking at 0:35.) Lots of black and white newsreel narrators talked like that (unless, like, it was always the same guy). But I've never heard anyone talk like that IRL, and I've never heard anyone talk like that in old movies. I wonder what the story behind the accent is. Unfortunately, I don't know what it's called and my attempts to google it have been unproductive.

Language people are hot!

Really! It's been pseudoscientifically proven!

Cough syrup

Why does cough medicine only come in liquid form? Why can't you buy it in pill form? The liquid stuff is disgusting! (Although it's a lot easier now as an adult knowing how to do shots.)

The logistics of the Finance Minister buying shoes

On TV they're showing Jim Flaherty buying shoes. He appears to be trying them on, and there appear to be some other boxes nearby for him to try on too. There's a swarm of media around him taking pictures.

I wonder how that really works? He can't possibly be doing a from-scratch trying-on-for-real shoe shopping trip with all those media people following him. A real shoe-shopping trip involves going to several different stores and trying on a bunch of different things and then maybe going back and doing a comparision etc. It could take all day, which would be boring for the media people and tiresome for Mr. Flaherty to do with a mob of cameras on him.

They must either do one trip to a specific store where he buys the best pair available there (and perhaps returns it later if it isn't good enough) or they must do preliminary recon to identify the best pair and then he shows up with his media mob and goes through the motions of trying them on.

Friday, January 23, 2009

The Impossible Quiz

I am smarter than 90.33% of the rest of the world.
Most Difficult Quiz

The quiz seems to think you're allowed to google, but I didn't google while taking it.

Perception of safety

Yesterday there was a shooting on the subway and there was a shooting on the 401.

I've seen news items about people who are now afraid to go on the subway and news items reassuring people that they shouldn't be afraid to go on the subway. I haven't seen any news items about people who are afraid to go on the 401 or reassuring people that they shouldn't be afraid to go on the 401.

Thursday, January 22, 2009

Parenting is futile

Think about all the behaviours that parents try to limit or restrict in their children.

Now think about how many of those limitations or restrictions are relevant to adults.

We can smoke and drink and have sex. We can go out whenever we want with whomever we please and go driving around in a car if one of us has one and come back as late as we want and stay up as late as we want before going to bed. We can talk on the phone or play videogames or watch TV or go on the internet as much as we want with no restrictions, and if we hear a swear word or see someone's boobies it's no big deal, not even worth mentioning really. We can have whatever cake or cookies or candy or junk food we want in any quantity without having to first drink a glass of milk or eat 11 peas or any other arbitrary rules. We can wear all the make-up we want, plus high heels or short hemlines or low-cut tops or bras with the best engineering money can buy. We can dye, pierce, or tattoo any part of our body humanly possibly. We can totally just walk into a pet store and buy a puppy. (We don't, because it's morally wrong, but we totally can.) We can leave our beds unmade and our clothes unironed and take hour-long showers and leave the house looking like that.

And we do whatever we want out of this list, whenever we want, to no ill effects.

And yet for the first 18 years of our lives, our parents were desperately trying to restrict these behaviours.

Brilliant Ideas That Will Never Work: celebrity interrogation for charity

You get a famous but reclusive person who hardly ever gives interviews, and you get them to do a Q&A session. You charge admission to the Q&A session (being a real hard-ass about recording devices), and then auction off the right to ask questions. Top bidder gets to ask the first question, second bidder gets to ask the second question, etc. etc. until time is up. The size of the audience and the duration of the event should be such that only 10-20% of the audience gets to ask questions, and if possible a live bidding system should be set up so people sitting in the audience can increase their bids in desperate attempts to get their questions in.

Fatal flaw: finding someone who is sufficiently famous and sufficiently reclusive that people would be willing to pay significant money for the opportunity, but still willing to do the interview.

Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Things They Should Invent: defined contribution to defined benefit pension conversion program

This economic crisis has really pulled the rug out from under defined contribution pension plans. People are seeing their pensions disappear with the tumbling stock market, which destroys consumer confidence among everyone with a defined contribution plan and makes people more likely to save than invest their pension contributions. At the same time, the economic turmoil must be making employers even more hesitant to set up defined benefit plans for the same reason that their employees are losing confidence in defined contribution plans. The impact of this is likely to be felt in our economy for a long time.

This is where the government could step in. They set up a system where you turn over your defined contribution, they invest it, and they guarantee you a defined benefit. The guaranteed benefit would simply be whatever is reasonable. Not an excessive amount that would put our public finances at risk, but not a stingy amount like EI either. There would be no ceiling - the bigger your contributions, the bigger your pensions. Perhaps people could add private contributions too, I'm not sure how that would affect it. The program would be completely optional. They'll tell you up front how much defined benefit they will guarantee, and if you think you can do better you can still invest your defined contributions yourself.

Advantages: The government already has pension-management expertise because they have to manage the CPP and their own employees' pensions. This would just be doing the same thing with more money. Since the government operates on a longer term than individuals, they can absorb losses in bad times and make them up in good times, which individuals can't do. This would boost consumer confidence among pensioners and older workers because they don't have to worry about what if they lose their pensions. It would also stimulate the economy by investing money that would otherwise be saved, and perhaps set an example for other investors. I seem to recall our PM recently saying something about how this economic turmoil provides a lot of good buying opportunities. This would be a chance to walk the talk, perhaps also increasing investor confidence. On a smaller scale, you know how every once in a while you meet someone who hates their job and is just marking time until their pension kicks in, to the detriment of the entire organization? This would let them leave their job for something they like better, without having to worry about losing security in retirement.

Question marks: This is based on the idea that larger investors with more principal can get a better return on investment than smaller investors. I'm not sure if this is actually true. It's in my mind as a pretty solid piece of conventional wisdom, but I have no idea where I got the idea from or how valid it actually is.

Disadvantages: People would have all their eggs in one basket and be entirely dependent on the government not going bankrupt.

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Question for USians

This purple lady who is talking before all the actual swearings-in happen is putting a lot of emphasis on how US democracy is apparently peaceful and non-violent.

Is that normal? It seems really random to me, but I've never watched a presidential inauguration before.

ETA: For that matter, is it normal to have your inauguration soundtracked by John Williams?

I think Peter Mansbridge is misreading Barack Obama

Peter Mansbridge is saying that Barack Obama is looking cool and confident and composed.

That's not what I'm seeing. To me it looks like he's quite obviously trying very very hard to look cool and confident and composed but is really somewhere between ecstatic and terrified.