Me and my problems

1. I broke a nail and now I type with a limp.

2. My left shoe is too big. This is weird because the right shoe is fine, and my left foot is bigger. I wore this pair just last week, and they were fine. Nothing appears to be stretched or broken, the insoles and heel cups are the same in both, and I'm wearing identical socks on both feet.

Things They Should Invent: delivery service for restaurants that don't have delivery

It's cold and rainy and windy and I'm craving pierogi. Making them myself would require a grocery store run, which isn't gonna happen in this weather. The only restaurants I know of or can google up that have pierogi are down on Ronce, and none of them deliver. I would totally pay someone good money to bring me pierogi right now.

A pierogi delivery service in and of itself probably isn't a viable business model, but what about a service that goes to any restaurant, buys whatever it is you want, and brings it to you? Imagine: you could have someone bring you pierogi or a hamburger or a lobster dinner! They charge a standard fee (either flat or mileage-based) on top of the restaurant price, and I think people would pay pretty well on days when they can't be assed to go out to a restaurant.

Retirement

When I was a kid, a lot of the grownups around me were counting the years/months until retirement. At the time I thought they just hated their jobs. But I just realized something even better:

If you're retired (with a defined-benefits pension, which the grownups in question did have), that's basically job security. Apart extreme (at the time - more normal now) cases where the entire pension plan collapses beyond insurability, you aren't going to lose your income. It's not the not having to work, it's the predictable income for the rest of your life.

I would totally work every day until the age of 100 for predictable income that's as close as humanly possible to un-loseable.

And they get this, AND they get to sleep in in the morning.

That's what I want to be when I grow up.

Theoretically useful but realistically useless

I took everything off my bathroom counter to clean it, and in the process I found a few stretched-out hair elastics and a couple of hair pins that seemed to have turned rusty from the wet bathroom counter. So I threw them all in the garbage.

This then is our garbage problem. Things that are theoretically still useful, but realistically we aren't going to use them. The elastics could still anchor hair or serve other elastic-type purposes, but realistically I'm not going to use them when I have others that aren't stretched out. The pins could still pin hair, but they seemed rusty, and besides I've since found other pins that work better on my hair. They both came in packages of several dozen from the dollar store. Even if there is someone else who could use them, it would be practically insulting for me to freecycle them since they're so small and cheap and in such poor condition. Even if I didn't throw them out, even if I committed to keeping them until I got full use out of them, they would still be sitting around my apartment doing nothing for literally years because I have more useful similar items in my home right this minute.

They aren't poorly made - all elastics lose their elasticity eventually, and the pins were simply being metal that got wet. They weren't an ill-advised purchase - the elastics did their job and the pins were the best I could find at the time I purchased them (the better ones I've gotten since then weren't available at the time). I suppose I could have been more careful about not getting the hair pins wet, but leaving a hair pin on the bathroom counter isn't the greatest irresponsibility ever.

But they're still technically useful, I'm never going to use them, and now they're in the garbage. What do we do about this?

Open Letter to the wife whose husband lost his religion

Dear lady who posted this on PostSecret:



Even if he does see the connection, he can't just start believing again. Yes, he could go through the motions, but he'd just be attempting to trick you and your god. He wouldn't actually believe in it. Religious faith is not something you can turn on and off on a whim; as you know from your own faith, you have to truly believe in it.

Think of it this way: could you truly stop believing in your god if you thought it would bring you luck to do so? Could you truly believe in, say, Allah or Ganesha or Athena or Gitche Manitou? You could go through the motions, sure, but would you actually believe in it?

Today needs some Stones

Let It Bleed - The Rolling Stones

Most fascinating PostSecret ever

Yoinked and re-upped from PostSecret France because I couldn't get it to post otherwise.

Things They Should Invent: products that change your hair's reaction to humidity

Curly hair goes frizzy in humidity. Straight hair goes lank.

In the great tradition of everyone wanting the texture they don't have, I'd love for my hair to go frizzy in humidity, especially when I'm trying to curl it. And I'm sure there are some curly people who wouldn't mind a bit of lankness.

Invent something that does this, and I will buy it.

Things They Should Invent: arguably edition

1. Arguably Awards: there should be an annual award for the most egregious use of arguably. Because you can use it practically anywhere. "Puppies are arguably the root of all evil."

2. Opposite of arguably: we need a word to emphasize when something is absolutely positively not arguable. "Deep-fried lard is [opposite of arguably] not very good for you."

Things They Should Study: where did the idea that we all pay 50% income tax come from?

Conventional wisdom is that we pay 50% of our income in taxes. That idea has been mindlessly bandied about as fact for as long as I can remember.

I just did my taxes, and the computer very kindly told me how much tax I'm paying in income tax. I'm paying a total of 18% of my income in taxes (my marginal tax rate is 30%, but obviously not everything is taxed at the marginal rate). So even if I spent every single dollar I earn on stuff that's subject to both sales taxes, that would be a total of 31% of my income in taxes.

My income falls between the median Canadian household income and the mean Canadian household income.

I don't have children, I don't have medical deductions, I don't have employment-related tax writeoffs, I don't have educational deductions, I don't claim my charitable donations. Basically the only deductions I claim are my RRSP contributions and my Metropass.

This would all suggest that most people are paying significantly less than 50% of their income in taxes. So where did the ubiquitous 50% idea come from?

Edited to add:

It occurred to me while I was putting on my makeup that this 50% idea might be responsible for our weak social safety net. It is a common misconception that people don't pay tax on social assistance benefits (in reality, it counts as income and is taxed if your income is high enough).

Suppose, for example, your gross income is $50,000 a year. And suppose you're under the common misconceptions that a) you're paying 50% of that in taxes, and b) government benefits are not taxable.

So someone tells you that Employment Insurance pays a maximum of $447 a week. You do the math and see that this is $23,244. But because you're under the misconception that you pay 50% of your income in taxes, you think your take-home is $25,000. And because you're under the misconception that EI isn't taxable, you think their take-home is $23,224. So you look at the situation and thinking that living on EI is no sacrifice whatsoever. But in reality, their take-home is less than that and your take-home is more than that, so there's a significant difference.

How ghettoization works

I was chatting with my hairdresser and mentioned in the natural flow of conversation that I'm childfree. She told me that most of her clients are childfree. That's very bizarre. I chose her because she has a somewhat unconventional approach that is compatible with my own somewhat unconventional needs, and I ended up as part of a clientele with generally similar family planning goals.

Then I realized that a lot of things in my life have worked out that way. I chose something based on specific factors, and ended up surrounded by people who are similar to me in completely unrelated areas.

For example, I chose translation because it's the first career path that I've ever been absolutely certain I could do. (All the others I would have had to blindly trust that my education and training would get me there.) I took what opportunities were available to me, and ended up on a team full of children of immigrants, ranging from first-and-a-half to second-and-a-half generation. (This is notable because none of us are translating in our heritage languages.)

I chose my neighbourhood because it's located at a subway stop, it has all the basic amenities (grocery store, drug store, LCBO, banks, library, doctor, dentist) all within walking distance, and it's safe and comfortable. Turns out it also has a good selection of demographically-suitable women's clothing and shoe stores, and a decent range of restaurants and bars that I wouldn't feel out of place patronizing. When I first moved here, my big political issue was working towards the legalization of same-sex marriage (this was April 2003, and I had no idea how close we actually were); turned out my MP supported it wholeheartedly.

I keep making decisions based on the relevant factors, and finding myself surrounded by people who are similar or like-minded in other areas of life as well. I'm not quite sure what to think of this. On one hand, it's convenient. On the other, it might be making me narrow-minded. But then, it's not like I'm going to go out of my way to live somewhere that meets my needs less well or find a less suitable job (or get my hair done by someone I don't trust) just so I can be around people who aren't similar to me.

I'm not quite sure what to make of this, but it's kind of interesting.

Do you actually want me to understand your story, or should I just smile and nod?

A number of times recently I've had people tell me stories involving topics or plot points that I don't understand, and that they know I don't understand. To use fake examples, they might be telling me about their ultrasound when they know I've never been pregnant, or they might be telling me a story about a family thing where I don't know the names of the family members.

So I ask the questions I need to follow the plot of the story. E.g., "So why do you have to drink all this water?" or "Wait, is Bob the ex-husband?" And then my interlocutor seems to get pissed or frustrated at me for not knowing this stuff. In life in general I seem to learn things quickly enough so I don't think I'm just generally stupid. (Of course, if I were generally stupid I wouldn't notice, would I?) This frustration seems to happen only when people are telling me stories where I don't know the subject matter, and it seems only when they know that I'm not familiar with the subject matter. When they don't know about my ignorance going in and then I confess it, I seem to do fine.

So should I be just smiling and nodding in these cases even though I'm not following the story at all?

Interesting study

A study by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives calculating how much taxpayer-funded public services we receive based on income and household configuration.

While it is interesting, it's a dense study (at least to economically semi-literate people like me) so I haven't read it thoroughly yet or analyzed the methodology or looked for other research on the topic (although the study says that there isn't much out there). But in any case, it's worth at least skimming through and seeing where you fall on the various charts.

(Via the always awesome Linda Diebel)

Things They Should Invent: make heel height proportionate to shoe size

I can strap a pair of four-inch heels on my size 11 feet without blinking an eye, but it's probably far more difficult to contort your feet into a four-inch heel if you only wear a size 6. According to the first chart I could google up, a size 6 foot is two whole inches shorter than mine, which is a different of about 20%. This means that a four-inch heel has the same difficutly level for me as a three-inch heel does for a size 6. Conversely, a four-inch heel on a size 6 would feel the same as a five-inch heel does on me, and I can tell you from firsthand experience that a five-inch heel is really pushing the absolute limits of what I can wear.

Why not give the dainty-footed a fighting chance and reduce heel height in proportion to shoe size?

Let's change the meaning of circumnavigate

Circumnavigate means to travel all the way around the planet. But how often do we need to express that concept - especially now that it can be readily achieved and is no longer any particular feat (except of general endurance)?

Circumnavigate should instead have a meaning parallel to that of circumlocute. It should mean to find a route around something so as to avoid that particular something. Example: "The subway is down and the shuttle buses are way overcrowded, so it's best to just circumnavigate Yonge St. entirely."

Normally we'd use "avoid" in that sentence where I used the word circumnavigate; the nuance requiring a different word is that circumnavigate would imply seeking out and finding a way to avoid Yonge St., rather than just not going on Yonge St. There's a slight connotation of initiative and achievement.

Pas de deux à six membres

(Shamelessly yoinked from James Bow)

Refining the Dream Drugs

I previously came up with the idea of Dream Drugs, which make your dreams more interesting.

I have an idea of how to achieve that: reverse the sleep cycle.

If I remember my science properly, at the beginning of the night you fall into a deep sleep, then you get more REM cycles (and therefore more dreams) as the night wears on.

This is inconvenient. If you aren't going to be able to get a full night's sleep, you aren't going to have as many dreams. If you happen to wake up an hour or two before you've completed your sleep cycle, it's extra tempting to go back to bed because that's when all the good dreams are going to happen.

So what the Dream Drugs should do is reverse the sleep cycle so that the dreams come first and the deep sleep comes second. Then every night you can enjoy dreams, even if you don't get a full night's sleep. And if you happen to wake up an hour or two before your alarm, you may as well get out of bed and get a head start on your day since you aren't going to get any more dreams to play with.

I wonder how bad writing works

Sometimes in fanfic I see people who just can't write dialogue. They have the characters talking in giant run-on sentences without commas.

"Good morning ma'am sorry to bother you but we're with the police and we need to ask you a few questions."

"Oh well come in then pardon the mess but I have three kids and just got them off to school and haven't had time to clean up."

It's like that for the whole fic, which is unfortunate because usually the premise of the story is interesting, but I just can't hear the characters in these run-on sentences.

This has me wondering how exactly the author ends up in that place. They are exposed to proper dialogue construction in their recreational reading (and I know they read recreationally because these are book fandoms, plus the majority of fic in the fandoms uses properly-constructed dialogue), and yet in their own writing they land on these unpunctuated run-on streams of sentences.

When translators misfire on tone, they tend to err on the side of sounding like themselves instead of sounding like the source text. I'm not enough into fiction writing to know for certain, but it would stand to reason that in fiction people would make the similar error of sounding like themselves instead of sounding like the character. I know that in my own many epicly failed attempts at fiction, the problem was that all the characters sound like me.

But, I don't know about anyone else, but I think in sentences, with clauses and punctuation and everything. They aren't always impeccably structured - this post is a representative braindump - but they are sentences. That's just the way my thoughts arrive once they have manifested themselves into words.

So does this mean there are people walking around out there who don't think in sentences? Do their brains give them an epic spew of words to which they must consciously and manually add punctuation?

Things They Should Study: bullies who tell their victims they should kill themselves

Today's Annie's Mailbox has a girl whose bully is leaving her MySpace messages saying "Why don't you just go and kill yourself already?"

I've heard of this bullying method before, although it was never done to me, and I really think someone should research it. We could use more information about the perps motives and what they're thinking, because this makes even less sense than most other bullying techniques.

My bullies bullied me when we were unwillingly all in the same place - at school or on the bus mostly. But in this technique, the bullies go out of their way contact the victim at home outside of school hours. If they really think the victim is so worthless they should commit suicide, why would they go out of their way to contact her during free time that isn't being marred by her presence?

Also, I don't know if this is broadly applicable, but within my own circle the victims who were being told to suicide were far cooler than me. (To me they looked like they were on par with their bullies in terms of coolness, but they were all several levels above me so it's possible I couldn't see the distinction.) In callously cold and objective terms, I was a far better candidate for suicide than these victims, but no one ever suggested that I should commit suicide. And now that I think about it, those particular bullies were never cruel to me. We certainly weren't friends and some of us didn't quite get along in a sort of cold and distant and avoiding each other way, but they never actually bullied me. Why would they do something so much more drastic to the cooler victim while leaving the uncool victim alone?

I'd love for someone to seek out adults who used to bully this way and find out about their motivations and how they chose their victims. Even moreso than regular bullying, it's a giant mystery to me.