Finally!

I look forward to finally welcoming our Afghan colleagues to Canada. We've been worrying about them for years, so I'm very happy to see our government doing something for them, if belatedly.

This will make you melt

(yoinked from Antonia Z)

White House Photostream

I'm really enjoying the White House Photostream. I've never been huge on photography as an art, but looking at these pictures I'm really appreciating the photographer's sense of composition and eye for interesting details. Each picture is its own little story and they make life in the White House look vaguely fun.

It's also fun to guess which of the "candid" photos are and aren't staged. It's a bit unfortunate that the people in the comment thread don't seem to see the careful and deliberate spin, but that might just be how the comments are moderated.

Open Letter to the City of Toronto recycling program

Dear recycling people:

Thank you for that very useful flier showing me, with pictures and detailed instructions, exactly what can and cannot be recycled. I didn't realize just how extensive our recycling program is (milk cartons! styrofoam!) so now I've put the flier up on my fridge and I'm recycling much better.

However, next time you make a flier, would you mind also including those recycling numbers that are sometimes found on plastic products? I can't figure out which category this plastic bag falls under. The manufacturer has very helpfully labelled the bag with a number 4 inside the recycling symbol, but I can't figure out which of the plastic categories on your chart that corresponds to.

P.S.: If you start collecting organics from my highrise building, you'll get like 90% diversion out of me. My building has a tri-sorter and everything, we're ready whenever you are.

Worms

(Content warning: graphic descriptions of worms. In case, like, you couldn't tell from the title.)

When I was a kid, quite often after it rained there's be worms all over the sidewalks, and it would be SO gross and it would SMELL like worms outside.

It just occurred to me that that hardly ever happens any more.

Possibilities:

1. It's because I live in a city now. More paved areas = less grass for worms to live in. I think this is unlikely, because I live on a residential street and there are lawns at nearly every building. I would notice at least on the side streets.

2. It's because I live in an older neighbourhood. I don't know (and can't google up in 30 seconds) precisely when my area was first developed, but historical fact has buildings on my section of Yonge St. in the 1830s. The neighbourhood where I grew up, on the other hand, was built in 1979/1980, before which the area was farmland. Maybe worms prefer natural areas as opposed to paved and built-up areas, so the local worm population has died out or emigrated.

3. Maybe global warming or climate change or some other factor is reducing the worm population.

Let's make some new rules for the subway

1. Point to the train. One of the unorthodox tips for riding the TTC is to exaggerate your body language so the people behind you can see that you're running for a train. While I appreciate the intentions behind that idea, its execution is difficult, passive-aggressive, and easily misinterpreted, especially on centre-platform stations. Instead, let's all point to the trains. If you see a train, point to it. If you see someone else pointing to a train, point in the same direction. Then everyone in the station will quickly know which train is there.

2. Be your own pusher. In Tokyo, they have people whose whole job is to push passengers into crowded trains. In Toronto we don't, so people stop right in front of the doors even though there's a dozen people behind them. So from now on, if someone stops right in front of the doors and you're trying to get on, push them. You don't need much of a push - I've been trying it the past couple weeks and a gentle nudge always does the job.

Rogers tech support: the good and the bad

The bad: there was a prolonged internet outage in my area yesterday.

The good: when I called Rogers tech support, I got an automated announcement informing me that there's an outage in my area and giving me an ETA for service to come back online. This quickly gave me the information I needed and saved me a lot of pressing buttons and waiting and troubleshooting.

The bad: service wasn't back online by the ETA given.

The bad: even though service wasn't back online, the automated announcement was gone.

The good: I only had to wait under 10 minutes to speak to an agent, and they gave me an estimated hold time going in.

The bad: the interrupting "we appreciate your call, please continue to hold" sort of message is way too frequent.

The good: the agent accepted my troubleshooting and my explanation that there was a previous outage, and confirmed that my area is still out.

The bad: the agent was unable to give me an ETA.

The good: the agent arranged for me to be called back when service was back online.

The bad: I was never called back.*

The possibly good, possibly bad, depending on your sleep schedule: perhaps the reason why I was never called back was because service came back online sometimes between 1:00 a.m. and 5:00 a.m.

The good: service was back online when I woke up this morning.

The bad: after being out for somewhere between 14 and 18 straight hours.

*Update: I just got the call back - eight hours after I noticed that it started working

Things They Should Invent: let people join other countries' do not call lists

When I joined the do not call list some of my voicemail spam did drop off, so now a significant portion is taken off by that automated recording that apparently wants to lower my interest rates without bothering to tell me which card they're talking about.

According to call display these calls are coming from the States, so I tried signing up for the US do not call list. But it won't let me because my phone number isn't USian.

Why not let us join their list, and they can join our list? Or are they trying to stimulate the economy with a cross-border telemarketing industry?

Click?

The Simpsons is pronouncing clique as "click". I've always pronounced it "cleeeek".

How do you pronounce it?

Another reason to stop renaming venues

I've blogged before about how annoying it is that they keep renaming Toronto theatres every time they get a new corporate sponsor. Here's another problem:

Today a very nice family stopped and asked me directions. By my best read on the situation, they're newcomers to Canada who live in 905 and are in the city for a special family outing. They didn't seem to be used to navigating the subway and the busy sidewalks with their gaggle of young children, and seemed rather overwhelmed by the whole situation.

I'm walking by, apparently looking like I know where I'm going, so they stop me and ask me directions. I can tell that the place they're asking for is a recently-renamed venue, but I don't know what it was called before (i.e. what I have it labelled as in my mind), so I don't know where it is. It was a part of town I'm not completely fluent in, so I wasn't even able to give them a "your best bet is in that general direction." So I apologized profusely for not being able to help them, and left them standing on the sidewalk with their gaggle of children, trying to find someone who can give them directions.

I just got home and googled up the place they were looking for. I've been there several times. I could totally have given them good directions complete with landmarks for the kids to keep an eye out for. But because they renamed the place, I was useless. Instead of being helpful and welcoming to these tourists and newcomers, I was useless and gave them a suboptimal Toronto experience.

Today needs some Hip

Grace, Too - The Tragically Hip

What I love about translator brain

I love being able to see nuances that I couldn't see before. The word "proactive" means something to me. I see how the statement "it is what it is" might contribute to discourse. I couldn't see those things in high school. When I was a kid, my father had this book called The Politically Correct Dictionary or something similar. The thesis of this book was "OMG, look, these politically correct people want us to replace all these everyday words with these cumbersome expressions! Let's laugh at them!" Now I can see and articulately explain the precise nuances of connotation that the authors of this book were either blind to or ignoring, and I can productively use both the "politically correct" and the "politically incorrect" words to achieve specific effects.

I love being able to tell what language a person was thinking in when they said or wrote something. I love being able to look at a single innocent error and get useful information on how I should analyze the word choices for the rest of the source text.

I love being able to look at someone else's mistranslation and tell exactly how it happened and sometimes, if the language combination is one of mine or a cognate of one of mine, tell what they really meant without even seeing the source text.

I love being able to tell when an author's word choices are meaningful and when they're mindless. I can't always do this, but when I can it's awesome.

My coffee ideas

1. Chocolate milk in coffee instead of regular milk. Good idea or bad idea?

2. Taking coffee into the shower in the morning, most likely in a travel mug with a fully closeable lid. Good idea or bad idea?

Things Fanfic Archives Should Invent: tell us when the author knows how the story ends

One of the most annoying things in fanfic is when an author starts an interesting and compelling story, then writes themselves into a corner and abandons it.

To avoid this, I'd like stories have tags indicating whether or not the author knows how it ends. No judgement either way, just yes or no. Then people who get annoyed by stories that are abandoned can skip those where the author doesn't know the ending until the author has actually completed them.

I would totally read a story being made up as it goes along by some of the more talented authors - people whose work I've previously read and enjoyed. But I'd like the option of opting out of stories by n00bs who don't know where they're going.

That's me in the corner, that's me in the spotlight

When I was 10 years old, my parents came up with the idea that we should say grace before Sunday dinner, and that we should all take turns - every week a different person says grace.

I was really uncomfortable with this idea. It seemed random and out of the blue. Why start now? Why only Sunday dinner? If they thought saying grace was so important, why didn't they ever do it when they were sitting down to eat themselves?

In retrospect, looking at it from an adult perspective, it seems likely they read one of those parenting articles on the importance of creating family rituals. This also might have been related to a tragedy that occurred in our extended family around that time. But to me that wasn't how religion worked. You did it - or you did your best to do it - because you believe in it, or because it's what you're supposed to do. You didn't just arbitrarily start doing other bits of religion for no particular reason!

I thought long and hard trying to make sense of this, and couldn't get past the feeling that my parents were trying to put on a show to trick God (written this way because that's how I thought of Him at the time), trying to impress Him with what I then didn't have a word for but would now describe as false piety. I was not comfortable with that. No way we could trick God. We were totally going to hell for that.

This would ultimately be the catalyst of my loss of faith.

I'd never really thought about whether my prayers and other religious acts were sincere. It was just how life worked, it was just what you did to be good. Say please and thank you, 7x9=63, I believe in one God the Father Almighty, don't pick your nose. But because I was uncomfortable with my parents' attempts to apparently trick God, I started thinking critically about this whole saying grace thing, and I arrived at the conclusion that I wasn't thankful for my food. I know, I know, you're supposed to be even outside Catholicism in life in general, but the fact is I wasn't thankful for it. I just took it for granted. (Still do, actually.) So now I'm not only trying to trick God, but I'm trying to trick God by specifically lying to him. Our family never really did every single piece of Catholicism, but generally my failures were benign neglect, and any religious acts were sincere. They were often automatic and had not been thought about critically, but, apart from my first confession (I made up plausible stuff because I couldn't think of anything to say - I've since learned that tons of people did that) I was never lying or outright faking it.

So I decided I didn't want to lie to and trick God, and told my parents I didn't want to say grace when it was my turn. I couldn't articulate my reasons very clearly, so I told them it's because I wasn't thankful for the food. They told me I had to anyway. We were all sitting at the table, with food on the table, and no one was allowed to eat until I said grace. So I said grace and felt dirty doing so.

For the next 10 years, there would be a monthly battle for me to get out of saying grace and my parents to try to get me to say grace. This cause me to be constantly questioning and thinking critically about my religion, and to ultimately conclude that I cannot be Catholic. (It wasn't until well into adulthood that I realized I'm congenitally incapable of religious faith - my brain just doesn't bend that way.) I could have either accepted it unquestioningly or as not-particularly-meaningful ritual, but putting on an intentional show false piety was a dealbreaker and drove me to a life of sincere sacrilege.

Today needs Craig Ferguson and Eddie Izzard being silly

(Non-overlap of second clip starts at 0:53)



If you know how to get these clips to stop pretending they're widescreen and fucking up the aesthetics of my template, let me know.

BURMA!

In honour of World Penguin Day:

Things They Should Study: next-of-kin overruling organ donor wishes

I blogged previously that they should change the rules of organ donation so they don't require next-of-kin consent when they already have clear consent from the prospective donor.

I think this would be interesting to study. In what percentage of cases does the next-of-kin not go along with the prospective donor's clearly-expressed wishes? In what percentage of cases does the next-of-kin block donation, and in what percentage do they consent to donation even though the prospective donor doesn't?

(I also wonder, purely as a matter of theoretical ethics, whether there's an ethical difference between consenting to donation against the donor's will (and thereby helping other people) and blocking donation (thereby preventing the donor from helping others). I can make arguments both ways.)

Snapshot

Right now I am playing Insaniquarium and listening to Mahler while blue gunk soaks into my face.