Things They Should Study: the economic impact of rain on Pride

It's supposed to rain tomorrow, so I'm sure as hell not going to the parade. And I'm sure I'm not the only one thinking that.

Pride is one of the events that brings in the most tourism dollars, and some of those tourists are coming from day-trip distances and therefore can easily stay home if the weather sucks. Someone should study the economic impact of the rain tomorrow.

New Rule: maintain mental "last updated" metadata

I was once in a conversation with a member of my parents' generation who had quite a number of very loud opinions on what constitutes responsible sexual behaviour. As the conversation progressed, it became apparent that they were unaware of the existence of dental dams, or that anyone had ever thought of addressing that particular need. Now this individual doesn't need that information for their own personal life - they've been married since before AIDS. They had all the sexual health information they need. However, it never occurred to them that this information may not be up to date.

We've all heard of things like this happening. Grandparents who put their newborn grandchildren to sleep on their stomachs instead of their sides (or whatever you're supposed to do now - don't rely on childfree bloggers for advice on how to avoid SIDS!) because that's what they do with their own children. People making declarative statements about how the school curriculum works based on what it was when they were in school. I'm probably guilty of this myself in ways I'm not even aware of. To use a fake example (because I'm obviously unaware of the real ones), I haven't given a moment's thought to HPV since I got Gardasil - I haven't had any reason to think about it. For all I know they have a test or a treatment now, but I'm still walking around with the assumption that there's no treatment and no way to tell if it's dormant but contagious.

So what we all need to do is be aware of when the information in our brain was last updated. You know how the files in your computer have a "last updated" attribute, so you can sort them by which is newest? We need to keep that in our brains, so as not to spread misinformation or make fools of ourselves.

Popes' names

Popes' names translate. Emperor Popeatine is Benedict in English and Benoît in French. John Paul II was Jan Pawel in Polish.

I wonder when they started doing this? It's hard to figure out, because we translate them retroactively. Pope Benedict XVI is Benoît in French, and we also call Pope Benedict I who reigned in the 500s Benoît in French. But I seriously doubt they translated his name in the 500s. I don't think they were quite so very concerned about localization at that time. So when did this convention begin?

Apartment listings: ur doin it wrong

For the purposes of a blog post, I was trying to figure out how much a three-bedroom apartment goes for in Toronto. So I went to a rentals website, searched for three-bedroom apartments in Toronto, and sorted the results by price, lowest to highest.

The first page was full of results that were impossibly low. Literally impossible - it wouldn't cover the property taxes on that property. So I clicked on some of these listings, and discovered that they were in fact for one bedroom in someone's house. They'd just listed it that way because it's a three-bedroom house. WTF?? Has it not occurred to these would-be landlords that the tenants are looking for how many bedrooms they'll get, not how many you have?

So I proceeded past these into higher prices. This set of prices looked reasonable for a one-bedroom in Toronto, but surely you can't get a three-bedroom for that little? If you can, my current and last apartments are egregiously over-charging, even taking into account that this is a better neighbourhood. So again I clicked on some listings that were representative of this price range, and found that they are listings for the entire building. Suites from bachelor to three-bedroom were available, and they'd indicated only the lowest of the range of prices, under "Starting from...". That's totally unhelpful. If I actually needed a three-bedroom apartment, I'd need to know how much the three-bedrooms go for.

Between these two issues, I went through six pages of useless information before I gave up. And I'm not even looking for an apartment, I just want to know about how much they cost!

The perfect mash for this week's twitter trends

(Aside: why do the police at 2:20 have the word "POLICE" written on their shields in English instead of Farsi?)

Shamelessly yoinked from Antonia Z's twitter feed.

Everything you ever wanted to know about same-sex marriage in Toronto

Presumably in honour of Pride, the Toronto Star's Map of the Week has all kinds of cool data about same-sex marriage in Toronto.

The argument for sterilization before marriage

One of the barriers people face in getting sterilized is "But what if you get into a relationship with someone who wants kids?" As we CFers know, that's a deal-breaker. We don't want to be in a relationship with someone who wants kids, period.

But, as we also know, some breeder types think we can be talked out of or are going to grow out of being childfree (we're not) so might enter into a relationship with a CFer anyway, only to write angsty letters to Dear Abby years later when they find we were telling the truth.

Therefore being sterilized before you've found your life partner is a good idea, because it serves as an automatic breeder filter. Even if your future reproductive plans don't come up in conversation early on (You can't exactly do "Hey, do you, um, want to go get a cup of coffee or something?" "Sure, but I'm not going to bear your children."), it will come up in the birth control conversation. ("I've had Essure, but we'll need condoms at least until we both get tested.") No one will ever be under the impression that you could be convinced to breed, and it will therefore save everyone a lot of angst.

Open Letter to Firefox

Dear Firefox:

Please let me have different Google accounts logged in in different browser windows. Internet Explorer lets me do that!

Umbrellas

I recently switched to a larger purse, so I bought a larger umbrella. (Don't worry, it's not one of those huge ones that takes up the whole sidewalk.) My previous umbrella folded up nice and small, but it was a bit smaller than I'd have liked when open.

Today I was walking through a sudden cloudburst and thinking that maybe I should have put my old umbrella in my purse too, then I could give it to one of these people running around with no umbrella. Yeah, it's a bit small, but it's far better than nothing.

I've also been wanting to get one of those rainbow umbrellas that were all over Pride last year, but I'm not seeing them around anywhere this year.

So these thoughts converged to come up with the following:

Find yourself a nice homophobic community. Get a bunch of rainbow umbrellas - the size that can fold up into a purse. On a rainy day, send people out on foot with one (not necessarily rainbow) umbrella to protect themselves from the rain and a few rainbow umbrellas in their purse. Then they should offer their "spare" umbrellas to random umbrellaless people, just as good samaritans.

Sexy tune

Video is irrelevant, it's just the only way I could get a full embed.



I couldn't find a video of it being performed, but I picture the clapping/snapping/stomping rhythm section being performed as an intricate playground clapping game.

Conspiracy theory of the moment

Because I like making up conspiracy theories:

What if the LCBO was never actually have labour relations problems, they just needed a sudden injection of cash?

Why you need Anglophone translators, even for easy language combinations

Click here

Analogy for why you might want a tubal even if your husband has a vasectomy

When reading about the couple who was denied a tubal even though they had two children and their family was complete, one of the most frequent comments I noticed was people saying the husband should get a vasectomy instead.

I know a vasectomy is far less invasive than a tubal, and I know it is a solution that works for a huge number of couples. But some people might still want a tubal even if their husband has a vasectomy.

Here's why:

Suppose some evil bad guy has given you a bomb. For plot purposes, you can't just put down the bomb and walk away - it is somehow attached to you in a way that you, personally, are unable to remove. So you call the bomb squad for help.

The bomb squad arrives and tells you you're in luck - this bomb isn't going to go off by itself, it will only go off if exposed to open flame. So the bomb squad goes through your home and removes ever source of open flame. They remove your barbecue and your fireplace and your lighters and your matches and your candles and everything else in the house that might produce or require open flame. Then they say "Okay, no more sources of open flame, you're safe."

Now, by strict statistics, the vast majority of people aren't going to be inadvertently exposed to open flame. There are no sources of open flame in your home, and if you ever see any open flame anywhere else, you're going to run in the opposite direction.

But you still want them to get rid of the bomb, don't you?

Labour relations

First two questions, then some worrying, and probably some other random stuff along the way because I'm not particularly organized today.

Question 1:

Price was uppermost in the mind of a woman who identified herself only as a bar owner on Ossington Ave.

"If I opened a bar in the United States, a bottle of vodka would cost me five bucks and I'd sell a cocktail for $4.25," she said hotly.

"Here a bottle of vodka costs $35.26 and I still have to sell a cocktail for $4.25, and I have to pay a 10 per cent liquor tax and GST, and I have to go through all these hoops for licensing."

Can any USians confirm that a bottle of vodka costs $5? I assume we're talking approximately 750 mL, which Google tells me is about 25 oz. I'm thinking if that was actually true, it would be far more common knowledge and it would be WAY more common to bring back your absolute maximum quota of booze every single time you cross the border. I've heard that it's cheaper in the states and people do bring back booze sometimes, but not to the extent that that price difference would result in. I blogged previously that media outlets should fact-check reader mail before printing it - maybe they should also fact-check statements like this in quotes that they run. It isn't right that a person should be able to get a statement like that printed as though it's fact, and decline to use their name in the process.

Also, I've noticed multiple times in the comments threads people pointing out that there are all kinds of great wineries in Niagara, and we Torontonians are probably just too snobby to come down and enjoy them. WTF? It's nothing against Niagara wine at all - I drink it all the time. It's just most people, most of the time, want buying wine to be a straightforward errand, not a day trip that you have to travel two hours each way for. Would you want to have to come up to TO every time you want alcohol?

Anyway, my question is: is it true that you can get a bottle of vodka for $5 in the US?

Question 2:

WTF is up with all the media reports of illegal dumping? This is the second day of the garbage strike. There is no scheduled garbage collection on Mondays. If they hadn't announced the garbage strike, people would be only just starting to notice that garbage has been collected. But on the front page of this morning's G&M, there's a picture of a pile of garbage bags described as an impromptu illegal dump. That picture must have been taken yesterday. If garbage collection had been going normally, that garbage wouldn't even have been collected until at least today. Someone here is overreacting - either people are going "OMG! Garbage strike! I must immediately illegally dump my garbage!" without even waiting to see if it resolves within the first couple of days, or the media is vastly overreporting/over-sensationalizing alleged illegal dumping.

***

Meanwhile, I'm terrified. Not by the strikes (although the prospect of a prolonged garbage strike with no alcohol available is kind of scary for someone with my phobias), but by the attitude of the public. There are so many loud people who seem so vehemently opposed to anyone making a decent living. They seem to genuinely and truly want all these people - LCBO workers, daycare workers, even garbage collectors - to be among the working poor, floating through contract hell. They seem to actively think that it's outright wrong for these workers to be making a decent working-class living, something where you can rent a small house in a safe neighbourhood, go to the dentist whenever necessary, buy your kid some skates for xmas and take them to Canada's Wonderland in the summer. This terrifies me, because if they want these people to be poor, they also want me to be poor. I'm far less important and have a far easier job than a garbage man! They just haven't noticed me yet because my job is to be invisible. (Yeah, I know, all this blogging doesn't help.)

When I was in university, I was earning under the LICO and living within that amount. I had scholarships, most of tuition was taken care of, but, like most students, I was really scrimping everywhere possible for living expenses. There were things crawling out of my walls and causing me panic attacks. For a couple of years I used now-defunct free dial-up internet services, living with constant uncertainty as to whether I'd be able to get online. I rationed my cheese intake, because cheese is expensive. If I'd ever had a dental emergency, I wouldn't have been able to afford to get it dealt with but for the fact that I was still on my parents' insurance.

I was happy then because I was living on my own for the first time, but I don't want to live like that again. I want the security of knowing nothing is going to crawl out of my wall. I want to turn on my computer and have the internet be there. Hell, I want to have a computer - like if mine dies, I want to be able to replace it! I want to be able to eat cheese whenever I feel like eating cheese. I want to be able to get regular dental care. I want air conditioning. I want to make birth control decisions without cost being a factor. I want to wear women's shoes and make-up and bras in my correct size. And, yes, I want all that for city and LCBO workers too.

I know many people in the world don't get to live at that level, but here in Toronto in the 21st century, it isn't really so much to ask. I'm not asking for diamond-encrusted platinum, I'm not even asking for a car, I just want to be able to continue to make a living that allows me these small comforts. But these loud angry people who begrudge the garbage men a paycheque that allows them to buy their kids skates will, as soon as they notice I exist, want to send me back to having things crawling out of my walls. I don't feel safe.

I'd like to see a study of the people who begrudge others a safe, steady living for a solid day's work. What do they do for a living? What's their financial situation and career history like? What are some examples of what they think are appropriately-compensated jobs?

OMG!

A doggie adopted a wolf cub!

Dress code

Today was the first warm day of the year, so, like butterflies emerging from a cocoon, most of us wore skirts or dresses for the first time since last summer. There was a flurry of girl talk as we admired and complimented each other's outfits (many of them bought in the dreariness of March with a longing eye cast towards warmer summer weather), and the conversation soon turned to how each and every one of us, at one time or another, had been prevented by patriarchical or church oppression from enjoying the breezy summer skirt that we'd been longing to wear since March. There were stories of the indignity of being sent home from Catholic school to change, the humiliation of being forbidden by a father to leave the house, the dehumanization of being told you're going to go to hell because you look sexy in that dress, even a now-ex-husband who threw out a beloved sundress because no wife of his was going to wear anything that slutty in public. We were all very glad that we now live such liberated 21st-century lives that we can express ourselves with whatever pretty things we want to wear.

Because my profession is female-dominated and has a disproportionately large number of recovering catholics (Vive la révolution tranquille!), and because my workplace wants to attract the best and brightest of the profession, my employer makes a point of providing a modern, liberated, feminist, secular environment. In this spirit, after hearing our stories, our manager implemented a new policy to ensure that we are never oppressed again: now our dress code stipulates that everyone must wear a skirt that is shorter than fingertip length. No long hemlines, no pants, no stockings, no leggings, none of the tools our patriarchical and religious oppressors used to force us to submit by hiding our bodies.

Of course, everything I've said so far is a complete and total lie. I made up every word of it. We have no dress code (and in fact make a huge point of not having a dress code), we don't have epic girl-talk sessions squeeing over each other's outfits in the office, I don't know of any abusive ex-husbands who threw out their wife's clothes, it's pure fiction. It was hot out today and I did wear a skirt, but everything else is nothing more than a product of my overactive imagination and the glass of wine I had with dinner.

But think about what you were thinking when I said our dress code requires a short skirt. You were probably thinking something like "WTF? That's no fair at all!" You might have been thinking "But what if you don't want to show that much leg?" You might have been thinking "That sounds kind of lecherous and creepy." If you're lecherous and creepy, you might have been thinking "Cool! How can I get a job there!" But I'm certain - I'd bet real money - that you weren't thinking that it's in any way reasonable or helpful or productive or kind or in any other way good policy to forbid us from covering our legs.

By direct extrapolation, it is equally bad policy to ban the burqa in France.

Open Letter to Ontario Minister of Housing Jim Watson

Dear Mr. Watson:

I am writing to you in your capacity as Minister of Housing to draw your attention to a flaw in the Ontario Residential Tenancies Act.

Subsection 6(2) of the Ontario Residential Tenancies Act states:

Sections 104, 111, 112, 120, 121, 122, 126 to 133, 165 and 167 do not apply with respect to a rental unit if,

(a) it was not occupied for any purpose before June 17, 1998;

(b) it is a rental unit no part of which has been previously rented since July 29, 1975; or

(c) no part of the building, mobile home park or land lease community was occupied for residential purposes before November 1, 1991. 2006, c. 17, s. 6 (2).

This is of concern specifically in reference to section 120, which sets out the guideline rent increase.

In other words, if the building was not occupied before 1998, or was not used in the manners specified before the dates indicated, the landlord can increase rent by however much they want rather than being limited by the guideline rent increase.

The section appears to be intended to encourage the creation of new rental housing, which is a laudable goal. However, this noble purpose is defeated by the fact that the last time this section was updated was 1997 or 1998, when the buildings referred to in paragraph a) were brand new. Eleven or twelve years have passed, but this section has not been updated. If it is not updated with a more recent date or a time limit on the exemption, landlords will be able to increase rent however much they want forever, simply by virtue of the fact that their building was built after an arbitrary date.

Not only is this contrary to the spirit of the legislation, it also has a negative impact on Ontarians' quality of life. The vast majority of Ontarians don't get enough of a raise year after year to keep up with an unregulated rent increase for 12 or more years. This means that people in housing up to ten years old live in fear of being priced out of their homes with each rent increase, of having to uproot their families and relocate to lower quality housing - even if they're fortunate enough to have stable employment - because their rent is increasing at a faster rate than their salary and there's no respite in sight.

I know this is not the intention of the Act and is not consistent with the values your government stands for. Please amend this legislation so that the dates in subsection 6(2) will be updated regularly, or introduce a time limit on the exemption as in subsection 3(7) of 1992 version of this legislation, so that Ontario tenants and their families can enjoy stable and secure housing.

Are cultures with fewer social apologies less secure?

I previously wondered about socio-cultural variations in how people receive apologies.

Recently IRL, I had to deal with someone who (by my best diagnosis) was insecure in their own competence and therefore overcompensated by jumping down the throat of any interlocutor who showed the slightest sign of weakness - criticizing the interlocutor's methods, questioning their competence, etc.

Fortunately, on my side of the conversation I knew what I was talking about. You might have noticed if you've been reading my blog that I try very hard not to make unqualified declarative statements unless I'm certain - I always try to represent my certainty or uncertainty accurately. (I don't think that's a cultural thing per se, I've made a conscious decision to communicate that way.) In my conversation with this individual, I was able to rightfully use unqualified declarative statements at every point. This isn't false bravado or arrogance in confidence's clothing, I just happened to know exactly what I was talking about.

This individual was by some measures my equal and by some measures my better, and usually in this type of situation I soften or mitigate my declarative statements a bit out of respect. "I think perhaps it might..." or "I was wondering if..." when I mean "It is..." or "You should..." But knowing what this individual was like, I decided not to leave any room for argument by sticking to declarative factual statements. It worked relatively well. This individual doesn't like me and would very much like to question my credibility, but the fact of the matter is I'm simply correct.

So this got me thinking about people who take apologies as a sign of weakness. What if their motives are similar to those of the individual I was dealing with - what if they're insecure and looking for signs of weakness in their interlocutor? And, similarly, hesitant to throw out an apology as a social lubricant for fear it might betray their own weakness?

But sometimes apologies/lack thereof can be cultural. In Canada (or at least my corner thereof) you apologize when someone steps on your foot. The real meaning isn't "I beg your forgiveness for my foot having gotten in your way," but rather "I acknowledge that there was an occurrence and hereby express that my intention is not to be an asshole about it." But in cultures with less of a social apology, that may well be interpreted as the speaker honestly thinking that it's their fault for getting their foot in the way.

Similarly, when I normally mitigate my declarative statements when talking to my equals and my betters, my intention is "I acknowledge your expertise and hereby express that my intention is not to boss you around." If there's a cultural aspect to this (which I think there is - from what I've seen on British TV shows they mitigate more than we do), people from less-mitigating cultures might interpret it as a sign that I'm not confident in my statements.

So I'm thinking about all this, and I'm thinking about how I had to suppress my natural mitigation tendencies to communicate with an individual who is insecure and defensive about their own competence, and it occurs to me: what if people who live in cultures with fewer social apologies/less mitigation of declarative statements are less confident and/or secure? And, if this does end up being the case, which is the cause and which is the effect?

It's a longshot, I know, to make cultural generalizations about insecurity and confidence, but that's where this train of thought landed.

Tangental to thinking about sick leave

The real tragedy is that the people who are least likely to be able to afford to lose income are in the jobs that are most likely to not have any provision for paid sick leave. Jobs that pay enough money that you can accrue a bit of savings and if you missed a day's pay it wouldn't be a huge problem are also jobs that are more likely to have paid sick leave or to allow you to massage your schedule a bit for a doctor's appointment.